ed his work at
Lausanne on the 27th of June, 1787.

Its conception had come to his mind as he sat one evening amid the ruins
of the Capitol at Rome, and heard the barefooted friars singing vespers in
the Temple of Jupiter. He had then thought of writing the decline and fall
of the city of Rome, but soon expanded his view to the empire. This was in
1764. Nearly thirteen years afterwards, he wrote the last line of the last
page in his garden-house at Lausanne, and reflected joyfully upon his
recovered freedom and his permanent fame. His second thought, however,
will fitly close this notice with a moral from his own lips: "My pride was
soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea
that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion,
and that whatever might be the future fate of my history, the life of the
historian must be short and precarious."

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS TO HISTORY.

_James Boswell_, 1740-1795: he was the son of a Scottish judge called Lord
Auchinleck, from his estate. He studied law, and travelled, publishing, on
his return, _Journal of a Tour in Corsica_. He appears to us a
simple-hearted and amiable man, inquisitive, and exact in details. He
became acquainted with Dr. Johnson in 1763, and conceived an immense
admiration for him. In numerous visits to London, and in their tour to the
Hebrides together, he noted Johnson's speech and actions, and, in 1791,
published his life, which has already been characterized as the greatest
biography ever written. Its value is manifold; not only is it a faithful
portrait of the great writer, but, in the detailed record of his life, we
have the wit, dogmatism, and learning of his hero, as expressing and
illustrating the history of the age, quite as fully as the published works
of Johnson. In return for this most valuable contribution to history and
literature, the critics, one and all, have taxed their ingenuity to find
strong words of ridicule and contempt for Boswell, and have done him great
injustice. Because he bowed before the genius of Johnson, he was not a
toady, nor a fool; at the worst, he was a fanatic, and a not always wise
champion. Johnson was his king, and his loyalty was unqualified.

_Horace Walpole_, the Right Honorable, and afterwards Earl of Orford,
1717-1797: he was a wit, a satirist, and a most accomplished writer, who,
notwithstanding, affected to despise literary fame. His paternity was
doubted;