��Essay on
��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 that the bulk of his readers were equally learned ; or at least would admire the splendour and dignity of the style T . And yet it is well known, that he praised in Cowley the ease and unaffected structure of the sentences 2 . Cowley may be placed at the head of those who cultivated a clear and natural style. Dryden 3 , Tillotson 4 , and Sir William Temple 5 , followed. Addison, Swift, and Pope, with more correctness, carried our language well nigh to perfection 6 . Of Addison,
��1 Life, 1.217.
2 'No author ever kept his verse and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural, and his style has a smooth and placid equability which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought or hard-la boured.' Works, vii. 55.
3 'Dryden does not appear to have any art other than that of ex pressing with clearness what he thinks with vigour. His style could not easily be imitated, either seriously or ludicrously ; for being always equable and always varied it has no prominent or discriminative char acters.' Ib. vii. 307.
4 'JOHNSON. I should not advise a preacher at this day to imitate Tillotson's style: though I don't know ; I should be cautious of ob jecting to what has been applauded by so many suffrages.' Life, iii. 247. ' There is nothing peculiar to the language of Archbishop Tillotson, but his manner of writing is inimit able ; for one who reads him won ders why he himself did not think and speak it in that very manner.' Goldsmith, The Bee, Nov. 24, 1759.
5 ' Temple wrote always like a man of sense and a gentleman ; and his
��style is the model by which the best prose writers in the reign of Queen Anne formed theirs.' Goldsmith, The Bee, Nov. 24, 1759.
' I have heard,' writes Dr. Warton, ' that, among works of prose, Pope was most fond of the second part of Sir William Temple's Miscellanies' Warton's Pope's Works, i. Preface,
P. 3-
Boswell recorded in his note-book : ' Dr. Johnson told me that what made him first think of forming his style as we find it was reading Sir William Temple, and of about twenty lines by Chambers of a proposal for his Dictionary.' Morrison Autographs, 2nd Series, i. 372. See also Life, i. 218, and iii. 257, where he says, 'Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose.' Perhaps he had in mind Boileau's lines
'Enfin Malherbe vint, et, le pre mier en France,
Fit sentir dans les vers une juste cadence.' L'Art pottique, c. i.
6 For Johnson's estimate of Addi- son's style see Life, i. 225 ; Works, vii. 472 ; of Swift's, Life, ii. 191 ; Works, viii. 220 ; of Pope's, Ib. viii. 324.
Johnson
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