18 
would stare at the clock in utter inability to tell the time, 
and at others, incidents and intelligence passed over him 
without leaving any impression. His view of human life and 
destiny became distorted with a tendency to hopelessness 
and his horizon seemed never clear of heavy clouds. Within 
the cheerful halo of fires and tea and talking friends he might 
for a season forget the surrounding gloom, but with the 
clearing of tables and the dispersal of company the haoitual 
cheerlessness inevitably returned. 
In one thus unhappily constituted an occasional murmur 
of complaint might well be expected and forgiven. But 
Johnson was never querulous. Believing as he did that 
humanity was radically wretched, that in this deplorable 
world unalloyed happiness could be enjoyed only by the riian 
who was drunk, he held it a duty still to shew fight against 
the devil, still to press doggedly onward in the face of dis- 
couragement and failure. 
Besides his melancholy and his twenty pounds, Johnson 
inherited from his father an enthusiasm for monarchy and a 
traditional affection towards the exiled Stuarts. He disliked 
Scotchmen, till he met them at home, and hated the Whigs 
as politicians void of principle. 
In the autumn of 1773 he visited Scotland and made with 
Boswell a rainy tour of the Hebrides. 
He was bound by strong attachment and profound respect 
to the English Church and clergy. His zeal for the apostolic 
succession would not permit him, when in Scotland, to attend 
a Presbyterian assembly. 
He was constitutionally indolent, remorseful of wasted 
days, and fertile in hopeless resolutions of amendment. After 
receiving his pension he produced little work in literature 
beyond his edition of Shakespeare and his “ Lives of the 
Poets,” the latter of which is generally considered to contain 
his best work. 
In 1765 the degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon 
him by Trinity College, Dublin, and ten years later he received 
a similar degree from his own Afina Mater. 
With the general reader of the present day the writings of 
Johnson find little favour. The solitary thoughts of the 
writer were rarely cheerful, and his books, written in solitude, 
are a set of sermons on a single text, “ All is vanity and 
vexation of spirit.” On second-hand bookstalls, in decrepit 
