really thinks so, his
perceptions are disturbed, he is mad. If he does not think so, he lies."
Exit opposition. There is nothing more to be said. Curiously enough, it is
often the palpable blunders of these monologues that now attract us, as if
we were enjoying a good joke at the dictator's expense. Once a lady asked
him, "Dr. Johnson, why did you define _pastern_ as the knee of a horse?"
"Ignorance, madame, pure ignorance," thundered the great authority.

When seventy years of age, Johnson was visited by several booksellers of
the city, who were about to bring out a new edition of the English poets,
and who wanted Johnson, as the leading literary man of London, to write the
prefaces to the several volumes. The result was his _Lives of the Poets_,
as it is now known, and this is his last literary work. He died in his poor
Fleet Street house, in 1784, and was buried among England's honored poets
in Westminster Abbey.

JOHNSON'S WORKS. "A book," says Dr. Johnson, "should help us either to
enjoy life or to endure it." Judged by this standard, one is puzzled what
to recommend among Johnson's numerous books. The two things which belong
among the things "worthy to be remembered" are his _Dictionary_ and his
_Lives of the Poets_, though both these are valuable, not as literature,
but rather as a study of literature. The _Dictionary_, as the first
ambitious attempt at an English lexicon, is extremely valuable,
notwithstanding the fact that his derivations are often faulty, and that he
frequently exercises his humor or prejudice in his curious definitions. In
defining "oats," for example, as a grain given in England to horses and in
Scotland to the people, he indulges his prejudice against the Scotch, whom
he never understood, just as, in his definition of "pension," he takes
occasion to rap the writers who had flattered their patrons since the days
of Elizabeth; though he afterwards accepted a comfortable pension for
himself. With characteristic honesty he refused to alter his definition in
subsequent editions of the _Dictionary_.

The _Lives of the Poets_ are the simplest and most readable of his literary
works. For ten years before beginning these biographies he had given
himself up to conversation, and the ponderous style of his _Rambler_ essays
here gives way to a lighter and more natural expression. As criticisms they
are often misleading, giving praise to artificial poets, like Cowley and
Pope, and doing scant justice o