do not surprise me at all by so doing (faid Johnson): they fee, reflected in that glass, men who have risen from almost the lowest situations in life; one to enormous riches, the other to every thing this world can give-rank, fame, and fortune. They see likewife, men who have merited their advancement by the exertion and improvement of those talents which God had given them; and I see not why they should avoid the mirror."

The other fingularity I promised to record, is this: That though a man of obfcure birth himself, his partiality to people of family was visible on every occafion; his zeal for fubordination warm even to bigotry; his hatred to innovation, and reverence for the old feudal times, apparent, whenever any possible manner of shewing them occurred. I have spoken of his piety, his charity, and his truth, the enlargement of his heart, and the delicacy of his sentiments; and when I search for shadow to my portrait, none can I find but what was formed by pride, differently modified as different occafions shewed it; yet never was pride so purified as Johnson's, at once from meanness and from vanity. The mind of this man was indeed expanded beyond the common limits of human nature, and stored with fuch variety of knowledge, that I used to think it resembled a royal pleasure-ground, where every plant, of every name and nation, flourished in the full perfection of their powers, and where, though lofty woods and falling cataracts first caught the eye, and fixed the earliest attention of beholders, yet neither the trim parterre nor the pleafing shrubbery, nor even the antiquated ever-greens, were denied a place in fome fit corner of the happy valley.

THE END.

POSTSCRIPT.

Naples, Feb. 10, 1786.

SINCE the foregoing went to the press, having seen a passage from Mr. Bofwell's Tour to the Hebrides, in which it is said, that I could not get through Mrs. Montagu's Essay on Shakespeare, I do not delay a moment to declare, that, on the contrary, I have always commended it myself, and heard it commended by every one else; and few things would give me more concern than to be thought incapable of tasting, or unwilling to testify my opinion of its excellence.

SM