We doubt whether there is in English literature a more triumphant book than Boswell’s.  What materials for tragedy are wanting?  Johnson was a man of strong passions, unbending spirit, violent temper, as poor as a church-mouse, and as proud as the proudest of Church dignitaries; endowed with the strength of a coal-heaver, the courage of a lion, and the tongue of Dean Swift, he could knock down booksellers and silence bargees; he was melancholy almost to madness, “radically wretched,” indolent, blinded, diseased.  Poverty was long his portion; not that genteel poverty that is sometimes behindhand with its rent, but that hungry poverty that does not know where to look for its dinner.  Against all these things had this “old struggler” to contend; over all these things did this “old struggler” prevail.  Over even the fear of death, the giving up of “this intellectual being,” which had haunted his gloomy fancy for a lifetime, he seems finally to have prevailed, and to have met his end as a brave man should.

Carlyle, writing to his wife, says, and truthfully enough, “The more the devil worries me the more I wring him by the nose;” but then if the devil’s was the only nose that was wrung in the transaction, why need Carlyle cry out so loud?  After buffeting one’s way through the storm-tossed pages of Froude’s (Carlyle,)—­in which the universe is stretched upon the rack because food disagrees with man and cocks crow,—­with what thankfulness and reverence do we read once again the letter in which Johnson tells Mrs. Thrale how he has been called to endure, not dyspepsia or sleeplessness, but paralysis itself:—­

“On Monday I sat for my picture, and walked a considerable way with little inconvenience.  In the afternoon and evening I felt myself light and easy, and began to plan schemes of life.  Thus I went to bed, and in a short time waked and sat up, as has long been my custom; when I felt a confusion in my head which lasted, I suppose, about half a minute; I was alarmed, and prayed God that however much He might afflict my body He would spate my understanding....  Soon after I perceived that I had suffered a paralytic stroke, and that my speech was taken from me.  I had no pain, and so little dejection in this dreadful state that I wondered at my own apathy, and considered that perhaps death itself, when it should come, would excite less horror than seems now to attend it.  In order to rouse the vocal organs I took two drams....  I then went to bed, and strange as it may seem I think slept.  When I saw light it was time I should contrive what I should do.  Though God stopped my speech, He left me my hand.  I enjoyed a mercy which was not granted to my dear friend Lawrence, who now perhaps overlooks me as I am writing, and rejoices that I have what he wanted.  My first note was necessarily to my servant, who came in talking, and could not immediately comprehend why he should read what I put into his hands....  How this will be received by you I know not.  I hope you will sympathize with me; but perhaps