nequalled force of thought,
and pointed vigour of style, and when taken in connexion with the age
of the author (seventy), is altogether marvellous. Truly there were
"giants in those days," and this was a Briareus.

For the details of his later life, his conversations, growing
weakness, little journeys, unconquerable love of literature, &c., we
must refer our readers to Boswell's teeming narrative. In 1783, he had
a stroke of palsy, which deprived him for a time of speech. That
returned to him, however, but a complication of complaints, including
asthma, sciatica, and dropsy, began gradually to undermine his
powerful frame. He continued to the last to cherish the prospect of a
tour to Italy, but never accomplished his purpose. Death had all along
been his great object of dread, and its fast approaches were regarded
with unmitigated terror. "Cut deeper," he cried to the physicians who
were operating on his limbs; "cut deeper; I don't care for pain, but I
fear death." He fixed all his dying hope upon the Cross, and
recommended Clarke's Sermons as fullest on the doctrine of a
Propitiation. He spoke of the Bible and of the Sabbath with the
warmest feelings of belief and respect. At last, on the 13th day of
December 1784, in the seventy-fifth year of his age, this great, good
man, whose fears had subsided, and who had become as a little child,
fell asleep in Jesus. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, on Monday,
December 20th, and his funeral was attended by the most distinguished
men of the day.

Perhaps no literary man ever exerted, during his lifetime, the same
personal influence as Samuel Johnson. Shelley used to call Byron the
"Byronic Energy," from a sense of his exceeding power. The author of
"Rasselas" was the "Johnsonian Energy;" and the demon within him, if
not so ethereal and terrible as Byron's, was far more massive, equally
strong, and in conversation, at least, much more ready to do his work.
First-rate conversation generally springs from a desire to shine, or
from the effort of a full mind to relieve itself, or from exuberant
animal spirits, or from deep-seated misery. In Johnson it sprang from
a combination of all these causes. He went to conversation as to an
arena--his mind was richly-stored, even to overflowing--in company his
spirits uniformly rose--and yet there was always at his heart a burden
of wretchedness, seeking solace, not in silence, but in speech. Hence,
with the exception of Burke, no one eve