At the time when he was concluding his very eloquent Preface, Johnson's
mind appears to have been in such a state of depression[871], that we
cannot contemplate without wonder the vigorous and splendid thoughts
which so highly distinguish that performance. 'I (says he) may surely be
contented without the praise of perfection, which if I could obtain in
this gloom of solitude, what would it avail me? I have protracted my
work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the
grave; and success and miscarriage are empty sounds, I therefore dismiss
it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure
or from praise[872].' That this indifference was rather a temporary than
an habitual feeling, appears, I think, from his letters to Mr.
Warton[873]; and however he may have been affected for the moment, certain
it is that the honours which his great work procured him, both at home
and abroad, were very grateful to him[874]. His friend the Earl of Corke
and Orrery, being at Florence, presented it to the _Academia della
Crusca_. That Academy sent Johnson their _Vocabulario_, and the French
Academy sent him their _Dictionnaire_, which Mr. Langton had the
pleasure to convey to him[875].

[Page 298: His melancholy at its meridian. A.D. 1755.]

It must undoubtedly seem strange, that the conclusion of his Preface
should be expressed in terms so desponding, when it is considered that
the authour was then only in his forty-sixth year. But we must ascribe
its gloom to that miserable dejection of spirits to which he was
constitutionally subject, and which was aggravated by the death of his
wife two years before[876]. I have heard it ingeniously observed by a lady
of rank and elegance, that 'his melancholy was then at its meridian[877].'
It pleased GOD to grant him almost thirty years of life after this time;
and once, when he was in a placid frame of mind, he was obliged to own