[876] She died in March 1752; the Dictionary was published in April 1755.
[877] In the Preface he writes (Works, v. 49):--'Much of my life has been lost under the pressures of disease; much has been trifled away; and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was passing over me.' In his fine Latin poem [Greek: Inothi seauton] 'he has left,' says Mr. Murphy (Life, p. 82), 'a picture of himself drawn with as much truth, and as firm a hand, as can be seen in the portraits of Hogarth or Sir Joshua Reynolds.' He wrote it after revising and enlarging his Dictionary, and he sadly asks himself what is left for him to do.
Me, pensi immunis cum jam mihi reddor, inertis Desidiae sors dura manet, graviorque labore Tristis et atra quies, et tardae taedia vitae. Nascuntur curis curae, vexatque dolorum Importuna cohors, vacuae mala somnia mentis. Nunc clamosa juvant nocturnae gaudia mensae, Nunc loca sola placent; frustra te, somne, recumbens, Alme voco, impatiens noctis, metuensque diei. Omnia percurro trepidus, circum omnia lustro, Si qua usquam pateat melioris semita vitae, Nec quid agam invenio.... Quid faciam? tenebrisne pigram damnare senectam Restat? an accingar studiis gravioribus audax? Aut, hoc si nimium est, tandem nova lexica poscam?
Johnson's Works, i. 164.
[878] A few weeks before his wife's death he wrote in The Rambler (No. 196):--'The miseries of life would be increased beyond all human power of endurance, if we were to enter the world with the same opinions as we carry from it.' He would, I think, scarcely have expressed himself so strongly towards his end. Though, as Dr. Maxwell records, in his Collectanea (post, 1770), 'he often used to quote with great pathos those fine lines of Virgil:--
'Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi Prima fugit, &c.'
yet he owned, and the pages of Boswell amply testify, that it was in the latter period of his life that he had his happiest days.
[879] Macbeth, Act ii. sc. 3.
[880] In the third edition, published in 1773, he left out the words perhaps never, and added the following paragraph:--
'It sometimes begins middle or final syllables in words compounded, as block-head, or derived from the Latin, as compre-hended.' BOSWELL. In the Abridgment, which was published some years earlier, after never is added 'except in compounded words.'
[881] It was published in the Gent. Mag. for April, 1755 (xxv. 190), just below the advertisement of the Dictionary.
[882] In the original, 'Milton and Shakespeare.'
[883] The number of the French Academy employed in settling their language. BOSWELL.
[884] The maximum reward offered by a bill passed in 1714 was L20,000 for a method that determined the longitude at sea to half a degree of a great circle, or thirty geographical miles. For less accuracy smaller rewards were offered. Ann. Reg. viii. 114. In 1765 John Harrison received L7,500 for his chronometer; he had previously been paid L2,500; ib. 128. In this Act of Parliament 'the legislature never contemplated the invention of a method, but only of the means of making existing methods accurate.' Penny Cyclo. xiv. 139. An old sea-faring man wrote to Swift that he had found out the longitude. The Dean replied 'that he never knew but two projectors, one of whom ruined himself and his family, and the other hanged himself; and desired him to desist lest one or other might happen to him.' Swift's Works (1803), xvii. 157. In She Stoops to Conquer (Act i. sc. 2), when Tony ends his directions to the travellers by telling them,--'coming to the farmer's barn you are to turn to the right, and then to the left, and then to the right about again, till you find out the old mill;' Marlow exclaims: 'Zounds, man! we could as soon find out the longitude.'
[885] Joseph Baretti, a native of Piedmont, came to England in 1750 (see Preface to his Account of Italy, p. ix). He died in May, 1789. In his Journey from London to Genoa (ii. 276), he says that his father was one of the two architects of the King of Sardinia. Shortly after his death a writer in the Gent. Mag. (Iix. 469, 570), who was believed to be Vincent, Dean of Westminster, thus wrote of him:--'Though his severity had created him enemies, his talents, conversation, and integrity had conciliated the regard of many valuable friends and acquaintance. His manners were apparently rough, but not unsocial. His integrity was in every period of his distresses constant and unimpeached. His wants he never made known but in the last extremity. He and Johnson had been friends in distress. One evening, when they had agreed to go to the tavern, a foreigner in the streets, by a specious tale of distress, emptied the Doctor's purse of the last half-guinea it contained. When the reckoning came, what was his surprise upon his recollecting that his purse was totally exhausted. Baretti had fortunately enough to answer the demand, and has often declared that it was impossible for him not to reverence a man, who could give away all that he was worth, without recollecting his own distress.' See post, Oct.