[Page 305: Johnson's opinion of booksellers. AEtat 47.]

On the first day of this year we find from his private devotions, that
he had then recovered from sickness[891]; and in February that his eye was
restored to its use[892]. The pious gratitude with which he acknowledges
mercies upon every occasion is very edifying; as is the humble
submission which he breathes, when it is the will of his heavenly Father
to try him with afflictions. As such dispositions become the state of
man here, and are the true effects of religious discipline, we cannot
but venerate in Johnson one of the most exercised minds that our holy
religion hath ever formed. If there be any thoughtless enough to suppose
such exercise the weakness of a great understanding, let them look up to
Johnson and be convinced that what he so earnestly practised must have a
rational foundation.

[Page 306: Christopher Smart. A.D. 1756.]

His works this year were, an abstract or epitome, in octavo, of his
folio _Dictionary_, and a few essays in a monthly publication, entitled,
_The Universal Visiter_. Christopher Smart, with whose unhappy
vacillation of mind he sincerely sympathised, was one of the stated
undertakers of this miscellany; and it was to assist him that Johnson
sometimes employed his pen[893]. All the essays marked with two
_asterisks_ have been ascribed to him; but I am confident, from internal
evidence, that of these, neither 'The Life of Chaucer,' 'Reflections on
the State of Portugal,' nor an 'Essay on Architecture,' were written by
him. I am equally confident, upon the same evidence, that he wrote
'Further Thoughts on Agriculture[894];'[Dagger] being the sequel of a very
inferiour essay on the same subject, and which, though carried on as if