passers-by would imagine, but observing all that stirs on either side of him without moving his short neck; hardly ever turning back; of a light brown complexion; teeth not yet failing him; smoothish face and ruddy cheeked; at some times looking to be about sixty-five, at other times much younger; regular even pace, stealing away ground rather than seeming to rid it; a gray eye, too often over-clouded by mistiness from the head; by chance lively--very lively it will be, if he have hope of seeing a young lady whom he loves and honours; his eye always on the ladies; if they have very large hoops, he looks down supercilious, and as if he would be thought wise, but, perhaps, the sillier for that; as he approaches a lady, his eyes are never set upon her face but upon her feet, and thence he raises it pretty quickly for a dull eye; and one would think (if one thought him at all worthy of observation) that from her air and (the last beheld) her face, he sets her down in his mind as so and so, and then passes on to the next object he meets.” Among other letters to Richardson we come across an affecting one from Dr. Johnson: “I am obliged to entreat your assistance, I am under arrest for five pounds eighteen shillings.” As round Pope and Dryden formerly, so it is now round Johnson that the booksellers of the next decade cluster; and from the moment when first he rolled into a London bookseller’s shop, his huge unwieldy body clad in coarse country garments, worn and travel-stained, his face scarred and seamed with small-pox--to ask for literary employment, and to be told he had better rather purchase a porter’s knot, the future of the trade was very much wrapt up in his own. Forced by hunger to work for the most niggardly pay, he was yet not to be insulted with impunity. “Lie there, thou lump of lead,” he exclaims as he knocked down Osborne of Gray’s Inn Gate, with a folio. “Sir,” he explains to Boswell afterwards, “he was impertinent to me, and I beat him.” [Illustration: Edward Cave, founder of the “Gentleman’s Magazine.” 1691-1754.] [Illustration: The King’s Printing House, Blackfriars. (_From a drawing made about 1750._)]