who neither know nor value the sweet, subtle mintage of the mind.  Around you mad riot shall surge, a hatred for liberty shall prevail—­an enthusiasm for slavery.  The glorious leaders of your Puritan faith shall be condemned and executed, hanged, cut down from the gallows alive, and quartered amid the hoarse insults of the people they sought to serve; and you yourself shall be hunted like a wild beast.  You shall see the prisons filled to overflowing with men and women whose only crime was their love for truth.  And a libertine shall sit on the throne of the England that you love.  These things you shall see with those mild, dark eyes, and then night, eternal night, shall settle down upon you; and for those idle orbs no day shall dawn nor starry night appear, nor face of man nor child shall be reflected there.  Your sightlessness shall give those who owe you gratitude and love, opportunity to filch your gold; and, lastly, fire shall rob you of your books, and well-nigh all your treasures.

Like another Lear, your daughters shall neither esteem nor respect you, and the lines you dictate shall be to them but the idle vaporings of a mind diseased.  Your acute ears shall hear these daughters express the wish that you were dead; and then in your blindness you will give yourself into the keeping of a woman as dull, inane and unfeeling as the foolish child you first chose as wife.  But with it all your obstinacy shall constitute your power; and that beauty which was yours in youth shall be with you to the last.  You shall feel all the torments of the damned and become inured to the scorching flames of hell!  But, as recompense, the splendors of the Celestial Kingdom shall open upon your inward vision, and your soul shall behold that which the eyes of earth have lost.  Something great and proud shall go out from your presence to all the discerning ones who shall approach you; and your end shall be like the setting of the sun, bright, calm, poised and resplendent.

SAMUEL JOHNSON

* * * Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward rooms and was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor.  Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before.

    The shepherd in Vergil grew at last acquainted with Love, and
    found him a native of the rocks.

Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached the ground encumbers him with help?  The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and can not enjoy it; till I am a solitary, and can not impart it; till I am known,