their works who are herein quoted to do him service—of the Waverley Novels in prose fiction, or of the Lake School, Diabolic School, and Cockney School, so called or miscalled, in verse.
Such an edition must create a new public for the Lives of the Poets, which, though more read than aught besides from the same pen, the public of our times have not been very eager to study. There is every enticement in these handsome volumes to become familiar with what is, and always will be, an interesting and valuable work. The fine narrative of the strange career of Savage, the dissertations interwoven with the memoir of Cowley, the kindly account of Addison, the mingled aversion and reserve of the history of Swift, the elaborate reviewal of Pope's character and works, and even the captious depreciation of Gray, are all worth reading, and marking, if not inwardly digesting—which last feat is not always possible or desirable. The style of the Lives is less grandiose than Johnson's other writings; his sentences have less resemblance to (Archdeacon Hare's comparison) the hoops worn by ladies in his day, the sentences[1] and the hoops being equally successful in disguising and disfiguring the form, as well as in keeping you at a distance from it. Far fewer are the long-tailed words in 'osity and 'ation; fewer such sentences as "pure without scrupulosity, and exact without apparent elaboration," occurring in the Life of Addison; or a rapid succession of such words as "alternate coruscations," "operation," "admiration," "combination," "elevation," "versification," " exclamation," which tread one on another's hi^h heels in a paragraph of the Life of Congreve. Nor do we frequently light on terms like "variegation of prose and verse" (applied to Addison's Travels), or "the line was liquidated to 'Britons, attend'" (instead of what may be called per contra the "solidarity" of the first reading, "Britons, arise!" in Cato), or "he was illegitimated by the parliament," said of the unhappy Richard Savage. In fine, though we may decline to assent to Mr. Cunningham's homage to Johnson as "the greatest of biographers," as much as to Lord Cockburn's homage to Jeffrey as "the greatest of British critics," we welcome his edition of the "Lives" with cordial greeting, and accept his verdict on it as "Johnson's great work"—a work to which Mr. Cunningham's preparations for twenty years past, will impart a new and wider popularity for more than twenty years to come.
- ↑ "In reading them," says the Archdeacon, "one may often be puzzled to think how they could proceed from a man whose words in conversation were so close and sinewy. …. How such a style could gain the admiration which Johnson's gained, in an age when numbers of men and women wrote incomparably better, would be another grave puzzle unless one remembered that it was the ago when hoops and toupees were thought to heighten the beauty of women, and full-bottomed wigs the dignity of men. He who saw in his glass how his wig became his face and heed, might easily infer that a similar full-bottomed, well-curled friz of words would be no less becoming to his thoughts. Nor did he miscalculate the effect upon his immediate readers. They who admired the hairy wig, were in raptures with the wordy one."—Guesses at Truth. Second Series.
