34 Punch and conversation

35 Auction hunter

36 The terrific diction

310 37 Iron and gold

311 38 Debtors in Prison

313 39 The bracelet

40 Art of advertising

314 41 On the death of a friend

320 45 Portraits defended

46 Molly Quick's complaint of her mistress
322 47 Deborah Ginger's account of city wits
48 The bustles of Idleness

293 15 Treacle's complaint of his wife

294 16 Drugget's retirement

324 49 Marvel's journey

325 50 Marvel paralleled

330 55 Author's mortifications

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE.

THIS work was written by Dr. Johnson for "The Universal Chronicle, or Weekly Gazette," projected in the year 1751, by Mr. J. Newberry, Bookseller. The preface to the Rambler contains an outline of the Life of the celebrated author of these papers; we shall therefore here only present our readers with a few observations on the style, &c. of Dr. Johnson, which he will not find so copiously described as we could wish in our preliminary observations on the Rambler."When common words were less pleasing to the The Doctor is said to have been allowed a share in the profits of this newspaper, for which he was to furnish a short essay on such subjects as might suit the taste of the times, and distinguish this publication from it contemporaries. The first Essay appeared on Saturday, April 15th, 1758, and continued to be published on the same day, weekly, until April 5th, 1760, when the Idler was concluded.

say, "He is the Raphael of Essay Writers." How he differed so widely from such elegant models is a problem not to be solved, unless it be true that he took an early tincture from the writers of the last century, particularly Sir Thomas Browne. Hence the peculiarities of his style, new combinations, sentences of an unusual struc ture, and words derived from the learned languages. His own account of the matter is, ear, or less distinct in their signification, I familiarized the terms of philosophy, by applying them to popular ideas." But he forgot the observation of Dryden:-"If too many foreign words are poured in upon us, it looks as if they were designed, not to assist the natives, but to conquer them." There is, it must be admitted, a swell of language, often out of all proportion to the sentiment; but there is, in general, a fulness of mind, and the thought seems to expand with the sound of the words. Determined to discard colloquial barbarisms and licentious idioms, he forgot the elegant simplicity that distinguishes the writings of Addison. He had what Locke calls a roundabout view of his subject; and though he was never tainted, like many modern wits, with the ambition of shining in paradox, he may be fairly called an Original Thinker. His reading was extensive. He treasured in his mind whatever was worthy of notice, but he added to it from his own meditation. He collected, quæ reconderet, auctaque promeret. Addison was not so profound a thinker. He was born to write, converse, and live with ease; and he found an

The Rambler may be considered as Johnson's great work. It was the basis of that high reputation which went on increasing to the end of his days. The circulation of those periodical essays was not, at first, equal to ther merit. They had not, like the Spectators, the art of charming by variety; and indeed how could it be expected? The wits of Queen Anne's reign sent their contributions to the Spectator; and Johnson stood alone. A stage-coach, says Sir Richard Steele, must go forward on stated days, whether there are passengers or not. So it was with the Rambler, every Tuesday and Saturday, for two years. In this collection Johnson is the great moral teacher of his countrymen; his essays form a body of ethics; the observations on life and man-early patron in Lord Somers. He depended, ners are acute and instructive; and the papers, however, more upon a fine taste than the vigour professedly critical, serve to promote the cause of of his mind. His Latin poetry shows, that he literature. It must, however, be acknowledged, relished, with a just selection, all the refined and that a settled gloom hangs over the author's delicate beauties of the Roman classics; and mind; and all the essays, except eight or ten, when he cultivated his native language, no woncoming from the same fountain head, no wonder der that he formed that graceful style, which has that they have the raciness of the soil from which been so justly admired; simple, yet elegant; they sprung. Of this uniformity Johnson was adorned, yet never over-wrought; rich in allusensible. He used to say, that if he had joined a sion, yet pure and perspicuous; correct withfriend or two, who would have been able to inter-out labour, and, though sometimes deficient in mix papers of a sprightly turn, the collection would have been more miscellaneous, and, by consequence, more agreeable to the generality of readers.

