accepted his judgment. It is so with James II., Marlborough, Warren Hastings, Impey, Dr. Johnson, Boswell, Croker, Robert Montgomery, and countless others in that splendid gallery, the perpetual delight of the English-speaking world.

Nevertheless since Macaulay wrote new materials concerning Boswell have come to light, among others the letters he wrote to his intimate friend, Temple, and it is well enough for us to consider again and obtain a fresh view if possible of one who has given the world so much pleasure.

The truth is, however, he reveals himself so vividly in his biography of Johnson, that we need nothing else as a revelation of his character or as an account of his life.

In our literary history there is no stranger compound than this same James Boswell, whom Goldsmith called a "Scotch bur that Tom Davies threw at Johnson, and he has stuck ever since." Even the garrulous and confidential Pepys is not his equal, though the two marvelously resemble each other.

Boswell possessed almost every quality that is offensive to men, and his name was synonymous with bore. He was vain, boastful, inquisitive, a drunkard, a babbler, an eavesdropper, and a coward. His intellectual qualities were of no

high order and his reasoning ability not beyond that of a youth of eighteen. He was educated for the Scotch bar, but never achieved the least distinction in his profession.

He pushed himself forward everywhere, whether he was wanted or not, and became acquainted with almost everybody of eminence in his time. Johnson at first rebuffed him in a way that would have crushed any person of ordinary sensibility, then endured him, and at last embraced him. He could not be shaken off, nor frightened by sarcasm or satire. He forced his society on Hume, Paoli, Burns, Wilkes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Chatham, Elibank, Hailes, Adam Smith, and Horace Walpole, and the latter was the only person who ever rid himself of him. He had energy and persistence to the very highest power, and he was so everlastingly good-natured that he was at last accepted just as one accepts, and at last cares for, a flavor of garlic in a salad.

Johnson at last forced him on The Club by intimating very significantly that until Boswell was elected nobody else would be, and it is lucky for us and for The Club, too, that Boswell became a member. He has immortalized it. Sir Joshua Reynolds and Garrick, Goldsmith and Burke and Gibbon would never have been known

to us as they are had it not been for the pen of James Boswell.

He possessed as no other man has ever possessed a genius for biography, and an exquisite power of drawing character. There were a half dozen or more biographies of Johnson written immediately after his death by persons who had known him intimately. Compare any of them with Boswell's work and it will be seen how immeasurably he surpassed them all. As Macaulay says: "Eclipse is first and the rest nowhere."

Posterity has laughed at Boswell, just as his contemporaries did, but it has also been grateful to him.

Carlyle dealt more kindly with him than any other writer has done, though there are a good many who are glad to be called Boswellians-not on his account, yet because of him.

He was much a child and a good deal of a fool, but he was also a genius, and we are glad he lived and was precisely the man he was. He was not a particularly admirable person, but he made the world better and wiser because he lived in it.

We cannot say this for everybody or even for some men of very supreme genius.

MRS. THRALE,

A CELEBRATED WOMAN.

(1741-1822.)

A FAMOUS member of that circle that" exchanged repartees under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montagu was Mrs. Thrale, more generally known in literary history as Mrs. Piozzi. She was one of the most distinguished of the bluestockings, but we know her better through her association with Dr. Johnson than in any other way. For many years she ministered to his comfort and did all in her power to make life pleasant to him, often a most difficult task. Her house at Streatham became to him a second home, and there, during the last twenty years of his life, he passed some of his happiest days.

Readers of Boswell will remember the many passages concerning the "lively Mrs. Thrale," many of which are colored by Boswell's jealousy, for he could not endure that anyone should be

on more intimate terms with his hero than himself. He quarreled with her and disparaged her book, but, next to Boswell, she gives us the best account of Johnson that we have. Her " Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson" is now an English classic.

Hester Lynch Salisbury was born in Carnarvonshire in January, 1741. She was of good family and received a much better education than was usually given to women in that day. At twenty-two she married Henry Thrale, a rich London brewer and member of parliament, and two years later, in 1765, the Thrales formed the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson.

They resided at Streatham, a suburb of London, and also had a house in town, and they drew around them many of the most distinguished men and women of letters in London.

In company with the Thrales Johnson made a tour of Wales and also a visit to Paris, and frequently accompanied them to Bath, then the most fashionable watering-place in England.

Mr. Thrale died in 1781, leaving a large fortune to his widow and daughters. Johnson was one of the executors of his will, and Boswell tells an anecdote of him that occurred at the sale of the brewery. The old doctor was seen bustling about with inkhorn and pen, and when asked by