Note 697 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 4)

In Mr. Barry's printed analysis, or description of these pictures, he speaks of Johnson's character in the highest terms. BOSWELL. Barry, in one of his pictures, placed Johnson between the two beautiful duchesses of Rutland and Devonshire, pointing to their Graces Mrs. Montagu as an example. He expresses his 'reverence for his consistent, manly, and well-spent life.' Barry's Works, ii. 339. Johnson, in his turn, praises 'the comprehension of Barry's design.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 256. He was more likely to understand it, as the pictures formed a series, meant 'to illustrate one great maxim of moral truth, viz. that the obtaining of happiness depends upon cultivating the human faculties. We begin with man in a savage state full of inconvenience, imperfection, and misery, and we follow him through several gradations of culture and happiness, which, after our probationary state here, are finally attended with beatitude or misery.' Barry's Works, ii. 323. Horace Walpole (Letters, viii. 366) describes Barry's book as one 'which does not want sense, though full of passion and self, and vulgarisms and vanity.'