For several years, except a few trifles in the _Gentleman's Magazine_,
and his famous "Prologue delivered at the Opening of Drury Lane
Theatre," he seems to have written nothing. But in 1745 appeared the
prospectus of his most laborious undertaking, the "English
Dictionary." This continued his principal occupation for some years,
and, as Boswell truly observes, "served to relieve his constitutional
melancholy by the steady, yet not oppressive, employment it secured
him." In its unity, too, and gigantic size, the task seemed fitted for
the powers of so strong a man; and although he says he dismissed it at
last with "frigid tranquillity," he had no doubt felt its influence
during the time to be at once that of a protecting guardian and of an
inspiring genius. In 1749, he published his "Vanity of Human Wishes,"
for which he received the sum of fifteen guineas,--a miserable
recompense for a poem which Byron pronounces "sublime," and which is
as true as it is magnificent in thought, and terse in language. In the
same year, Garrick had "Irene" acted, but it was "damned" the first
night, although it dragged on heavily for eight nights more. When the
author was asked how he felt at its ill-success, he replied, "Like the
Monument!" How different from Addison, walking restlessly, and
perspiring with anxiety behind the scenes, while the fate of "Cato"
was hanging in the balance!

In 1750 he began his "Rambler," and carried it on with only tolerable
success till 1752. The world has long ago made up its mind on the
merits and defects of this periodical, its masculine thought and
energetic diction, alternating with disguised common-place and (as he
would have said himself) "turgescent tameness"--its critical and
fictitious papers, often so rich in fancy, and felicitous in
expression, mixed with others which exhibit "bulk without spirit