Surround its base, than for him to journey onward to a better world possessed of power, pleasure, and riches."
76- No great work worthy of praise or memory, ' says Doctor Johnson, "but came out of poor cradle" .
The grim old lexicographer had a hard and uphill struggle before he gained at last a firm footing on the ladder of success, and perhaps in some of his writings and sayings we may trace a flavor of disappointed bitterness against the Chesterfield and dandies who neglected him in his earlier years. At any rate we can hardly fail to be struck with the seeming flat contradiction in Gray's familiar verse:
'But knowledge to their eyes here ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill penury suppressed their noble rage,
and froze the genial current of their soul'.
What, then, is the fact? Does 'chill penury' really exercise a numbering influence, b lighting like a cold
296