When the last sheet of the Dictionary had been carried to the publisher, Millar, Johnson asked the messenger, “What did he say?” “Sir,” said the messenger, “he said, ‘Thank God I have done with him.’” “I am glad,” replied Johnson, “that he thanks God for anything.”  Thankfulness for relief from seven years’ toil seems to have been Johnson’s predominant feeling:  and he was not anxious for a time to take any new labours upon his shoulders.  Some years passed which have left few traces either upon his personal or his literary history.  He contributed a good many reviews in 1756-7 to the Literary Magazine, one of which, a review of Soame Jenyns, is amongst his best performances.  To a weekly paper he contributed for two years, from April, 1758, to April, 1760, a set of essays called the Idler, on the old Rambler plan.  He did some small literary cobbler’s work, receiving a guinea for a prospectus to a newspaper and ten pounds for correcting a volume of poetry.  He had advertised in 1756 a new edition of Shakspeare which was to appear by Christmas, 1757:  but he dawdled over it so unconscionably that it did not appear for nine years; and then only in consequence of taunts from Churchill, who accused him with too much plausibility of cheating his subscribers.

  He for subscribers baits his hook;
  And takes your cash:  but where’s the book? 
  No matter where; wise fear, you know
  Forbids the robbing of a foe;
  But what to serve our private ends
  Forbids the cheating of our friends?

In truth, his constitutional indolence seems to have gained advantages over him, when the stimulus of a heavy task was removed.  In his meditations, there are many complaints of his “sluggishness” and resolutions of amendment.  “A kind of strange oblivion has spread over me,” he says in April, 1764, “so that I know not what has become of the last years, and perceive that incidents and intelligence pass over me without leaving any impression.”

It seems, however, that he was still frequently in difficulties.  Letters are preserved showing that in the beginning of 1756, Richardson became surety for him for a debt, and lent him six guineas to release him from arrest.  An event which happened three years later illustrates his position and character.  In January, 1759, his mother died at the age of ninety.  Johnson was unable to come to Lichfield, and some deeply pathetic letters to her and her stepdaughter, who lived with her, record his emotions.  Here is the last sad farewell upon the snapping of the most sacred of human ties.

“Dear Honoured Mother,” he says in a letter enclosed to Lucy Porter, the step-daughter, “neither your condition nor your character make it fit for me to say much.  You have been the best mother, and I believe the best woman in the world.  I thank you for your indulgence to me, and beg forgiveness of all that I have done ill, and of all that I have omitted to do well.  God grant you His Holy Spirit, and receive you to everlasting happiness for Jesus Christ’s sake.  Amen.  Lord Jesus receive your spirit.  I am, dear, dear mother,