It is remarkable, that the pomp of diction, which has been objected to Johnson, was first assumed in the Rambler. His Dictionary was going on at the same time, and, in the course of that work, as he grew familiar with technical and scholastic words, he thought the bulk of his readers were equally learned; or at least would admire the splendour and dignity of the style. And yet it is well known, that he praised in Cowley the ease and unaffected structure of the sentences. Cowley may be placed at the head of those who cultivated a clear and natural style. Dryden, Tillotson, and Sir William Temple, followed. Addison, Swift, and Pope, with more correctness, carried our language well nigh to perfection. Of Addison, Johnson was used to

strength, yet always musical. His essays in general, are on the surface of life; if ever original, it was in pieces of humour. Sir Roger de Coverly, and the Tory Fox-hunter, need not to be mentioned. Johnson had a fund of humour, but he did not know it, nor was he willing to descend to the familiar idiom and the variety of diction which that mode of composition required. The letter, in the Rambler, No. 12, from a young girl that wants a place, will illustrate this observation. Addison possessed an unclouded imagination, alive to the first objects of nature and of art. He reaches the sublime without any apparent effort. When he tells us, "If we consider the fixed stars as so many oceans of flame, that are each of them attended with a different set of planets; if we still discover new firmaments and new lights that are sunk further in those unfathomable depths of æther, we are lost in a labyrinth of suns and worlds, and confounded with the magnifi

fellow at Cambridge, but, as Johnson, being himself an original thinker, always revolted from servile imitation, he has printed the piece, with an apology, importing that the journal of a citizen in the Spectator almost precluded the attempt of any subsequent writer. This account of the Idler may be closed, after observing, that the author's mother being buried on the 23d of January 1759, there is an admirable paper, occasionsame month, No. 41. The reader, if he pleases, may compare it with another fine paper in the Rambler, No. 54, on the conviction that rushes on the mind at the bed of a dying friend.

cence and immensity of nature;" the ease, with which this passage rises to unaffected grandeur, is the secret charm that captivates the reader. Johnson is always lofty; he seems, to use Dryden's phrase, to be o'er informed with meaning, and his words do not appear to himself adequate to his conception. He moves in state, and his periods are always harmonious. His Oriental Tales are in the true style of eastern magnificence, and yet none of them are so much admired as the Vi-ed by that event, on Saturday the 27th of the sions of Mirza. In matters of criticism, Johnson is never the echo of preceding writers. He thinks and decides for himself. If we except the Essays on the pleasures of imagination, Addison cannot be called a philosophical critic. His moral Essays are beautiful; but in that province nothing can exceed the Rambler, though Johnson used to say, that the Essay on "The Burthens of Mankind" (in the Spectator, No. 558) was the most exquisite he had ever read. Talking of himself, Johnson said, "Topham Beauclark has wit, and every thing comes from him with ease; but when I say a good thing, I seem to labour." When we compare him with Addison, the contrast is still stronger. Addison lends grace and ornament to truth; Johnson gives it force and energy. Addison makes virtue amiable; Johnson represents it as an awful duty. Addison insinuates himself with an air of modesty; Johnson commands like a dictator; but a dictator in his splended robes, not labouring at the plough. Addison is the Jupiter of Virgil, with placidries, made yet more injurious by contempt, they serenity talking to Venus:

"Vultu, quo cœlum tempestatesque serenat." Johnson is Jupiter Tonans; he darts his lightning, and rolls his thunder, in the cause or virtue and piety. The language seems to fall short of his ideas; he pours along, familiarising the terms of philosophy, with bold inversions, and sonorous periods; but we may apply to him what Pope has said of Homer:-"It is the sentiment that swells and fills out the diction, which rises with it, and forms itself about it; like glass in the furnace, which grows to a greater magnitude, as the breath within is more powerful, and the heat more intense."

It is not the design of this comparison to decide between those two eminent writers. In matters of taste every reader will chose for himself. Johnson is always profound, and of course gives the fatigue of thinking. Addison charms while he instructs; and writing, as he always does, a pure, an elegant, and idiomatic style, he may be pronounced the safest model for imitation.

