tered, and all shunned her. If a lover gave a ball to his mistress and her friends, it was stipulated, that Floretta should not be invited. If she entered a publick room, the ladies curtsied, and shrunk away, for there was no such thing as speaking, but Floretta would find something to criticise. If a girl was more sprightly than her aunt, she was threatened, that in a little time she would be like Floretta. Visits were very diligently paid, when Floretta was known not to be at home; and no mother trusted her daughter to herself, without a caution, if she should meet Floretta, to leave the company as soon as she could.

With all this Floretta made sport at first, but in time grew weary of general hostility. She would have been content with a few friends, but no friendship was durable; it was the fashion to desert her, and with the fashion what fidelity will contend? She could have easily amused herself in solitude, but that she thought it mean to quit the field to treachery and folly.

Persecution at length tired her constancy, and she implored Lilinet to rid her of her wit: Lilinet complied, and walked up the mountain, but was often forced to stop, and wait for her follower. When they came to the flinty fountain, Floretta filled a small cup, and slowly brought it to her lips, but the water was insupportably bitter. She just tasted it, and dashed it to the ground, diluted the bitterness at the fountain of alabaster, and resolved to keep her wit, with all its consequences.

Being now a wit for life, she surveyed the various conditions of mankind with such superiority of sentiment, that she found few distinctions to be envied or desired, and, therefore, did not very soon make another visit to the fountain. At length, being alarmed by sickness, she resolved to drink length of life from the golden cup. She returned, elated and secure, for though the longevity acquired was indeterminate, she considered death as far distant, and, therefore, suffered it not to intrude upon her pleasures.

But length of life included not perpetual health. She

felt herself continually decaying, and saw the world fading about her. The delights of her early days would delight no longer, and however widely she extended her view, no new pleasure could be found; her friends, her enemies, her admirers, her rivals, dropped one by one into the grave, and with those who succeeded them, she had neither community of joys, nor strife of competition.

By this time she began to doubt whether old age were not dangerous to virtue; whether pain would not produce peevishness, and peevishness impair benevolence. She thought that the spectacle of life might be too long continued, and the vices which were often seen, might raise less abhorrence; that resolution might be sapped by time, and let that virtue sink, which in its firmest state it had not, without difficulty, supported; and that it was vain to delay the hour which must come at last, and might come at a time of less preparation, and greater imbecility.

These thoughts led her to Lilinet, whom she accompanied to the flinty fountain; where, after a short combat with herself, she drank the bitter water. They walked back to the favourite bush, pensive and silent: "And now," said she, "accept my thanks for the last benefit that Floretta can receive." Lady Lilinet dropped a tear, impressed upon her lips the final kiss, and resigned her, as she resigned herself, to the course of nature.

PRAYERS AND MEDITATIONS

COMPOSED BY

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL. D.

Published from his Manuscripts by George Strahan, D. D. Prebendary of Rochester, and Vicar of Islington.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION IN 1785.

THESE posthumous devotions of Dr. Johnson will be, no doubt, welcomed by the public, with a distinction similar to that which has been already paid to his other works.

During many years of his life, he statedly observed certain days* with a religious solemnity; on which, and other occasions, it was his custom to compose suitable prayers and meditations; committing them to writing for his own use, and, as he assured me, without any view to their publication. But being last summer on a visit at Oxford to the reverend Dr. Adams †, and that gentleman urging him repeatedly to engage in some work of this kind, he then first conceived a design to revise these pious effusions, and bequeathed them, with enlargements, to the use and benefit of others.

Infirmities, however, now growing fast upon him, he at

Viz. New Year's Day; March 28, the day on which his wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Johnson, died; Good-Friday; Easter-Day; and September the 18th, his own birth-day.

+ Master of Pembroke College, at which Dr. Johnson received part of his education.

length changed this design, and determined to give the manuscripts, without revision, in charge to me, as I had long shared his intimacy, and was at this time his daily attendant. Accordingly, one morning, on my visiting him by desire at an early hour, he put these papers into my hands, with instructions for committing them to the press, and with a promise to prepare a sketch of his own life to accompany them. But the performance of this promise also was prevented, partly by his hasty destruction of some private memoirs, which he afterwards lamented, and partly by that incurable sickness, which soon ended in his dissolution.

As a biographer, he is allowed to have excelled without a rival; and we may justly regret that he who had so advantageously transmitted to posterity the memories of other eminent men, should have been thus prevented doing equal honour to his own. But the particulars of this venerable man's personal history may still, in great measure, be preserved ; and the public are authorised to expect them from some of his many friends, who are zealous to augment the monument of his fame by the detail of his private virtues *.

That the authenticity of this work may never be called in question, the original manuscript will be deposited in the library of Pembroke College in Oxford. Dr. Bray's associates are to receive the profits of the first edition, by the author's appointment; and any further advantages that accrue, will be distributed among his relations t.

Since this Preface was written, the following publications have appeared, viz.

Anecdotes of the late Dr. Johnson, during the last Twenty Years of his Life, by Hester Lynch Piozzi. 3rd edit. 1786, small 8vo.

The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D. published with his Works, by sir John Hawkins, 8vo. 1787.

The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D. by James Boswell, esq. first published in 2 vols. 4to. afterwards (1793) in three. A new edition, with Notes, &c. is preparing by the editor of this edition of his Works, with which it will be printed uniform.

An Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. by Arthur Murphy, esq. 8vo. 1792, prefixed to this edition.

+ The profits of the first edition were accordingly paid to Dr. Bray's associates; and those of the second have been distributed among Dr.

I have now discharged the trust reposed in me by that friend, whose labours entitle him to lasting gratitude and veneration from the literary, and still more from the christian world. His Lives of the English Poets "are written," as he justly hopes,*" in such a manner as may tend to the promotion of piety." This merit may be ascribed, with equal truth, to most of his other works; and doubtless to his Sermons, none of which indeed have yet been made public, nor is it known where they are extant; though it be certain, from his own acknowledgement, both in conversation and writing,† that he composed many. As he seems to have turned his thoughts with peculiar earnestness to the study of religious subjects, we may presume these remains would deserve to be numbered among his happiest productions. It is, therefore, hoped they have fallen into the hands of those, who will not withhold them in obscurity, but consider them as deposits, the seclusion of which, from general use, would be an injurious diminution of their author's fame, and retrenchment from the common stock of serious instruction. ‡

But the integrity of his mind was not only speculatively shadowed in his writings, but substantially exemplified in his life. His prayers and his alms, like those of the good Cornelius, went up for an incessant memorial; and always, from

Johnson's poor relations and connexions, all of whom are since dead, except Humphrey Hely, who married Ford, sister to the Rev. Cornelius Ford, and first cousin to our author. This poor man, who has seen better days is now a tenant of Whicher's Alms-houses, Chapel street, Westminster. [It is now, April 1817, about twenty years since he died in these Alms-houses, and was buried in the adjoining burial-ground belonging to St. Margaret's Chapel.]

• See p. 265,

+ P. 264.

In 1788 appeared one volume, and in 1789 a second, of Sermons on different subjects, left for publication by John Taylor, LL.D. late Prebendary of Westminster, &c. published by the Rev. Samuel Hayes, A. M. Usher of Westminster School. To the second volume is added a Sermon avowedly written by Dr. Johnson, for the funeral of his wife and from internal and other evidence, the whole contents of both volumes are now generally ascribed to the same author. They are, for the first time, placed among his collected works in this edition.