But to be serious. There can be little doubt that if all that he said, and wrote, and did, be fairly considered, few men can claim credit for having lived more useful lives than Dr. Johnson. Long before the end of that life arrived, King George III. had spontaneously borne testimony to his merits by the gift, rare at that time, of a literary pension, adding a graceful compliment: “I should perhaps have thought that you had written enough, if you had not written so well.” Born in humble, though not needy circumstances, unable to complete his education and to obtain an Oxford degree by the _res angusta domi_, he came to London to fight the battle of life, his only weapon being his pen, and he won the day against all difficulties, the cold indifference of the rich, the jealousies of his equals and contemporaries, and the heart-breaking and niggardly doles of the London publishers. Undaunted by these and other difficulties, he showed Edmund Cave how his new venture, the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, might come to deserve its name on other grounds than that alleged at first, viz., that it was not fit for any lady to read it. He raised, by his essays and biographical sketches, the whole style and character of that which in the middle of the last century was one of the leading organs of the time, when the daily papers as yet were not, and the country gentleman’s household had to depend for the news of the day on the “news-letter” written specially for their amusement and information. Till Johnson took the matter in hand, and set himself to supply the want by a new method which his native wit suggested, the country knew not one iota of the speeches delivered in the Houses of Parliament; the legislation of the country was carried on in the dark, so far as concerned the people at large. If he had done nothing else than this, Dr. Johnson would deserve, at the very least, the honour of a statue on the Thames Embankment, or of a scholarship bearing his name at Pembroke College, Oxford, the scene of his early struggles.