ch breathes through his 'Essays.' But
what anecdote of that most decorous and successful person touches our
hearts or has the heroic ring of Johnson's wrestlings with adverse
fortune? Addison showed how a Christian could die--when his life has run
smoothly through pleasant places, secretaryships of state, and marriages
with countesses, and when nothing--except a few overdoses of port
wine--has shaken his nerves or ruffled his temper. A far deeper emotion
rises at the deathbed of the rugged old pilgrim, who has fought his way
to peace in spite of troubles within and without, who has been jeered in
Vanity Fair and has descended into the Valley of the Shadow of Death,
and escaped with pain and difficulty from the clutches of Giant Despair.
When the last feelings of such a man are tender, solemn, and simple, we
feel ourselves in a higher presence than that of an amiable gentleman
who simply died, as he lived, with consummate decorum.

On turning, however, from Johnson's life to his writings, from Boswell
to the 'Rambler,' it must be admitted that the shock is trying to our
nerves. The 'Rambler' has, indeed, high merits. The impression which it
made upon his own generation proves the fact; for the reputation,
however temporary, was not won by a concession to the fashions of the
day, but to the influence of a strong judgment uttering itself through
uncouth forms. The melancholy which colours its pages is the melancholy
of a noble nature. The tone of thought reminds us of Bishop Butler,
whose writings, defaced by a style even more tiresome, though less
pompous than Johnson's, have owed their enduring reputation to a
philosophical acuteness in which Johnson was certainly very deficient.
Both of these great men, however, impress us by their deep sense of the
evils under which humanity suffers, and their rejection of the
superficial optimism of the day. Butler's sadness, undoubtedly, is that
of a recluse, and Johnson's that of a man of the world; but the
sentiment is fundamentally the same. It may be added, too, that here, as
elsewhere, Johnson speaks with the sincerity of a man drawing upon his
own experience. He announces himself as a scholar thrust out upon the
world rather by necessity than choice; and a large proportion of the
papers dwell upon the various sufferings of the literary class. Nobody
could speak more feelingly of those sufferings, as no one had a closer
personal acquaintance with them. But allowing to Johnson wha