almost every comfort, for the purpose of supplying a silly,
affected old woman with superfluities, which she accepted with but
little gratitude. But all his affection had been concentrated on her. He
had neither brother nor sister, neither son nor daughter. To him she was
beautiful as the Gunnings, and witty as Lady Mary. Her opinion of his
writings was more important to him than the voice of the pit of Drury
Lane Theatre or the judgment of the Monthly Review. The chief support
which had sustained him through the most arduous labour of his life
was the hope that she would enjoy the fame and the profit which
he anticipated from his Dictionary. She was gone; and in that vast
labyrinth of streets, peopled by eight hundred thousand human beings, he
was alone. Yet it was necessary for him to set himself, as he expressed
it, doggedly to work. After three more laborious years, the Dictionary
was at length complete.

It had been generally supposed that this great work would be dedicated
to the eloquent and accomplished nobleman to whom the prospectus
had been addressed. He well knew the value of such a compliment; and
therefore, when the day of publication drew near, he exerted himself
to soothe, by a show of zealous and at the same time of delicate and
judicious kindness, the pride which he had so cruelly wounded. Since
the Ramblers had ceased to appear, the town had been entertained by a
journal called the World, to which many men of high rank and fashion
contributed. In two successive numbers of the World the Dictionary was,
to use the modern phrase, puffed with wonderful skill. The writings of
Johnson were warmly praised. It was proposed that he should be invested
with the authority of a Dictator, nay, of a Pope, over our language, and
that his decisions about the meaning and the spelling of words should
be received as final. His two folios, it was said, would of course be
bought by everybody who could afford to buy them. It was soon known that
these papers were written by Chesterfield. But the just resentment of
Johnson was not to be so appeased. In a letter written with singular
energy and dignity of thought and language, he repelled the tardy
advances of his patron. The Dictionary came forth without a dedication.
In the preface the author truly declared that he owed nothing to the
great, and described the difficulties with which he had been left
to struggle so forcibly and pathetically that the ablest and most
malevolent