The Idlers, during the time of their publication, were frequently copied into contemporary works without any acknowledgment. The author, who was also a proprietor of the Universal Chronicle, in which they appeared, hurled his vengeance on the pirates in the following "Hue and Cry," which, as coming from Dr. Johnson's pen, may justly be deemed a literary curiosity.

66

London, Jan. 5, 1759. Advertisement. The proprietors of the paper, entitled "The Idler," having found that those essays are inserted in the newspapers and magazines with so little regard to justice or decency, that the Universal Chronicle in which they first appear, is not always mentioned, think it necessary to declare to the publishers of those collections, that however patiently they have hitherto endured these inju

have now determined to endure them no longer. -They have already seen essays, for which a very large price is paid, transferred with the most shameless rapacity into the weekly or monthly compilations, and their right, at least for the present, alienated from them, before they could themselves be said to enjoy it. But they would not willingly be thought to want tenderness even for men by whom no tenderness hath been shown. The past is without remedy, and shall be without resentment. But those who have been thus busy with their sickles in the fields of their neighbours, are henceforward to take notice, that the time of impunity is at an end. Whoever shall, without our leave, lay the hand of rapine upon our papers, is to expect that we shall vindicate our due, by the means which justice prescribes, and which are warranted by the immemorial prescriptions of honourable trade. We shall lay hold, in our turn, on their copies, degrade them from the pomp of wide margin and diffuse typography, contract them into a narrow space, and sell them at an The Essays written by Johnson in the Adven-humble price; yet not with a view of growing turer may be called a continuation of the Rambler. rich by confiscations, for we think not much betThe Idler, in order to be consistent with the as-ter of money got by punishment than by crimes: sumed character, is written with abated vigour, in a style of ease and unlaboured elegance. It is the Odyssey after the Iliad. Intense thinking would not become the Idler. The first number presents a well-drawn portrait of an Idler, and from that character no deviation could be made. Accordingly, Johnson forgets his austere manner, and plays us into sense. He still continues his lectures on human life, but he adverts to common occurrences, and is often content with the topic of the day. An advertisement in the beginning of the first volume informs us, that twelve entire Essays were a contribution from different hands. One of these, No. 33, is the journal of a Senior

we shall therefore, when our losses are repaid, give what profit shall remain to the Magdalens: for we know not who can be more properly taxed for the support of penitent prostitutes than prostitutes in whom there yet appears neither penitence nor shame."

The effect of this singular manifesto is not now known; but if "essays for which a large price has been paid" be not words of course, they may prove that the author received an immediate remuneration for his labour, independent of his share in the general profits.

Nos. 33, 93, and 96, were written by Mr. Thomas Warton. Thomas Warton was the

"A Companion to the Guide, and a Guide to the Companion; being a complete Supplement to all the Accounts of Oxford hitherto published." The lapse of time, and the new reign, had now entirely restored to Oxford its ancient virtue of loyalty; and Warton, who had lamented the death of George II. in a copy of verses addressed to Mr. Pitt, continued the courtly strain, though with due dignity, in lines on the marriage of George III. and on the birth of the Prince of Wales, printed in the university collection. Still ranking equally with the wits and with the poets of Isis, he edited in 1764 the "Oxford Sausage," of several pieces in which lively miscellany he was the writer. In 1766 he again appeared as a classical editor by superintending the Anthology of Cephalus, printed at the Clarendon-press, to which he perfixed a learned and ingenious preface. He took the degree of B. D. in 1761, and in 1771 was instituted to the small living of Kiddington in Oxfordshire, on the presentation of the Earl of Litchfield, then chancellor of the university. An edition of Theocritus in 2 vols. 4to. which was published in 1770, gave him celebrity not only at home, but among the scholars of the continent.

