2 JOHNSON. 



torian figuring always in the group with his more stern 

 idol, affording relief, by contrast, to the picture of the 

 sage, and amusing with his own harmless foibles, which 

 he takes a pleasure in revealing, as if he shared the gra- 

 tification he was preparing for his unknown reader. His 

 cleverness, his tact, his skill in drawing forth those he 

 was studying, his admirable good humour, his strict love 

 of truth, his high and generous principle, his kindness 

 towards his friends, his unvarying but generally rational 

 piety, have scarcely been sufficiently praised by those 

 who nevertheless have been always ready, as needs they 

 must be, to acknowledge the debt of gratitude due for 

 perhaps the book of all that were ever written, the most 

 difficult to lay down once it has been taken up. To the 

 great work of Mr. Boswell, may be added some portions 

 of Sir John Hawkins's far inferior, and much less accurate 

 biography ; the amusing but also somewhat careless 

 anecdotes of Mrs. Piozzi, formerly Mrs. Thrale, and above 

 all, the two interesting works of Madame D'Arblay, the 

 celebrated Miss Burney, her own autobiography, and the 

 life of her father. These works, but the two last 

 especially, abound in important additions to that of 

 Mr. Boswell ; and what relates to Dr. Johnson certainly 

 forms the principal value of them both*-. 



* We must, however, not pass over the light, somewhat lurid it 

 must be owned, which the autobiography sheds on the habits and 

 effects of a court life ; the dreadful prostration of the understanding 

 which may be seen to arise among at least the subordinate figures of 

 the courtly group. I own that I cannot conceive this to be the 

 universally resembling picture. My own experience and observa- 

 tion of many years, some of them passed in near connexion with our 

 court, leads me to this conclusion. It must be added in extenuation 

 of the absurdities so often laughed at in Boswell, that this amiable 



