15
remained, but for a concurrence of fortuitous circumstances in the next century?[1]
The renewed examination, to which it may be superfluous to say, his Majesty attended with the
- ↑ Dr. Johnson benefitted the world by accident, it may be said, and not of afore-thought; for, according to Sir John, who expresses some astonishment at the circumstance, he could never be brought to acknowledge any higher motive for writing than money. It was to an occasion when he wanted the needful that we owe his Rasselas, and had he originally succeeded in procuring a place of £70 a year, in Ireland, he would never have been heard of. It is not too much therefore, to assume, that we are indebted to the physical wants of the author of the Rambler for the mental entertainment he dispenses; and, in this view, no disparity can be greater than the respective merits of the sovereign and the subject: yet while particulars of dubious importance, regarding the latter, continue to be diurnally recorded, a conduct which deserved to be treasured in the recollection of those that knew of it; and to have been immortalized by the pen of him who 'wrote for all ages,' as Ben Jonson said of his friend, is consigned to the obliterating waters of Lethe, like some play never heard of after the first night it was brought forward. If the repeated story of the Doctor's standing a few hours bareheaded at a book-stall in foul weather, by way of penance for his former offence to his Father, is placed in juxtaposition with the self denial of the King for days, weeks, and even months pending the present concern, can the biographers of the imitator of Juvenal find much to approve in the first instance, without acknowledging far more commendation due to the Monarch thus engrossed by humane and beneficial purposes, which called for most of the virtues that do honour to the cottage as well as to the palace. [These considerations are further illustrated at No. 7 in the Appendix.]
