Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes by Thomas Gray;Thomas Parnell;Tobias George Smollett;Samuel Johnson
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vast," and are chiefly remarkable for their bold, bad innovations on
that English tongue of which the author was piling up the standard Dictionary. Many have dwelt severely on Johnson's inequalities, without attending to their cause; that was unquestionably the "body of death" which hung so heavily upon his system, and rendered writing at times a positive torment. Let his fastidious critics remember that he never spent a single day, of which he could say that he was entirely well, and free from pain, and that his spirits were often so depressed, that he was more than once seen on his knees, praying God to preserve his understanding. A great calamity now visited his household. This was the death of his wife. She expired on the 17th of March 1752. She had been married to him sixteen years; and notwithstanding the difference of age, and other causes of disagreement, he seems to have loved her with sincerity, and to have lamented her death with deep and long-continued sorrow. He relaxed not, however, an instant in his literary labours, continued the preparation of his Dictionary, and contributed a few lively and vigorous papers to the "Adventurer"--a paper, edited by Dr Hawkesworth, a writer of some talent, who did his best to tower up to the measure and stature of the "Rambler." During this time Johnson was filling his house with a colony of poor dependants,--such as Mrs Anna Williams, a soured female poetaster; and Levet, a tenth-rate medical peripatetic, who, as well as Hodge, the great lexicographer's cat, and Francis Barber, his black servant, now share in his immortality,--besides becoming acquainted with such men of eminence as Reynolds, the inimitable painter; Bennet Langton, the amiable and excellent country-gentleman; and Beauclerk, the smart and witty "man about town." In 1755 (exactly a hundred years ago), Johnson |
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