In the Gentleman's Magazine for May of this year he wrote a 'Life of Roscommon,'* with Notes, which he afterwards much improved, indented the notes into text, and inserted it amongst his Lives of the English Poets.
Mr. Dodsley this year brought out his Preceptor, one of the most valuable books for the improvement of young minds that has appeared in any language; and to this meritorious work Johnson furnished 'The Preface,'* containing a general sketch of the book, with a short and perspicuous recommendation of each article; as also, 'The Vision of Theodore the Hermit, found in his Cell,'* a most beautiful allegory of human life, under the figure of ascending the mountain of Existence. The Bishop of Dromore heard Dr. Johnson say, that he thought this was the best thing he ever wrote[1].
1749: ÆTAT. 40.]—In January 1749, he published The Vanity of Human Wishes, being the Tenth Satire of Juvenal imitated[2]. He, I believe, composed it the preceding
- ↑ Tom Tyers said that Johnson 'in one night composed, after finishing an evening in Holborn, his Hermit of Teneriffe.' Gent. Mag. for 1784, p. 901. The high value that he set on this piece may be accounted for in his own words, 'Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgment of his own works. . . . What has been produced without toilsome efforts is considered with delight, as a proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention.' Johnson's Works, vii. 110. He had said much the same thirty years earlier in The Rambler (No. 21).
- ↑ 'On January 9 was published, long wished, another satire from Juvenal, by the author of London.' Gent. Mag. xviii. 598, 9.
Hawkins says the club broke up about 1756 (Life, p. 361). Johnson in the first of the passages says they had not met at all for thirty years—that is to say, not since 1753; while in the last two passages he implies that their weekly meetings came to an end about 1751. I cannot understand moreover how, if Bathurst, 'his beloved friend,' belonged to the club, Johnson should have forgotten it. Bathurst died in the expedition to the Havannah about 1762. Two others of those given in Hawkins's list were certainly dead by 1783, M'Ghie, who died while the club existed (Ib. p. 361), and Dr. Salter. A writer in the Builder (Dec. 1884) says, 'The King's Head was burnt down twenty-five years ago, but the cellarage remains beneath No. 4, Alldis's dining-rooms, on the eastern side.'
