all were written by himself with the exception of twelve, which were furnished by Thomas Warton, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Mr. Langton. Selections. XIV. Robbery of Time; XXIV. Thinking; XLI. Death of a Friend; LI. Flight of Time; LII. Selfdenial; The character of Sober, which Johnson intended for his own portrait. STUDY OF "RASSELAS, PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA." This philosophical and moral tale, which Johnson himself called “ a little story-book," is but another expression of the author's sentiments on his favorite topic-the vanity of human wishes. He wrote the book during the evenings of one week, to defray the expenses of his mother's funeral. The work was very successful, and acquired a European reputation; it was translated into Italian, French, German, and Dutch, and an American edition was soon issued. Plan. The plan of the book is simple, and recalls certain parts of Voltaire's simultaneous but incomparably more brilliant attack upon Optimism in "Candide." There is supposed to be a happy valley in Abyssinia, where the royal princes are confined in total seclusion, but with ample supplies for every conceivable want. Rasselas, who has been thus educated, becomes curious as to the outside world, and at last makes his escape with his sister, her attendant, and the ancient sage and poet, Imlac. Under Imlac's guidance they survey life and manners in various stations; they make the acquaintance of philosophers, statesmen, men of the world, and recluses; they discuss the results of their experience pretty much in the style of the Rambler; they agree to pronounce the sentence, "Vanity of Vanities!" and finally, in a "conclusion where nothing is concluded," they resolve to return to the happy valley. The book is little more than a set of essays upon life, with just story enough to hold it together. It is wanting in those brilliant flashes of epigram which illustrate Voltaire's pages so as to blind some readers to its real force of sentiment, and yet it leaves a peculiar and powerful impression upon the reader.- LESLIE STEPHEN. Similarity to Voltaire's "Candide." -This was one of the most remarkable literary coincidences in history, and none marvelled at it more than Johnson himself. Voltaire's "Candide," written to refute the system of Optimism, which it has accomplished with brilliant success, is wonderfully similar in its plan and conduct to Johnson's "Rasselas," insomuch that I have heard Johnson say, that if they had not been published so closely one after the other that there was not time for imitation, it would have been in vain to deny that the scheme of that which came latest was taken from the other. Though the proposition illustrated by both these works was the same, namely, that in our present state there is more evil than good, the intention of the writers was very different. Voltaire, I am afraid, meant only, by wanton profaneness, to obtain a sportive victory over religion, and to discredit the belief of a superintending Providence; Johnson meant, by showing the unsatisfactory nature of things temporal, to direct the hopes of man to things eternal.-BOSWELL. QUOTATIONS. Imlac's Description of the Requirements of a Poet.-"The business of a poet is to examine not the individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances: he does not number the streaks of the tulip or describe the different shades in the verdure of a forest. He is to exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking features as recall the original to every mind; and must neglect the minute discriminations which one may have remarked and another have neglected for those characteristics which are alike obvious to vigilance and carelessness. .. "But the knowledge of nature is only half the task of a poet; he must be acquainted likewise with all the modes of life. He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths, which will always be the same; he must, therefore, content himself with the slow progress of his name; contemn the applause of his own time, and commit his claims to the justice of posterity. He must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place. "His labors are not yet at an end: he must know many languages and many sciences; and, that his style may be worthy of his thoughts, must, by incessant practice, familiarize to himself every delicacy of speech and grace of harmony." " Here the prince, Rasselas, interrupted the old poet: Enough; thou hast convinced me that no human being can ever be a poet." [This last sentence is probably the best known quotation from Johnson's writings.] "Whoever thou art, that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the pyramids and confess thy folly!" CRITICISMS. No prig shall ever persuade me that "Rasselas" is not a noble performance in design and in execution. Never were the expenses of a mother's funeral more gloriously defrayed by a son than the funeral of Samuel Johnson's mother by the price of "Rasselas," written for the pious purpose of laying her head decently and honorably in the dust.