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Aetat.43.
Suspension of his literary labors.
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cessation for some time of any exertion of his talents as an essayist. But, in the same year, Dr. Hawkesworth, who was his warm admirer, and a studious imitator of his style[1], and then lived in great intimacy with him, began a periodical paper, entitled The Adventurer, in connection with other gentlemen, one of whom was Johnson's much-loved friend, Dr. Bathurst; and, without doubt, they received many valuable hints from his conversation, most of his friends having been so assisted in the course of their works.

That there should be a suspension of his literary labours during a part of the year 1752, will not seem strange, when it is considered that soon after closing his Rambler, he suffered a loss which, there can be no doubt, affected him with the deepest distress[2]. For on the 17th of March, O.S., his

    prospect of its end. . . . He that is himself weary will soon weary the public. Let him therefore lay down his employment, whatever it be, who can no longer exert his former activity or attention; let him not endeavour to struggle with censure, or obstinately infest the stage, till a general hiss commands him to depart.'

  1. ↑ How successful an imitator Hawkesworth was is shewn by the following passage in the Carter and Talbot Corresp., ii. 109:—'I discern Mr. Johnson through all the papers that are not marked A, as evidently as if I saw him through the keyhole with the pen in his hand.'
  2. ↑ In The Rambler for Feb. 25 of this year (No. 203) he wrote in the following melancholy strain:—'Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from the time to come. In youth we have nothing past to entertain us, and in age we derive little from retrospect but hopeless sorrow. Yet the future likewise has its limits which the imagination dreads to approach, but which we see to be not far distant. The loss of our friends and companions impresses hourly upon us the necessity of our own departure; we know that the schemes of man are quickly at an end, that we must soon lie down in the grave with the forgotten multitudes of former ages, and yield our place to others, who, like us, shall be driven a while by hope or fear about the surface of the earth, and then like us be lost in the shades of death.' In Prayers and Meditations, pp. 12-1 5, in a service that he used on May 6, 'as preparatory to my return to life to-morrow,' he prays:—'Enable me to begin and perfect that reformation which I promised her, and to persevere in that resolution which she implored Thee to continue, in
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