1750, Johnson wrote a prologue, which was spoken by Garrick at Drury Lane Theatre, on the representation of the Masque of Comus, for the benefit of Mrs. Foster, Milton's granddaughter. He had entertained the idea of mitigating the poverty of this descendant of the poet when he wrote his postscript in Lauder's book, and recommended a subscription for the purpose; and on the day preceding the performance of Comus, he inserted a letter in the General Advertizer, dated April 4th, strongly recommending the public to honour the illustrious dead by relieving the necessities of his last relative. This charitable interference, together with the ocсаsional encomia of the critic on the poetry of Milton, induced Mr. Boswell and Mr. Murphy to suppose that it was impossible Johnson could be inimical to the poet, the latter observing that "the man, who had thus exerted himself to serve the grand-daughter, cannot be supposed to have entertained personal malice to the grand-father." In answer to this inference Dr. Symmons replies; " I must be forgiven if I remark that this offer of vindication is both irrelevant and defective; irrelevant, as benevolence to the living, allowing it to be unalloyed with any base mixture of osten- tation or interest, may unite, in perfect consistency, with enmity to the dead:-defective, as the praise, to which the appeal has been so confidently made, is evidently penurious, reluctant, compelled by the demand of the critic's own character, and uniformly dashed and qualified with something of an opposite nature:

medio de fonte leporum

Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus augat. "While he was depreciating the fame of the illustrious ancestor, Johnson could not act more prudently, or in a way more likely to lead him to his final object, than by acquiring easy credit as the friend of the distressed grandchild; and the prologue which he wrote for her benefit, and which is little more than a versification of what he had before attached to the pamphlet sullied with Lauder's malignity and forgeries, has fully answered the writer's purposes by the imputed liberality which it has obtained for him, and the means with which it has thus supplied him of striking, during the repose of suspicion, the more pernicious blow. Avowed hostility generally defeats its own object; and the semblance of kindness has commonly been assumed by the efficient assassin for the perpetration of his design. Whether, in short, in the instance before us, Johnson indulged, as his friends would persuade us to believe, the charitable propensities of his own heart, or availed himself of the opportunity to provide for the interests of his own character, the measure may be allowed to have been good, or to have been wise, but cannot be admitted, in opposition to the testimony of formidable facts, to have been demonstrative of his favourable disposition towards Milton." *

Though some expressions in this extract require a little softening, the argument must be allowed to be cogent; Johnson certainly disliked the character of Milton, and was probably not averse to witness a diminution of his reputation; but, from the tenor of his life and writings, nothing can induce me to believe that he would for a moment submit to, or connive at, imposition. or falsehood, for the purpose of obtaining such a result.

The year 1752 saw Johnson overwhelmed with the most oppressive affliction; scarcely had he closed the pages of the Rambler, the last number of which is dated March the 14th, when he lost his wife, who expired on the 17th of that month, after an union of seventeen years.* She

was deposited in the church of Bromley, in Kent. The attachment of Johnson to his wife was sincere and ardent, and was cherished to the last moment of his existence, with unabated tenderness. He preserved her wedding-ring as long as he lived, enclosed in a small wooden box, within which was pasted the following inscription :

Eheu!

ELIZ. JOHNSON,
Nupta Jul. 9o 1736,
Mortua, ebeu!
Mart. 17° 1752.

His prayers and meditations also, which we shall afterwards have occasion to notice, bear a strong and singular testimony to the durability and warmth of his affection.

To mitigate the poignancy of his grief, and dispel the tedium of solitude, he now took into his house, which was in Gough-Square, a Mrs. Anne Williams, who had been the intimate friend of his wife. She was the daughter of Dr. Zachary Williams, a physician in South Wales, and, though blind, had uncommon talents, and great powers of conversation. To this lady, though by no means possessed of a good temper, Johnson was, uniformly kind and attentive. She published by subscription, in 1766, a quarto volume of Miscellanies, to which he patron contributed a few pieces of considerable value.

It was at this period too, that, deprived of his customary domestic gratifications, he began to extend the circle of his acquaintance, and not only to mix more in society abroad, but to receive more frequently at his own house those with whom he had formerly associated. Among the friends who were, at the death of his wife, the consolers of his distress, it may be satisfactory to mention the names of Dr. Bathurst, Dr. Taylor, Dr. Hawkesworth, Mr. Cave, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Macauley; Mr. Millar, Mr. Dodsley, Mr. Bouquet, Mr. Payne, booksellers; Mr. Strahan the printer; the Earl of Orrery, Lord Southwell, Mr. Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Bennet Langton, Esq. and Mr. Topham Beauclerck; who all, there is every reason to believe, held the author of the Rambler in the highest veneration, as well for the goodness of his heart, as the extraordinary powers of his intellect.

The well-carned fame of Johnson, however, did not attain its greatest altitude until the year 1755; when he appeared to the expecting world, by the publication of his Dictionary of the English Language, in the character of a LEXICOGRA