476 Essay on
��expected what was never intended. In every ivork regard the writer s end. Johnson went to see men and manners, modes of life, and the progress of civilization 2 . His remarks are so artfully blended with the rapidity and elegance of his narrative, that the reader is inclined to wish, as Johnson did with regard to GRAY, that to travel, and to tell his travels, had been more of his employment 3 .
As to Johnson's Parliamentary Debates, nothing with propriety can be said in this place. They are collected in two volumes by Mr. Stockdale 4 , and the flow of eloquence which runs through the several speeches is sufficiently known.
It will not be useless to mention two more volumes, which may form a proper supplement to this edition. They contain a set of Sermons left for publication by John Taylor, LL.D. The Reverend Mr. Hayes, who ushered these Discourses into the world, has not given them as the composition of Dr. Taylor. All he could say for his departed friend was, that he left them in silence among his papers. Mr. Hayes knew them to be the production of a superior mind ; and the writer of these Memoirs owes it to the candour of that elegant scholar 5 , that he is now warranted to give an additional proof of Johnson's ardour in the cause of piety, and every moral duty. The last discourse in the collection was intended to be delivered by Dr. Taylor at the funeral of Johnson's wife ; but that Reverend gentleman declined the office, because, as he told Mr. Hayes, the praise of the deceased was too much amplified 6 . He, who reads the piece, will find it a beautiful moral lesson, written with temper, and no where overcharged with ambitious ornaments. The rest of the Discourses were the fund, which
1 Pope, Essay on Criticism, 1. 255. verses,' was Southey's tutor at West-
2 Ante, p. 430. minster. ' He had some skill and
3 Works, viii. 480. much facility in versifying.' He
4 Life, i. 190, n. 4. was 'a free, good-natured, fuddling
5 Ib. iii. 181. companion, whose wig the boys Samuel Hayes, ' Botch Hayes, as stuck full of paper darts in school.'
he was denominated, for the manner Southey's Life, &c., ed. 1849, i. 135. in which he mended his pupil's 6 Life, i. 241.
Dr.
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