r abundant injustice to nobler poets like
Gray and Milton; and they are not to be compared with those found in Thomas
Warton's _History of English Poetry_, which was published in the same
generation. As biographies, however, they are excellent reading, and we owe
to them some of our best known pictures of the early English poets.

Of Johnson's poems the reader will have enough if he glance over "The
Vanity of Human Wishes." His only story, _Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia_,
is a matter of rhetoric rather than of romance, but is interesting still to
the reader who wants to hear Johnson's personal views of society,
philosophy, and religion. Any one of his _Essays_, like that on "Reading,"
or "The Pernicious Effects of Revery," will be enough to acquaint the
reader with the Johnsonese style, which was once much admired and copied by
orators, but which happily has been replaced by a more natural way of
speaking. Most of his works, it must be confessed, are rather tiresome. It
is not to his books, but rather to the picture of the man himself, as given
by Boswell, that Johnson owes his great place in our literature.

BOSWELL'S "LIFE OF JOHNSON"

In James Boswell (1740-1795) we have another extraordinary figure,--a
shallow little Scotch barrister, who trots about like a dog at the heels of
his big master, frantic at a caress and groveling at a cuff, and abundantly
contented if only he can be near him and record his oracles. All his life
long Boswell's one ambition seems to have been to shine in the reflected
glory of great men, and his chief task to record their sayings and doings.
When he came to London, at twenty-two years of age, Johnson, then at the
beginning of his great fame, was to this insatiable little glory-seeker
like a Silver Doctor to a hungry trout. He sought an introduction as a man
seeks gold, haunted every place where Johnson declaimed, until in Davies's
bookstore the supreme opportunity came. This is his record of the great
event:

I was much agitated [says Boswell] and recollecting his prejudice against
the Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, "Don't tell him
where I come from." "From Scotland," cried Davies roguishly. "Mr. Johnson,"
said I, "I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it."... "That,
sir" [cried Johnson], "I find is what a very great many of your countrymen
cannot help." This stroke stunned me a good deal; and when we had sat down
I felt myself not a little embarrasse