Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/227

 I have now discharged the trust reposed in me by that friend, whose labours entitle him to lasting gratitude and veneration from the literary, and still more from the christian world. His Lives of the English Poets "are written," as he justly hopes, "in such a manner as may tend to the promotion of piety." This merit may be ascribed, with equal truth, to most of his other works; and doubtless to his Sermons, none of which indeed have yet been made public, nor is it known where they are extant; though it be certain, from his own acknowledgement, both in conversation and writing, that he composed many. As he seems to have turned his thoughts with peculiar earnestness to the study of religious subjects, we may presume these remains would deserve to be numbered among his happiest productions. It is, therefore, hoped they have fallen into the hands of those, who will not withhold them in obscurity, but consider them as deposits, the seclusion of which, from general use, would be an injurious diminution of their author's fame, and retrenchment from the common stock of serious instruction.

But the integrity of his mind was not only speculatively shadowed in his writings, but substantially exemplified in his life. His prayers and his alms, like those of the good Cornelius, went up for an incessant memorial; and always, from

Humphrey Hely, who married Ford, sister to the Rev. Cornelius Ford, and first cousin to our author. This poor man, who has seen better days is now a tenant of Whicher's Alms-houses, Chapel street, Westminster. [It is now, April 1817, about twenty years since he died in these Alms-houses, and was buried in the adjoining burial-ground belonging to St. Margaret's Chapel.]]
 * [Footnote: Johnson's poor relations and connexions, all of whom are since dead, except