having read a single one of the contemporary dramatists. He had plenty of time, but he preferred to indulge his appetite for social talk and desultory reading. Sometimes, too, he laid down principles that he broke habitually in his own composition. He satirised plays "where declamation roars and passion sleeps"; yet his own Irene' belongs to the category. He condemned the practice of filling out the sound of a period with unnecessary words. It is but fair to say that in later life he recognised his own faults. On one occasion, when some person read his Irene' aloud, he left the room, saying he did not think it had been so bad; and in his 'Lives of the Poets' he tried hard to work himself out of the sonorous grandiloquence of the 'Rambler.'

ELEMENTS OF STYLE.

Vocabulary.-Johnson's memory for words, and consequent command of language, was amazing. In this respect he stands in the very first rank. One might suppose, from what is usually said concerning the great preponderance of Latin words in his diction, that he failed in command of homelier language; but this is a mistake. His 'Rambler' is highly Latinised; but in his Preface to Shakspeare, 1768, we trace the beginnings of a homelier style. In his 'Lives of the Poets' the style is not so Latinised as the average style of the present day. The proportion of Latin words is not above half as great as in a leader of the 'Times.' He is often studiously homely, and shows a perfect command of homely diction. Perhaps the less pompous diction of his latest productions is partly a result of his great practice in conversation. As we have just said, he was conscious of the blemish in his 'Rambler,' and endeavoured to amend.

As an example of studied variety of expression, take the following comparison between punch and conversation:

"The spirit, volatile and fiery, is the proper emblem of vivacity and wit ; the acidity of the lemon will very aptly figure pungency of raillery and acrimony of censure: sugar is the natural representative of luscious adulation and gentle complaisance; and water is the proper hieroglyphic of easy prattle, innocent and tasteless."

Sentences and Paragraphs.-The often-remarked mannerism of Johnson's sentences does not consist in one particular, but in the combination of several.

In

(1.) The frequent use of the balance structure. He employs liberally all the arts of balance both in sound and in sense. the Lives of the Poets' he is much less elaborate and sonorous in his balances than in the 'Rambler.' In the following sentence from the Rambler' there are five different balances :

·

"It is easy to laugh at the folly of him who refuses immediate ease for

distant pleasure, and instead of enjoying the blessings of life, lets life glide away in preparations to enjoy them; it affords such opportunities of triumphant exultation, to exemplify the uncertainty of the human state, to rouse mortals from their dream, and inform them of the silent celerity of time, that we may believe authors willing rather to transmit than examine so advantageous a principle, and more inclined to pursue a track so smooth and so flowery, than attentively to consider whether it leads to truth.

In the Lives of the Poets' there are few sentences of such sonorous amplitude. In this later work balances are numerous; but, on the whole, it may be said that there the cadence is more varied, and that we have a greater proportion of curt, short sentences and balances, in the following emphatic form:

"Observation daily shows that much stress is not to be laid on hyperbolical accusations and pointed sentences, which even he that utters them desires to be applauded rather than credited."

Such balances as the following are very common"If his jests are coarse, his arguments are strong;" "too judicious to commit faults, but not sufficiently vigorous to attain excellence;" "his figures neither divert by distortion, nor amaze by exaggeration;" "however exalted by genius, or enlarged by study."

(2.) Short comprehensive sentences. These appear plentifully in all his works, but, partly from the nature of the subject, are especially plentiful in the Lives of the Poets.' The following short passage is a fair illustration ::

"In the poetical works of Swift, there is not much upon which the critic can exercise his powers. They are often humorous, almost always light, and have the qualities which recommend such compositions, easiness and gaiety. They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The diction is correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There seldom occurs a hard-laboured expression, or a redundant epithet; all his verses exemplify his own definition of a good style; they consist of 'proper words in proper places.

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(3.) One of the most striking mannerisms in Johnson's composition belongs strictly to the paragraph-to the arrangement of sentences rather than the arrangement of clauses. He has a habit of abruptly introducing a general principle before the particular circumstances that it applies to. We have remarked this as a peculiarity in Macaulay's style. If Johnson did not originate this form of composition, he was at least the first to bring it into prominence. After him it was extensively adopted. Macaulay is hitherto his most celebrated imitator.

The following passage concerning Cowley is an example of his abrupt introduction of general principles. It exemplifies also a cognate practice of abruptly bringing in a person or thing con trasted or compared with the subject of the discourse :

"In the year 1647, his Mistress' was published; for he imagined, as he declared in a preface to a subsequent edition, that 'poets are scarcely

thought freemen of their company, without paying some duties, or obliging themselves to be true to love.'

"This obligation to amorous ditties owes, I believe, its orginal to the fame of Petrarch, who, in an age rude and uncultivated, by his tuneful homage to his Laura, refined the manners of the lettered world, and filled Europe with love and poetry. But the basis of all excellence is truth: he that professes love ought to feel its power. Petrarch was a real lover, and Laura doubtless deserved his tenderness. Of Cowley we are told by Barnes, who had means enough of information, that, whatever he may talk of his own inflammability, and the variety of characters by which his heart was divided, he in reality was in love but once, and then never had resolution to tell his passion.

