I profess myself to have ever entertained a profound veneration for the astonishing force and vivacity of mind which The Rambler exhibits. That Johnson had penetration enough to see, and seeing would not disguise the general misery of man in this state of being, may have given rise to the superficial notion of his being too stern a philosopher. But men of reflection will be sensible that he has given a true representation of human existence, and that he has, at the same time, with a generous benevolence displayed every consolation which our state affords us; not only those arising from the hopes of futurity, but such as may be attained in the immediate progress through life. He has not depressed the soul to despondency and indifference. He has everywhere inculcated study, labor, and exertion. Nay, he has shewn, in a very odious light, a man whose practice is to go about darkening the views of others by perpetual complaints of evil, and awakening those considerations of danger and distress, which are, for the most part, lulled into a quiet oblivion. This he has done very strongly in his character of Suspirius[1], from which Goldsmith took that of Croaker, in his comedy of The Good-Natured Man[2], as Johnson told me he acknowledged to him, and which is, indeed, very obvious[3].
- ↑ No. 55 [59]. Boswell.
- ↑ Miss Burney records in her Diary that one day at Streatham, while she and Mrs. Thrale "were reading this Rambler, Dr. Johnson came in. We told him what we were about. "Ah, madam!" cried he, "Goldsmith was not scrupulous; but he would have been a great man had he known the real value of his own internal resources."' Mme. D'Arblays Diary, i. 83. See Post, beginning of 1768.
- ↑ It is possible that Mrs. Hardcastle's drive in She Stoops to Conquer was suggested by The Rambler, No. 34. In it a young gentleman describes a lady's terror on a coach journey. 'Our whole conversation passed in dangers, and cares, and fears, and consolations, and stories of ladies dragged in the mire, forced to spend all the night on a heath, drowned in rivers, or burnt with lightning . . . We had now a new scene of terror, every man we saw was a robber, and we were ordered sometimes to drive hard, lest a traveller whom we saw behind should overtake us; and sometimes to stop, lest we should come up to him
