Social England : a record of the progress of the people in religion, laws, learning, arts, industry, commerce, science, literature and manners, from the earliest times to the present day . d himthrough life, as well as bywhat he thouoht the un-kindness of Mrs. Thrale,whose house at Streatham,during her husbands life,had been his favourite resort,and on whom, after thathusbands death and in herquest for another, Johnsonseems to have become aburden. But he had manyother faithful allies, fromEdmund Burke to FannyBurney: and when he died on December 13th, 1784., certainlynot the unluckiest, though
Social England : a record of the progress of the people in religion, laws, learning, arts, industry, commerce, science, literature and manners, from the earliest times to the present day . d himthrough life, as well as bywhat he thouoht the un-kindness of Mrs. Thrale,whose house at Streatham,during her husbands life,had been his favourite resort,and on whom, after thathusbands death and in herquest for another, Johnsonseems to have become aburden. But he had manyother faithful allies, fromEdmund Burke to FannyBurney: and when he died on December 13th, 1784., certainlynot the unluckiest, though as certainly not the least great, ofEnglishmen passed away. The unkindness of the Fates to himhas, perhaps, sometimes been exaggerated; the kindness of theMuses not so. Yet all competent critics—and he has occupied the mostcompetent—have found it not merely necessary to admit thatthe man was greater than his works, but not specially easy toindicate the special character of his human greatness. Aftermuch undue praise and some exaggerated depreciation of thework itself, the best judges are agreed to consider it, with thepossible exception of the • Lives of the Poets, eminently. JuU-XsuNS IIULSE, liOLT{Xov: demolished.) LITER ATV RE. 341 1784] second-rate. The Lives of the Poets, strangely far from thecentre as some of the judgments go, are not second rate ; butthey did not obtain for Johnson his lame in his own day, and itmay be suspected that they prolited even more by that famethan the} helped to make it. By the time when he wrote them,Johnson, never disposed to extreme humility except as a matterof religious conviction, could speak with authority as hardlyDryden, hardly Pope, hardly his namesake a hundred and fiftyyears earlier could have spoken : and authority is a great thingin giving judgment. A junior
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