The progress of knowledge, even since Johnson's time, has enabled us to say, without presumption, that we differ with this extraordinary person on many important points, without ceasing to have the highest regard for his character. His faults were the result of temperament; perhaps his good qualities and his powers of reflection were, in some measure, so too; but this must be the case with all men. Intellect and beneficence, from whatever causes, will always command respect; and we may gladly compound, for their sakes, with foibles which belong to the common chances of humanity. If Johnson has added nothing very new to the general stock, he has contributed (especially by the help of his biographer) a great deal that is striking and entertaining. He was an admirable critic, if not of the highest things, yet of such as could be determined by the exercise of a masculine good sense; and one thing he did, perhaps beyond any man in England, before or since--he advanced, by the powers of his conversation, the strictness of his veracity, and the respect he exacted towards his presence, what may be called the personal dignity of literature. The consequence has been, not exactly what he expected, but certainly what the great interests of knowledge require; and Johnson has assisted men, with whom he little thought of co-operating, in setting the claims of truth and beneficence above all others. East from Fetter Lane, on the same side of the street, is Crane Court--the principal house in which, facing the entry, was that in which the Royal Society used to meet, and where they kept their museum and library before they removed to their late apartments in Somerset House. The society met in Crane Court up to a period late enough to allow us to present to our imaginations Boyle and his contemporaries prosecuting their eager inquiries and curious experiments in the early dawn of physical science, and afterwards Newton presiding in the noontide glory of the light which he had shed over nature. FOOTNOTES: [75] See Walter Scott's edition of Dryden, vol. x., p. 372. "Abhorrers" were addressers on the side of the court, who had avowed "abhorrence" of the proceedings of the Whigs. The word was a capital one to sound through a trumpet. [76] Aubrey says that his death took place in a cellar in Long Acre; and adds; "Mr. Edm. Wylde, &c., had made a collection for him, and given him money." But Aubrey's authority is not valid against Wood's. He is to be read like a proper gossip, whose accounts we may pretty safely reject or believe, as it suits other testimony. [77] Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, fol. vol. ii., p. 145. [78] Baker's Biographia Dramatica. Reed's edition, 1782, vol. i., p. 207. [79] Malone in the Prolegomena to Shakspeare, as above, vol, iii., p. 287. [80] Correspondence of Samual Richardson, &c., by Anna Letitia Barbauld, vol. i., p. 97.