the magnetic needle, and ascertaining the longitude, for the safety of navigation.  It appears that this scheme had been referred to sir Isaac Newton; but that great philosopher excusing himself on account of his advanced age, all applications were useless, till 1751, when the subject was referred, by order of lord Anson, to Dr. Bradley, the celebrated professor of astronomy.  His report was unfavourable[r], though it allows that a considerable progress had been made.  Dr. Williams, after all his labour and expense, died in a short time after, a melancholy instance of unrewarded merit.  His daughter possessed uncommon talents, and, though blind, had an alacrity of mind that made her conversation agreeable, and even desirable.  To relieve and appease melancholy reflexions, Johnson took her home to his house in Gough square.  In 1755, Garrick gave her a benefit play, which produced two hundred pounds.  In 1766, she published, by subscription, a quarto volume of miscellanies, and increased her little stock to three hundred pounds.  That fund, with Johnson’s protection, supported her, through the remainder of her life.

During the two years in which the Rambler was carried on, the Dictionary proceeded by slow degrees.  In May, 1752, having composed a prayer, preparatory to his return from tears and sorrow to the duties of life, he resumed his grand design, and went on with vigour, giving, however, occasional assistance to his friend, Dr. Hawkesworth, in the Adventurer, which began soon after the Rambler was laid aside.  Some of the most valuable essays in that collection were from the pen of Johnson.  The Dictionary was completed towards the end of 1754; and, Cave being then no more, it was a mortification to the author of that noble addition to our language, that his old friend did not live to see the triumph of his labours.  In May, 1755, that great work was published.  Johnson was desirous that it should come from one who had obtained academical honours; and for that purpose his friend, the rev.  Thos.  Warton, obtained for him, in the preceding month of February, a diploma for a master’s degree, from the university of Oxford.—­Garrick, on the publication of the Dictionary, wrote the following lines: 

  “Talk of war with a Briton, he’ll boldly advance,
  That one English soldier can beat ten of France. 
  Would we alter the boast, from the sword to the pen,
  Our odds are still greater, still greater our men. 
  In the deep mines of science, though Frenchmen may toil,
  Can their strength be compar’d to Locke, Newton, or Boyle? 
  Let them rally their heroes, send forth all their powers,
  Their versemen and prosemen, then match them with ours. 
  First Shakespeare and Milton, like gods in the fight,
  Have put their whole drama and epic to flight. 
  In satires, epistles, and odes would they cope? 
  Their numbers retreat before Dryden and Pope. 
  And Johnson, well arm’d, like a hero of yore,
  Has beat forty French, and will beat forty more.”