recommended Clarke's Sermons as fullest on the doctrine of a
Propitiation. He spoke of the Bible and of the Sabbath with the
warmest feelings of belief and respect. At last, on the 13th day of
December 1784, in the seventy-fifth year of his age, this great, good
man, whose fears had subsided, and who had become as a little child,
fell asleep in Jesus. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, on Monday,
December 20th, and his funeral was attended by the most distinguished
men of the day.

Perhaps no literary man ever exerted, during his lifetime, the same
personal influence as Samuel Johnson. Shelley used to call Byron the
"Byronic Energy," from a sense of his exceeding power. The author of
"Rasselas" was the "Johnsonian Energy;" and the demon within him, if
not so ethereal and terrible as Byron's, was far more massive, equally
strong, and in conversation, at least, much more ready to do his work.
First-rate conversation generally springs from a desire to shine, or
from the effort of a full mind to relieve itself, or from exuberant
animal spirits, or from deep-seated misery. In Johnson it sprang from
a combination of all these causes. He went to conversation as to an
arena--his mind was richly-stored, even to overflowing--in company his
spirits uniformly rose--and yet there was always at his heart a burden
of wretchedness, seeking solace, not in silence, but in speech. Hence,
with the exception of Burke, no one ever matched him in talk; and
Burke, we imagine, although profounder in thought, more varied in
learning, and more brilliant in imagination, seldom fairly pitted
himself against Johnson. He was a younger man, and held the sage in
too much reverence to encounter him often with any deliberate and
determined purpose of contest. He frequently touched the shield of the
general challenger, not with the sharp, but with the butt-end of his
lance. He said, on one occasion, when asked why he had not talked more