hfield, and some deeply
pathetic letters to her and her stepdaughter, who lived with her, record
his emotions. Here is the last sad farewell upon the snapping of the
most sacred of human ties.

"Dear Honoured Mother," he says in a letter enclosed to Lucy Porter,
the step-daughter, "neither your condition nor your character make it
fit for me to say much. You have been the best mother, and I believe the
best woman in the world. I thank you for your indulgence to me, and beg
forgiveness of all that I have done ill, and of all that I have omitted
to do well. God grant you His Holy Spirit, and receive you to
everlasting happiness for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. Lord Jesus receive
your spirit. I am, dear, dear mother,

"Your dutiful son,

"SAMUEL JOHNSON."

Johnson managed to raise twelve guineas, six of them borrowed from his
printer, to send to his dying mother. In order to gain money for her
funeral expenses and some small debts, he wrote the story of _Rasselas_.
It was composed in the evenings of a single week, and sent to press as
it was written. He received L100 for this, perhaps the most successful
of his minor writings, and L25 for a second edition. It was widely
translated and universally admired. One of the strangest of literary
coincidences is the contemporary appearance of this work and Voltaire's
_Candide_; to which, indeed, it bears in some respects so strong a
resemblance that, but for Johnson's apparent contradiction, we would
suppose that he had at least heard some description of its design. The
two stories, though widely differing in tone and style, are among the
most powerful expressions of the melancholy produced in strong
intellects by the sadness and sorrows of the world. The literary
excellence of _Candide_ has secured for it a wider and more enduring
popularity than has fallen to the lot of Johnson's far heavier
production. But _Rasselas_ is a book of singular force, and bears the
most characteristic impression of Johnson's peculiar temperament.

A great change was approaching in Johnson's circumstances. When George
III. came to the throne, it struck some of his advisers that it would be
well, as Boswell puts it, to open "a new and brighter prospect to men of
literary merit." This commendable design was carried out by offering to
Johnson a pension of three hundred a year. Considering that such men as
Horace Walpole and his like were enjoying sinecures of more than twice
as many thousands for bein