THE IDLER.

XXV. (Page 282.) - "Johnson's own superlative power of wit set him above risk of such uneasiness. Garrick remarked to me of him, 'Rabelais and all the wits are nothing compared with him. You may be diverted by them; but Johnson gives you a forcible hug, and shakes laughter out of you, whether you will or no.'"-Boswell's Life, ii., 231.

XXVI. (Page 292.)-Twenty years after Johnson wrote this phillipic we find, from the following conversation, that his prejudice was still as deeply rooted :- "The celebrated Mrs. Rudd being mentioned. Johnson: 'Fifteen years ago I should have gone to see her.' Spottiswoode: 'Because she was fifteen years younger?' 'No, Sir; but now they have a trick of putting everything into the newspapers.'"Boswell, iii., 330.

XXVII. (Page 294.)-The greatest living authority on the life and times of Johnson-his nineteenth century Boswell, in fact-Dr. Birkbeck Hill, thinks that in Mr. Sober we have a portrait of the Doctor, drawn by his own hand. There is unquestionably much in the sketch to warrant such a conclusion.

XXVIII. (Page 294.) - Dr. Johnson's repugnance to early-rising is well known. He struggled manfully, but unsuccessfully, against what was in reality a constitutional infirmity. When at the height of his same, the "Sultan of English Literature was a man who was known to be never ready to go to bed, and once there, never ready to get out.

XXIX. (Page 297.)-Dr. Johnson unconsciously describes himself in a phrase which occurs in this essay-"the ponderous dictator of sentences, whose notions are delivered in the lump, and are, like uncoined bullion, of more weight than use." The racy vigour and brilliant incisiveness of his reported talk, heightens the contrast which exists between it, and the "terriffick diction" which marks his published works. Johnson often played the part of "candid friend" to Oliver Goldsmith, and sometimes the light-hearted poet ventured to pay him back in his own coin, as the following incident shows:-"Goldsmith was often very fortunate in his witty contests, even when he entered the lists with Johnson himself. Sir Joshua Reynolds was in company with them one day, when Goldsmith said, that he thought that he could write a good fable, mentioned the simplicity which that kind of composition requires, and observed that in most fables the animals introduced seldom talk in character. 'For instance,' said he, 'the fable of the iittle fishes, who saw birds fly over their heads, and envying them, petitioned Jupiter to be changed into birds. The skill,' he continued, 'consists in making them talk like little fishes. While he indulged himself in this fanciful review, he observed Johnson shaking his sides, and laughing. Upon which he smartly proceeded, 'Why, Dr. Johnson, this is not so easy as you seem to think; for if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales.' "-Boswell, ii., 231.

XXX. (Page 300.) - A pathetic interest attaches to this number of the Idler. It was written two or three days after the death, at Lichfield, of Dr. Johnson's mother, at the advanced age of ninety; an event which, according to Boswell, "deeply affected him," since his "reverential affection for her was not abated by years, as indeed he retained all his tender feelings even to the latest period of his life."

XXXI. (Page 305.)-Writing to Dr. Burney, in the last year of his life (1784), Dr. Johnson says:--" I struggle hard for life. I take physic, and take air; my friend's chariot is always ready. We have been this morning twenty-four miles, and could run forty-eight more. who can run the race with death?"

XXXII (Page 310.) - DR. JOHNSON TO MRS. THRALE.

"DEAREST MADAM,

"LONDON, May 1, 1780.

But

". Never let criticism operate on your face or your mind; it is very rarely that an author is hurt by his criticks. The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket; a very few names may be considered as perpetual lamps that shine unconsumed."

XXXIII. (Page 326.)-[1772.] "Dr. Johnson went home with me to my lodgings in Conduit Street and drank tea, previous to our going to the Pantheon, which neither of us had seen before. He said, 'Goldsmith's Life of Parnell is poor; not that it is poorly written, but that he had poor materials; for nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.' He censured Ruffhead s Life of Pope; and said 'he knew nothing of Pope and nothing of poetry.' "-Boswell, ii., 166.

XXXIV. (Page 328.) -" If a life be delayed till interest and envy are at an end, then we may hope for impartiality, but must expect little intelligence; for the incidents which give excellence to biography are of a volatile and evanescent kind, such as soon escape the memory, and are rarely transmitted by tradition." -The Rambler, No. 60.

XXXV. (Page 330.)-" Sir, it is the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his book will hold."-Boswell's Life, ii., 237.

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[EXTRACT FROM PREFACE.]

Too much care cannot be taken of the exterior of the human body, on which the general health so largely depends. The most recent discoveries in science go to prove that cleanliness, with proper attention to bodily exercise, is the greatest enemy to disease and decay. Quackery has never been more rampant than it is to-day, and advertised secret preparations for beautifying the person meet us at every turn. It is with the object of showing how Beauty may be preserved and aided on purely hygienic principles, that this work has been written, the greatest secret of Beauty being Health.

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