have believed in her complete contrition and repentance. He rode with her in the cart to Tyburn; and, in the frontispiece to an edition of his autobiography published at Salford in 1806, she is depicted much in the position of Thomas Idle in Hogarth's print, with Told seated at her side. But, if one may judge from the 'authentick Narrative' published by Mr. Urban in September, 1767, she is not a malefactor with whom it is possible to sympathize greatly. Told's ministrations to her and to the other inmates of Newgate, it should be added, were not effected without difficulty; and vested interests, in the shape of keepers and Ordinary, were often arrayed against him- his clerical brother, in particular, taking an infinity of pains to harass and obstruct him in his pious offices. But his invincible tenacity of purpose triumphed over all obstacles, and he was even able to effect some trifling reforms in the prison itself. Nor were his exertions confined to Newgate, for, in process of time, he visited (he says) 'every prison, as well as many workhouses in and about London; and frequently travelled to almost every town within 12 miles around this metropolis.'

In December, 1778, in his sixty-eighth year, Silas Told's life of obscure and unselfish useful

ness came to an end. But the Gentleman's Magazine' for that date devotes no obituary line to the patient 'Prisoners' Chaplain' from whose lips so many hapless beings had heard the last words of comfort and consolation. His best epitaph is to be found in Wesley's 'Journal': 'Sun. 20.—I buried what was mortal of honest Silas Told. For many years he attended the malefactors in Newgate, without fee or reward; and I suppose no man for this hundred years has been so successful in that melancholy office. God had given him peculiar talents for it; and he had amazing success therein. The greatest part of those whom he attended died in peace, and many of them in the triumph of faith.'

JOHNSON'S LIBRARY.

"THERE

'HERE are my friends;—there are my books, to which I have not yet bid farewell.' Thus Johnson-writing in the last months of his life to Dr. Brocklesby from Lichfield-speaks of the London that he loved so dearly. He loved his books dearly too. But his attachment for them, like his attachment for his friends, was after all but a growling kind of affection, not incompatible with much severe discipline and no small amount of rough usage. Whether he would actually have marked his place with the countless straws (paleas innumeras') of the slovenly student in the 'Philobiblon,' or-as is related of another even more unpardonable amateur-set the leg of a chair on a volume to keep it open, may in charity be doubted. What is certain is, that he would not scruple to cut the leaves with a greasy knife, and read while he was eating (one knows how he eat!); and it is probable that with his imperfect sight, his haste to tear out the heart' of his subject, and his frequent fits of absence or abstraction, he was not in the least the kind of

person to whom one would have cared to confide the masterpieces of Miss Prideaux or Mr. CobdenSanderson, even though, out of abundance of caution, he should cuddle them uncouthly in a corner of the tablecloth, as he once did with Charles Sheridan's Revolution in Sweden.' 'David!' he said to Garrick, 'will you lend me your "Petrarca"?' (Petrarch, it may be remembered, had been the passion of his boyhood.) And Garrick answering doubtfully "Y—e—s, Sir !' was greeted with a reproachful 'David! you sigh? '—the obvious outcome of which was that the treasure, stupendously bound,' and no doubt containing the famous Shakespeare bookplate with its cautionary motto from the 'Ménagiana,' found its way that very evening into Johnson's keeping. 'He received it,' reported Boswell, who happened to be present, with a Greek ejaculation and a couplet or two from "Horace";" and then-in one of those transports of enthusiasm which seemed to require that (like Dominie Sampson) he should spread his arms aloft-poor Garrick's 'Petrarca,'' stupendously bound,' pounced over his head upon the floor, to be forthwith forgotten in the train of thought to which it had given birth. Can it be wondered that Garrick, a precise, natty man, with the ambitions, if not the instincts, of a

connoisseur, and a punctilious respect for externals, should hesitate to lend his priceless 'old plays' to such a reader, a reader who, moreover, if he made show of religiously registering his obligations, seldom carried his good resolutions so far as to return the books he borrowed, although-like Coleridge later he usually enriched them liberally with unsolicited marginalia? When a man deals thus with the property of his friends, he cannot be expected to spare his own; and it may easily be believed that Johnson's collection, based, no doubt, on works originally brought together for the preparation of the 'Dictionary,' was, as described, by no means handsome in its appearance.' Nor, though he was discovered, on more than one occasion, in hedger's gloves and a cloud of his own raising, vaguely endeavouring to import 'Heaven's first law' into his library by vigorously 'buffeting' the unfortunate volumes together, could those volumes be said to be, in any sense, either well cared for or well kept. He has many good books, but they are all lying in confusion and dust,' wrote Boswell to Temple in 1763; and Hawkins reports further that they were 'miserably ragged' and 'defaced,' and 'chosen with so little regard to editions or their external appearance, as shewed they were intended for use,