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, N. 33, is the journal of a Senior 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 2 . 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, occasioned by that event, on Saturday the 27th of the same month, N. 41 3 . The reader, if he pleases, may compare it with another fine paper in the Rambler, N. 54, on the conviction that rushes on the mind at the bed of a dying friend 4 .
4 Rasselas/ says Sir John Hawkins, * is a specimen of our language scarcely to be paralleled ; it is written in a style refined to a degree of t 'mmaculate purity, and displays the whole force of turgid eloquence 5 .' One cannot but smile at this encomium. Rasselas is undoubtedly both elegant and sublime. It is a view of human life, displayed, it must be owned, in gloomy colours. The author's natural melancholy, depressed, at the time, by the approaching dissolution of his mother, darkened the picture 6 . A tale, that should keep curiosity awake by the artifice of un expected incidents, was not the design of a mind pregnant with better things. He, who reads the heads of the chapters, will find, that it is not a course of adventures that invites him forward, but a discussion of interesting questions ; Reflections on Human Life ; the History of Imlac, the Man of Learning ; a Dissertation upon Poetry ; the Character of a wise and happy Man, who dis-
1 Life, i. 330. 3 Life, i. 331. 4 Id. i. 214.
2 Spectator, No. 317. The author 5 Hawkins, p. 368. of the Journal in the Idler was * Ante, p. 415. Thomas Warton.
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