younger brother of Dr. Joseph Warton, and was born at Basingstoke in 1728. He very early manifested a taste for verse; and there is extant a well-turned translation of an epigram of Martial composed by him in his ninth year. He was educated under his father, who kept a school at Basingstoke, till he was admitted in 1743 a commoner of Trinity College, Oxford. Here he exercised his poletícal talent to so much advantage, that on the appearance of Mason's Elegy of "Isis," which severely reflected on the disloyalty of Oxford at that period, he was encouraged by Dr. Huddesford, president of his college, to vindicate the cause of the university. This task he performed with great applause, by writing, in his 21st year, "The Triumph of Isis;" a piece of much spirit and fancy, in which he retaliated upon the bard of Cam by satirising the courtly venality then supposed to distinguished the loyal university, and sung in no common strains the past and present glories of Oxford. This on his part was fair warfare, though as a peace-offering he afterwards excluded the poem from his volume of collected pieces. His "Progress of Discontent," published in 1750, in a miscellany entitled "The Student," exhibited to great advantage his power in the familiar style, and A History of English Poetry is said to have his talent for humour, with a knowledge of life been meditated by Pope, who was but indifferextraordinary at his early age, especially if com- ently qualified by learning, whatever he might posed, as is said, for a college-exercise in 1746. In have been by taste, for such an undertaking. 1750 he took the degree of M. A., and in the fol- Gray, who possessed every requisite for the work, lowing year became a Fellow of his college. He except industry, entertained a distant idea of enappears now to have unalterably devoted him-gaging in it, with the assistance of Mason; but self to the pursuit of poetry and elegant literature he shrunk from the magnitude of the task, and in a university-residence. His spirited satire, readily relinquished his project, when he heard entitled "Newmarket," and pointed against the that a similar design was adopted by Warton. ruinous passion for the turf; his "Ode for Mu- At what period he first occupied himself in this sic ;" and "Verses on the Death of the Prince of extensive plan of writing and research, we are Wales;" were written about this time; and in not informed; but in 1774 he had proceeded so 1753 he was the editor of a small collection of far as to publish the first volume in quarto; and poems, which, under the title of "The Union," he pursued an object now apparently become the was printed at Edinburgh, and contained several great mark of his studies, with so much assiduity, of his own pieces. In 1754 he made himself that he brought out a second volume in 1778, and known as a critic and a diligent student of poeti- a third in 1781. He now relaxed in his labours, cal antiquities, by his observations on Spenser's and never executed more than a few sheets of a Fairy Queen, in one volume, afterwards enlarg- fourth volume. The work had grown upon his ed to two volumes; a work well received by the hands, and had greatly exceeded his first estipublic, and which made a considerable addition mate; so that the completion of the design, to his literary reputation. These various proofs which was to have terminated only with the of his abilities caused him very properly to be commencement of the eighteenth century, was elected in 1757 professor of poetry to the univer- still very remote, supposing a due proportion to sity, an office which he held for the usual period have been preserved throughout. Warton's of ten years, and rendered respectable by the "History of English Poetry" is regarded as his erudition and taste displayed in his lectures. Dr. opus magnum; and is indeed an ample monument Johnson was at this time publishing his "Idler," of his reading, as well as of his taste and critical and Warton who had long been intimately ac-judgment. The majority of its readers, however, quainted with him, contributed the three papers will probably be of opinion that he has dwelt too we have mentioned to that work. He gave a minutely upon those early periods in which poespecimen of his classical proficiency in 1758 by try can scarcely be said to have existed in this the publication "Inscriptionum Romanarum country, and has been too profuse of transcripts Metricarum Delectus," a collection of select Latin from pieces destitute of all merit but their age. epigrams and inscriptions, to which were annex- Considered, however, as literary antiquarianism, ed a few modern ones, on the antique model, five the work is very interesting; and though inaccuof them by himself. He drew up in 1760, for theracies have been detected, it cannot be denied to Biographica Britannica, the life of Sir Thomas abound with curious information. His brother Pope, which he published separately, much gave some expectation of carrying on the history enlarged, in 1772 and 1780. Another con- to the completion of the fourth volume, but tribution to literary biography was his "Life seems to have done little or nothing towards fuland Literary Remains of Dr. Bathurst," pub-filling it. As a proof that Warton began to be lished in 1761. A piece of local humour, which was read at the time with great avidity, dropped from his pen in 1760 with the title,

B

weary of his task, it appears that about 1781 he had turned his thoughts to another laborious undertaking, which was a county-history of Ox