full, we should give passage after passage of the most perfect rational exposition in our own or in any literature. Johnson's chief subjects need no more mere exposition from now to the end of the world; all the facts are taken up by him, all the inferences are given. High as some of the topics are; he is always sufficient for them. There is no common human duty, either of performance or of avoidance, for which he cannot assign the full grounds. The authority of his teaching is drawn from the intellect, not enforced by any enthusiasm of the feelings, and. in a certain high sense, that means a defect personally; but it follows from this that the rhetoric is never excessive, and is not liable to stale. Who can suppose a time when Johnson's absolutely logical presentation of these matters will be wholly out of fashion? He left it to religion to supply the actuating motives, always assuming that to be present, added to what he urged. Grant this, and regard his self-imposed task as that of explaining virtue by lay reasoning, expounding it as a matter of common sense, provable to the understanding from the facts, and he did the work as no other writer has done it. His scheme, we allow, does not include any hints for the lofty department of the culture of the emotions by means of art, now growing increasingly indispensable to the daintiest souls; but looking to the ordinary wants of mankind, the apparatus of moral principles he offers is all but sufficient. Scattered about in these essays lie the fragmentary materials for a new " Whole Duty of Man;" and it was such a work that Johnson ought to have given to the world, for it to have had the full fruit of his mind, if we let our expectations rise to the height of his powers at their best. Instead of that whole we have these splendid pieces.
In saying that Johnson's writings are void of any enthusiasm of the feelings, a single qualification must be made. He gives play to one passion; he has, at times, an enthusiasm of sadness. There is nowhere to be met with a more relentless review of the inevitableness, the commonness, the diversity of human miseries, than he gives in the 120th paper of "The Adventurer." Here is his general conclusion:—
The world in its best state is nothing more than a larger assembly of beings, combining to counterfeit happiness which they do not feel, employing every art and contrivance to embellish life, and to hide their real condition from one another.
In other essays, he deals with some human woes separately, going into the particulars. "Rambler" No. 69 has a passage on the prospect of age, which is as sad as words can be:—
The other miseries which waylay our passage through the world, wisdom may escape, and fortitude may conquer. . . . But a time must come when our policy and bravery shall be equally useless; when we shall sink into helplessness and sadness, without any power of receiving solace from the pleasures that have formerly delighted us, or any prospect of emerging into a second possession of the blessings we have lost.
Here we have melancholy rising into the ideal. These darker ones are the only set of facts which overcome the fine balance' of Johnson's understanding. It is plain that, in the above utterance, he leaves out of view the way in which time lessens our wants, and, also, overlooks some compensations which it gives. One thing, however, must be borne in mind. It is impossible for any one now to read these passages without thinking of gloomy episodes in Johnson's own career. Besides Boswell's details, we have Johnson's "Prayers and Meditations," which affect most readers in an exaggerated way. They are-but pen-and-ink records of what everybody experiences; we all pray and resolve, and fail, and hope and resolve again; but he wrote them all down, while the rest of us omit it. They are in no way to be reckoned among literary productions, and we leave them. If, however, readers had not this extra, this interfering knowledge of the writer, it is not unlikely that they would admiringly regard the passages in the essays simply as wonderful instances of heroic persistence in shutting out illusion and accepting the whole of the facts. At least, to go into the details of Johnson's failure to be as wise in act as he was in writing, would be the very Boswellianism which it is the plan of this paper not to aid. His defence, almost his exculpation, was his diseased body.
A word has yet to be added of him in another literary aspect. He still is the most generally recognized critic in our literature; true, it has not many. Earlier, we ventured to say that in so far as Englishmen at all qualify their idolatry of Shakespeare, the bulk of them still take their opinions of the plays from Johnson. He made some enormous mistakes. In selecting, as the most striking passage in English poetry, the scene he quotes from Congreve's "Mourning Bride," he showed a stolidness which is one of the most amazing marvels among the wonders
