existence of the soul after death, he was not prepared to deny the possibility of such communications from the unseen world. Once more, there was sometimes, no doubt, an odd contrast between his pursuits and his associates; it might seem incongruous that the great lexicographer should spend the small hours of the morning in brewing a bowl of bishop at a tavern with such young men as the elegant Mr Bennet Langton and the gay Mr Topham Beauclerc, and in helping them to surprise the early fruiterers in Covent Garden; but we may remember that all history attests the magnetic attraction of bright mind for bright mind—however different their bodily dwellings—from the days when Socrates fascinated Alcibiades, and at cock-crow, after the night-long banquet, was still trying to convince the drowsy Aristophanes that Comedy is of the same essence as Tragedy. Johnson was a great man to his contemporaries, and, if we judge soundly, he must appear a great man to us; although we estimate in a somewhat different proportion the elements which constitute his greatness. To us he is no longer the literary oracle or the profound sage; he is rather a man of singularly robust intellect; a most keen and sane observer of character; a man wise in the wisdom of life, who knew the evil and the misery that must be always in the world, but never wasted in idle repining the strength that should be reserved for combating and, so far as possible, alleviating them; a man to be honoured for his intellectual gifts, but
