his good humour and his kindness. This has indeed been observed as often accompanying the melancholic temperament, as if their innocence and defencelessness were a relief and repose to the agitated mind. The same love of children was observed in Sir Isaac Newton, and it was an accompaniment of the case of which I have already given the outlines. Johnson also liked the society of persons younger than himself; and to the last had nothing of the severeness, querulousness, and discontent with the world, which the old are often seen to shew. Indeed at all times of his life he liked to view things rather on their light side, at least in discussion; and he was a decided enemy to the principles of those who superciliously look down upon vulgar enjoyments, or ascetically condemn the innocent recreations of sense. Though he never at any period of his life, except during his intimacy with Savage, was intemperate, (for his often drinking alone as he said "to get rid of himself," must be regarded only as a desperate remedy attempted for an incurable disease,) yet he loved at all times to indulge in the pleasures of the table, and was exceedingly fond of good eating, even while for some years he gave up the use of wine. It was a saying of his in discussing the merits of an entertainment at which he had been a guest, Sir, it was not a dinner to ask a man to." With the breakfasts in Scotland he expressed his entire satisfaction and in his Journey,' he says that if he could " transport himself by wish, he should, wherever he might be to dine, always breakfast in Scotland." 66 All these, however, are trifling matters, only made important by the extraordinary care taken to record every particular respecting his habits, as well as his more important qualities. He was friendly and actively so, in the greatest degree; he was charitable beyond what even prudential considerations might justify; as firmly as he believed the Gospel, so constantly did he practise its divine maxim, " that it is more blessed to give than to receive." His sense of justice was strict and constant; his love of truth was steady and unbroken, in all matters as well little as great; nor did any man ever more peremptorily deny the existence of what are sometimes so incorrectly termed white lies; for he justly thought that when a habit of being careless of the truth in trifling things once has been formed, it will become easily, nay, certainly, applicable to things of moment. His habitual piety, his sense of his own imperfections, his generally blameless conduct in the various relations of life, has been already sufficiently described, and has been illustrated in the preceding narrative. He was a good man, as he was a great man; and he had so firm a regard for virtue that he wisely set much greater store by his worth than by his fame.* * The edition of Boswell by my able and learned friend Mr. Croker, is a valuable accession to literature, and the well known accuracy of that gentleman gives importance to his labours. I have mentioned one instance of his having been misled by the narrative of Sir Walter Scott from neither having attended to the dates.Supra, p. 58. ADAM SMITH. WITH AN ANALYSIS OF HIS GREAT WORK. In the last years of the seventeenth century were born two men, who laid the foundation of ethical science as we now have it, greatly advanced and improved beyond the state in which the ancient moralists had left it, and as the modern inquirers took it up after the revival of letters, Bishop Butler and Dr. Hutchinson. The former, bred a Presbyterian, and exercised in the metaphysical subtleties of the Calvinistic school, had early turned his acute and capacious mind to the more difficult questions of morals, and having conformed to the Established Church, he delivered, as preacher at the Rolls Chapel, to which office he was promoted by Sir Joseph Jekyll, at the suggestion of Dr. Samuel Clarke, a series of discourses, in which the foundations of our moral sentiments and our social as well as prudential duties were examined with unrivalled sagacity. The latter having published his speculations upon the moral sense, and the analogy of our ideas of beauty and virtue, while a young teacher among the Presbyterians in the north of Ireland, was afterwards for many years Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, and there delivered his Lectures, which, by their copious illustrations, their amiable |