Transcribed from the 1889 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org [Picture: Book cover] CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY. * * * * * RASSELAS PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA * * * * * BY SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. [Picture: Decorative image] CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED: LONDON, PARIS & MELBOURNE. 1889. INTRODUCTION. RASSELAS was written by Samuel Johnson in the year 1759, when his age was fifty. He had written his _London_ in 1738; his _Vanity of Human Wishes_ in 1740; his _Rambler_ between March, 1750, and March, 1752. In 1755 his _Dictionary_ had appeared, and Dublin, by giving him its honorary LL.D., had enabled his friends to call him “Doctor” Johnson. His friends were many, and his honour among men was great. He owed them to his union of intellectual power with unflinching probity. But he had worked hard, battling against the wolf without, and the black dog within—poverty and hypochondria. He was still poor, though his personal wants did not exceed a hundred pounds a year. His wife had been seven years dead, and he missed her sorely. His old mother, who lived to the age of ninety, died poor in January of this year, 1759. In her old age, Johnson had sought to help her from his earnings. At her death there were some little debts, and there were costs of burial. That he might earn enough to pay them he wrote _Rasselas_. _Rasselas_ was written in the evenings of one week, and sent to press while being written. Johnson earned by it a hundred pounds, with twenty-five pounds more for a second edition. It was published in March or April; Johnson never read it after it had been published until more than twenty years afterwards. Then, finding it in a chaise with Boswell, he took it up and read it eagerly. This is one of Johnson’s letters to his mother, written after he knew that her last illness had come upon her. It is dated about ten days before her death. The “Miss” referred to in it was a faithful friend. “Miss” was his home name for an affectionate step-daughter, Lucy Porter:— “HONOURED MADAM,— “The account which Miss gives me of your health pierces my heart. God comfort and preserve you, and save you, for the sake of Jesus Christ. “I would have Miss read to you from time to time the Passion of our Saviour; and sometimes the sentences in the Communion Service beginning—’Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ “I have just now read a physical book which inclines me to think that a strong infusion of the bark would do you good. Do, dear mother, try it.