Cowper, in writing of himself, says: "The effect of such continual listening to the language of a heart hopeless and deserted is, that I can never give much more than half my attention to what is started by others, and very rarely start anything myself. My silence, however, and my absence of mind make me sometimes as entertaining as if I had wit.'

Johnson, indeed, could give all his attention to what was started by others if it once roused his interest, but he, no doubt, too often, like Cowper, was listening to the language of a heart, if not hopeless and deserted, yet in a very despondent state. His absence of mind, too, was entertaining, and his habit of talking to himself occasioned some merriment. 'I was certain,' writes Boswell, 'that he was frequently uttering pious ejaculations, for fragments of the Lord's Prayer have been distinctly overheard. His friend, Mr. Thomas Davies, of whom Churchill says, "That Davies hath a very pretty wife," when Johnson muttered "Lead us not into temptation," used with waggish and gallant humour to whisper Mrs. Davies, "You, my dear, are the cause of this."'

The society of lively women told equally well on each. What Mrs. Thrale did for Johnson, the same, though in a far less degree, for they were far less with him, did Lady Austen and Lady Hesketh do for Cowper.

Without in the least forgetting all he owed to Mrs. Unwin, we may with some confidence say that, had he never known Mr. Newton, and had Lady Hesketh always lived with him, he might, as his death drew near, have owned with Johnson that he had enjoyed far more real happiness in his latter than in his earlier years.

For many years these two men lived very near to each other without ever meeting. Two of the unhappiest men in London-for so at about one and the same time they were—were indeed very close neighbours. Johnson was living in Inner Temple Lane when Dr. Adams, the tutor of his old college, visited him and found him 'in a deplorable state, sighing, groaning, talking to himself, and restlessly walking from room to room. He then used this emphatical expression of the misery which he felt : "I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits." It was in his chambers in the Inner Temple that only a few months earlier Cowper, first with laudanum and then with his garter, had tried to end his life, which had become too miserable for him any longer to bear. It was, moreover, at the same period of life that they were first. attacked with melancholy. Cowper was but twenty when he was, as he says, 'struck with such a dejection of spirits as none but those who have felt the same can have the least conception of. Day and

night I was upon the rack, lying down in horror and rising up in despair.' At the very same age Johnson 'felt himself overwhelmed with a horrible hypochondria, with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience, and with a dejection, gloom, and despair which made existence misery.'

It is strange that of these two melancholy men the one should have written one of the most diverting of histories, the History of John Gilpin,' and that the other should have lived to be the material out of which has been formed one of the liveliest of books, Boswell's 'Life of Samuel Johnson.' But humour and melancholy commonly go hand-in-hand, and men who have done most to lighten the sadness of others, too often themselves have passed through life 'as 'twere with a defeated joy.'

CHAPTER VI.

LORD CHESTERFIELD AND JOHNSON.

THERE is a well-known passage in one of 'Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son,' which is commonly supposed to have been aimed at Johnson. Boswell says 'the character of a respectable Hottentot in "Lord Chesterfield's Letters" has been generally understood to be meant for Johnson, and I have no doubt that it was.' Murphy does not even raise a doubt on the question, neither does Hawkins. But Johnson himself said that the character was not meant for him, but for George Lord Lyttelton; and Lord Hailes, according to Boswell, maintained with some warmth that it was not intended as a portrait of Johnson, but of a late noble lord distinguished for abstruse science (probably, says Mr. Croker, the second Earl of Macclesfield).' I shall be able, I believe, to prove almost beyond a doubt that Boswell, Murphy, and Hawkins were wrong. Whoever it was that Lord Chesterfield meant, it certainly was not Johnson. To establish my position I must quote the passage at length.

'There is a man whose moral character, deep learning, and superior parts I acknowledge, admire, and respect; but whom it is so impossible for me to love, that I am almost in a fever whenever I am in his company. His figure (without being deformed) seems made to disgrace or ridicule the common structure of the human body. His legs and arms are never in the position, which, according to the situation of his body, they ought to be in ; but constantly employed in committing acts of hostility upon the Graces. He throws anywhere but down his throat whatever he means to drink; and only mangles what he means to carve. Inattentive to all the regards of social life, he mistimes or misplaces everything. He disputes with heat and indiscriminately, mindless of the rank, character, and situation of those with whom he disputes; absolutely ignorant of the several gradations of familiarity or respect, he is exactly the same to his superiors, his equals, and his inferiors, and therefore by a necessary consequence absurd to two of the three. Is it possible to love such a man? No. The utmost I can do for him is to consider him as a respectable Hottentot.'

Now in this passage itself there is good evidence to be found that Chesterfield was thinking of anyone rather than Johnson. As Boswell himself said to Johnson, 'there was one trait which unquestionably did not belong