-CHRISTOPHER NORTH. A mass of sense. - DR. YOUNG. The reader who first attempts the "Abyssinian Candide" feels that he has imposed on himself a task rather than found a pleasure, or even a relaxation. The manner is heavy, and little suited to the occasion; the matter is of a very ordinary fabric, if it is safe and wholesome; there is nothing that shines except the author's facility of writing in a very artificial style as soon as we are informed, by external evidence, of the whole having been written in a few nights. He, perhaps, had some kind of misgiving that it was not a successful effort, for he had never looked at it till two and twenty years after it was written, when a friend happening to have it who was travelling with him, Johnson read it with some eagerness.-LORD BROUGHAM. The work can scarce be termed a narrative, being in a great measure void of incident: it is rather a set of moral dialogues on the various vicissitudes of human life, its follies, its fears, its hopes, its wishes, and the disappointment in which all terminate. The style is in Johnson's best manner, enriched and rendered sonorous by the triads and quaternions which he so much loved, and balanced with an art which, perhaps, he derived from the learned Sir Thomas Browne. --SIR WALTER SCOTT. "THE LIVES OF THE POETS." This is by far the most valuable and the best written of Johnson's works. Belonging to the artificial and didactic school, his literary criticisms are of little value, but the work is much consulted at the present day for its biographical information. By him Cowley, Pope, and Waller are extolled as exemplary poets, while the poets of nature -Milton, Gray, and Thomson-were bitterly denounced. Milton was of an age too far gone, and Gray and Thomson were the pioneers of an age to come, of which the outlines were yet too shadowy to be understood by JohnThe lives of Cowley, Dryden, and Pope are the best; that of Gray is the worst. son. CRITICISMS. Much of Johnson's criticism is pretty nearly obsolete; but the child of his old age, "The Lives of the Poets"a book in which criticism and biography are combinedis an admirable performance in spite of serious defects. It is the work that best reflects his mind, and intelligent readers who have once made its acquaintance will be apt to turn it into a familiar companion. - LESLIE STEPHEN. "The Lives of the Poets" is, on the whole, the best of Johnson's works. The narratives are as entertaining as any novel. The remarks on life and on human nature are eminently shrewd and profound. The criticisms are often excellent, and, even when grossly and provokingly unjust, well deserve to be studied; for however erroneous they may be, they are never silly. They are the judgments of a mind trammelled by prejudice and deficient in sensibility, but vigorous and acute. They, therefore, generally contain a portion of valuable truth which deserves to be separated from the alloy, and at the very worst they mean something-a praise to which much of what is called criticism in our time has no pretensions.... Among the Lives the best are, perhaps, those of Cowley, Dryden, and Pope. The very worst is, beyond all doubt, that of Gray.-T. B. MACAULAY. Let us always bear in mind, therefore, that the century so well represented by Dryden, Addison, Pope, and Swift, and of which the literary history is so powerfully written by Johnson in his Lives, is a century of prose-a century of which the great work in literature was the formation of English prose. Johnson was himself a laborer in this great and needful work, and was ruled by its influences. His blame of genuine poets like Milton and Gray, his overpraise of artificial poets like Pope, are to be taken as the utterances of a man who worked for an age of prose, who was ruled by its influences, and could not but be ruled by them. Of poetry he speaks as a man whose sense for that with which he is dealing is in some degree imperfect.MATTHEW ARNOLD. CUMBERLAND'S CHARACTERIZATION OF DR. JOHNSON AS A WRITER. As a poet his translations of Juvenal gave him a name in the world and gained him the applause of Pope. He was a writer of tragedy, but his "Irene" gives him no conspicuous rank in that department. As an essayist he merits more consideration. His Ramblers are in everybody's hands; about them opinions vary, and I rather believe the style of these essays is not now considered as a good model. This he corrected in his more advanced age, as may be seen in his "Lives of the Poets," where his diction, though occasionally elaborate and highly metaphorical, is not nearly so inflated and ponderous as in the |