which won much praise.

Later Years.--By the time he had been for ten years in London, his
abilities were sufficiently well known to the leading booksellers for
them to hire him to compile a _Dictionary of the English Language_ for
L1575. He was seven years at this work, finishing it in 1755. Between
1750 and 1760 he wrote the matter for two periodicals, _The Rambler_
(1750-1752) and _The Idler_ (1758-1760), which contain papers on
manners and morals. He intended to model these papers on the lines of
_The Tatler_ and _The Spectator_, but his essays are for the most part
ponderously dull and uninteresting.

In 1762, for the first time, he was really an independent man, for
then George III. gave him a life pension of L300 a year. Even as late
as 1759, in order to pay his mother's funeral expenses, Johnson had
been obliged to dash off the romance of _Rasselas_ in a week; but from
the time he received his pension, he had leisure "to cross his legs
and have his talk out" in some of the most distinguished gatherings of
the eighteenth century. During the rest of his life he produced little
besides _Lives of the English Poets_, which is his most important
contribution to literature. In 1784 he died, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey among the poets whose lives he had written.

A Man of Character.--Any one who will read Macaulay's _Life of
Johnson_[2] may become acquainted with some of Johnson's most striking
peculiarities; but these do not constitute his claims to greatness. He
had qualities that made him great in spite of his peculiarities. He
knocked down a publisher who insulted him, and he would never take
insolence from a superior; but there is no case on record of his
having been unkind to an inferior. Goldsmith said: "Johnson has
nothing of a bear but the skin." When some one manifested surprise
that Johnson should have assisted a worthless character, Goldsmith
promptly replied: "He has now become miserable, and that insures the
protection of Johnson."

Johnson, coming home late at night, would frequently slip a coin into
the hand of a sleeping street Arab, who, on awakening, was rejoiced to
find provision thus made for his breakfast. He spent the greater part
of his pension on the helpless, several of whom he received into his
own house.

There have been many broader and more scholarly Englishmen, but there
never walked the streets of London a man who battled more courageously
for what he thought was right. The