which supplied him with what was general much more readily than with what was particular. Had De Foe been the composer he would have scattered over each speech the most ingenious and probable matters of detail, but De Foe and Johnson were wide as the poles asunder. Neither had Johnson any dramatic power. His parliamentary speakers have scarcely more variety than the characters in Irene. Unless he had been a constant frequenter of the galleries of the two Houses, he could not have acquired any knowledge of the style and the peculiarities of the different members. Nay, even of their modes of thinking and their sentiments he could have gained but the most general notions. Of debating he knew nothing. It was the set speeches in Livy and the old historians that he took as his models. In his orations there is very little of 'the tart reply;' there is, indeed, scarcely any examination of an adversary's arguments. So general are the speeches that the order in which they are given might very often without inconvenience be changed. They are like a series of leading articles on both sides of the question, but all written by one man. Johnson is constantly shifting his character, and, like Falstaff and the Prince, playing first his own part and then his opponent's. It is wonderful how well he preserves his impartiality, though he does 'take care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it.'
He not only took the greatest liberties in his reports, but he often took them openly. Thus an army bill was debated in committee on Dec. 10, 1740, and again the following day on the report in the full House. 'As in these two debates,' he writes, 'the arguments were the same, Mr. Gulliver has thrown them into one to prevent unnecessary repetitions.' (Gent. Mag. Dec. 1742, p. 676.) In each House during the winter of 1742-3 there was a debate on taking the Hanoverian troops into pay. The debate in the Lords was spread over five numbers of the Magazine in the following summer and autumn. It was not till the spring of 1744 that the turn of the Commons came, and then they were treated somewhat scurvily. 'This debate,' says the reporter, who was Johnson, 'we thought it necessary to contract by the omission of those arguments which were fully discussed in the House of Hurgoes, and of those speakers who produced them, lest we should disgust our readers by tedious repetitions.' (ib. xiv. 125.) Many of these debates have been reported somewhat briefly by Bishop (afterwards Archbishop) Seeker. To follow his account requires an accurate
