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Ramblers. He was an acute and able critic; the enthusiastic admirers of Milton and the friends of Gray will have something to complain of, but criticism is a task which no man executes to all men's satisfaction.... In works professedly of fancy he is not very copious; yet in his "Rasselas" we have much to admire, and enough to make us wish for more. It is the work of an illuminated mind, and offers many wise and deep reflections, clothed in beautiful and harmonious diction. We are not, indeed, familiar with such personages as Johnson had imagined for the characters of his fable, but if we are not exceedingly interested in their story, we are infinitely gratified with their conversation and remarks. In conclusion, Johnson's era was not wanting in men to be distinguished for their talents; yet if one was to be selected out as the first great literary character of the time, I believe all voices would concur in naming him.

THE JOHNSONIAN STYLE.

The following celebrated passage, taken from Boswell's "Journal," is a good illustration of Johnson's style: "We were now treading that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavored, and would be foolish if it were possible.... Far from me, and from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us, indifferent and unmoved, over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona."

CRITICISMS.

If you were to write a fable about little fishes, Doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like whales.-OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

All his books are written in a learned language - in a language which nobody hears from his mother or his nurse; in a language in which nobody ever quarrels, or drives bargains, or makes love; in a language in which nobody ever thinks.-T. B. MACAULAY.

The reproach conveyed in the phrase "Johnsonian English" must not mislead us. It is aimed at his words, not at his structure. In Johnson's prose the words are often pompous and long, but the structure is always plain and modern.-MATTHEW ARNOLD.

His phraseology rolls ever in solemn and majestic periods, in which every substantive marches ceremoniously, accompanied by its epithet; grand, pompous words peal like an organ; every proposition is set forth, balanced by a proposition of equal length; thought is developed with the compassed regularity and official splendor of a procession. Classical prose attains its perfection in him as classical poetry in Pope. Art cannot be more finished or nature more forced.-H. A. TAINE.

Johnson's sentences seem to be contorted, as his gigantic limbs used to twitch, by a kind of mechanical, spasmodic action. The most obvious peculiarity is the tendency, which he noticed himself, to "use too big words and too many of them." He had to explain to Miss Reynolds that the Shakespearian line,

"You must borrow me Gargantua's mouth,"

had been applied to him because he used "big words, which require the mouth of a giant to pronounce them." It was not, however, the mere bigness of the words that distinguished his style, but a peculiar love of putting the abstract for the concrete, of using awkward inversions, and of balancing his sentences in a monotonous rhythm, which gives the appearance, as it sometimes corresponds to the reality, of elaborate logical discrimination. With all its faults, the style has the merits of masculine directness. The inversions are not such as to complicate the construction. As Boswell remarks, he never uses a parenthesis; and his style, though ponderous and wearisome, is as transparent as the smarter snipsnap of Macaulay. - LESLIE STEPHEN.

Carlyle's COMPARISON OF DR. JOHNSON AND DAVID HUME.

Samuel Johnson and David Hume, as was observed, were children of the same year. Through life they were spectators of the same life-movement; often inhabitants of the same city. Greater contrast in all things between two great men could not be. Hume, well-born, competently provided for, whole in body and mind, of his own determination forces a way into Literature. Johnson, poor, moonstruck, diseased, forlorn, is forced into it "with the bayonet of necessity at his back." And what a part did they severally play there! As Johnson became the father of all succeeding Tories, so was Hume the father of all succeeding Whigs, for his own Jacobitism was but an accident, as worthy to be named Prejudice as any of Johnson's. Again, if Johnson's culture was exclusively English, Hume's, in Scotland, became European; for which reason, too, we find his influence spread deeply over all quarters of Europe, traceable deeply in all speculation— French, German, as well as domestic; while Johnson's name, out of England, is hardly anywhere to be met with. In spiritual stature they are almost equal-both great among the greatest, yet how unlike in likeness! Hume has the widest, methodizing, comprehensive eye; Johnson the keenest for perspicacity and minute detail; so had, perhaps chiefly, their education ordered it. Neither of the two rose into Poetry, yet both to some approximation thereof: Hume to something of an Epic clearness and method, as in his delineation of the Commonwealth Wars; Johnson to many a deep Lyric tone of plaintiveness, and impetuous, graceful power, scattered over his fugitive compositions. Both, rather to the general surprise, had a certain rugged Humor shining through their earnestness-the indication, indeed, that they were earnest men and had subdued their wild world into a kind of temporary home and safe dwelling. Both were, by principle and habit, Stoics; yet Johnson with the greater merit, for he alone had very much to triumph over; further, he alone ennobled his Stoicism into Devotion. To Johnson Life was as a Prison, to be endured with heroic faith; to Hume it was little more than a foolish Bartholomew - Fair show-booth, with the foolish crowdings and elbowings of which it was not worth while to quarrel-the whole would break up and be at liberty so soon. Both realized the highest task of Manhood-that of living like men; each died, not unfitly, in his way: Hume as one with factitious, half-false gayety, taking leave of what was itself wholly but a Lie; Johnson as one with awe-struck yet resolute and piously expectant heart, taking leave of a Reality to enter a Reality still higher. Johnson had the harder problem of it, from first to last; whether, with some hesitation, we can admit that he was intrinsically the better-gifted may remain undecided. These two men now rest-the one in Westminster Abbey here, the other in the Calton Hill church-yard of Edinburgh. Through life they did not meet; as contrasts "like in unlike" love each other, so might they two have loved and communed kindly had not the terrestrial dross and darkness that was in them withstood! They were the two half-men of their time; whoso should combine the intrepid candor and decisive scientific clearness of Hume, with the Reverence, the Love, and devout Humility of Johnson, were the whole man of a new time. [See "Characteristics of the Age:" Scepticism of Hume.]

BOOKS OF REFERENCE.

Boswell's "Life of Johnson."
Stephen's "Life of Johnson," edited
by Morley in the "English Men of
Letters" Series.

Walpole's "Men of the Reign of
George III."

"The Cumberland Memoirs."

Albert Barnes's "Miscellaneous Es-
says."

Hazlitt's "On the Periodical Essayists."
The Gentleman's Magazine, 1739-1784.

Macaulay's "Life of Johnson."
Macaulay's Essay on Croker's Edition
of Boswell's "Life of Johnson."
Carlyle's Essay on Boswell's "Life of Taine's "History of English Litera-

Johnson."

ture."

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