iant had accomplished his
labors alone. The amount of reading necessary to fix and illustrate his
definitions was enormous, and the book is especially valuable from the apt
and varied quotations from English authors. He established the language,
as he found it, on a firm basis in signification and orthography. He laid
the foundation upon which future lexicographers were to build; but he was
ignorant of the Teutonic languages, from which so much of the structure
and words of the English are taken, and thus is signally wanting in the
scientific treatment of his subject. This is not to his discredit, for the
science of language has had its origin in a later and modern time.

Perhaps nothing displays more fully the proud, sturdy, and self-reliant
character of the man, than the eight years of incessant and unassisted
labor upon this work.

His letter to Lord Chesterfield, declining his tardy patronage, after
experiencing his earlier neglect, is a model of severe and yet respectful
rebuke, and is to be regarded as one of the most significant events in his
history. In it he says: "The notice you have been pleased to take of my
labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I
am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart
it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical
asperity not to confess obligation when no benefit has been received, or
to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a
patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself." Living as he did
in an age when the patronage of the great was wearing out, and public
appreciation beginning to reward an author's toils, this manly letter gave
another stab to the former, and hastened the progress of the latter.

OTHER WORKS.--The fame of Johnson was now fully established, and his
labors were rewarded, in 1762, by the receipt of a pension of L300 from
the government, which made him quite independent. It was then, in the very
heyday of his reputation, that, in 1763, he became acquainted with James
Boswell, to whom he at once became a Grand Lama; who took down the words
as they dropped from his lips, and embalmed his fame.

In 1764 he issued his edition of Shakspeare, in eight octavo volumes, of
which the best that can be said is, that it is not valuable as a
commentary. A commentator must have something in common with his author;
there was nothing congenial between Shaksp