"This consideration cannot but abate in some measure the reader's esteem for the works and the author. To love excellence is natural; it is natural likewise for the lover to solicit reciprocal regard by an elaborate display of his own qualifications. The desire of pleasing has in different men produced actions of heroism, and effusions of wit; but it seems as reasonable to appear the champion as the poet of an airy nothing,' and to quarrel as to write for what Cowley might have learned from his master Pindar to call the dream of a shadow.'”

To make up what is called the "Johnsonian manner," or "Johnsonese," we must take not only these striking peculiarities of sentence-structure, but certain other peculiarities, especially a peculiar use of the abstract noun, and vigorous comprehensive brevity. Macaulay's sentence-structure is modelled in a considerable degree upon Johnson's, yet the resemblance is not at first so striking, because Macaulay is a concrete and diffuse writer, whereas Johnson is extremely abstract and condensed.

Figures of Speech. Similitudes. Our author's prose is not ornate. He studies condensed expression rather than embellishment or illustration. None of our great prose writers is so sparing of similitudes. In the 'Rambler' there are pages that contain hardly a single metaphor.

The few similitudes that he does use are in harmony with the general loftiness of his style. Thus, Imlac is represented as saying to Rasselas

"The world, which you figure to yourself smooth and quiet as the lake in the valley, you will find a sea foaming with tempests, and boiling with whirlpools; you will be sometimes overwhelmed by the waves of violence, and sometimes dashed against the rocks of treachery."

Again, writing of the subversion of the Roman Empire by the Northern barbarians, he says that had America then been discovered, and navigation sufficiently advanced, "the intumescence of nations would have found its vent, like all other expansive vio lences, where there was least resistance.”

Allegory. There are several allegories in the 'Rambler' on the model of the allegories in the 'Spectator.' One in the Rambler' on "Wit and Learning" is the model of Dr Campbell's allegory on "Probability and Plausibility," examined minutely in the Ap

pendix to Bain's 'Rhetoric.' The allegoric style of composition, though still occasionally used, now makes its appearance in composition much less frequently than in the age of Johnson. The following is an example of the artificial manufacture, from 'Rambler' 96" Truth, Falsehood, and Fiction, an Allegory" :—

"While the world was yet in its infancy, TRUTH came among mortals from above, and FALSEHOOD from below. TRUTH was the daughter of JUPITER and WISDOM; FALSEHOOD was the progeny of FOLLY impregnated by the wind.

"It sometimes happened that the antagonists met in full opposition. In these encounters, FALSEHOOD always invested her head with clouds, and commanded FRAUD to place ambushes about her. In her left hand she bore the shield of IMPUDENCE, and the quiver of SOPHISTRY rattled on her shoulder. All the passions attended at her call; VANITY clapped her wings before, and OBSTINACY supported her behind," &c.

Contrast. From his earliest composition to his last, Johnson shows a liking for strong antithesis. It is frequently combined with balance, and has been already to some extent illustrated. He is particularly fond of antithesis in his succinct expositions of character and style. Goldsmith is "a man who had the art of being minute without tediousness, and general without confusion; whose language was copious without exuberance, exact without constraint, and easy without weakness." Rowe "seldom moves either pity or terror, but he often elevates the sentiments; he seldom pierces the breast, but he always delights the ear, and often improves the understanding." "The Thessalia' of Rowe deserves more notice than it obtains, and as it is more read will be more esteemed." We have already quoted his account of Addison.

QUALITIES OF STYLE.

Simplicity. Perhaps the most common objection to Johnson's style is that it contains too many heavy words of Latin origin. The objection is just, but there are one or two things that the objectors commonly overlook. One is that his earlier style is much more Latinised than his later: as already remarked, his 'Lives of the Poets' contains more of the Saxon element than the average style of the present day. Another thing is that his Latin derivatives are not of his own coining: he told Boswell that he had not taken upon him to add more than four or five words to the language; and being, as a lexicographer, brought painfully face to face with gaps in our language, he must in this respect have practised no little self-denial. Finally, he is much less Latinised than several writers of note both before and after him -than Sir Thomas Browne, for instance, or Robertson, or Gibbon. The 'Rambler' certainly is a very ponderous composition. Reviewing it himself later in life, he shook his head, and exclaimed

that it was "too wordy." Take as an example the following,

which is not an extreme case :

"In cities, and yet more in courts, the minute discriminations which distinguish one from another are for the most part effaced, the peculiarities of temper and opinion are gradually worn away by promiscuous converse, as angular bodies and uneven surfaces lose their points and asperities by frequent attrition against one another, and approach by degrees to uniform rotundity."

Compare this with a passage from Sterne, where you have the same idea:

"The genius of a people, where nothing but the monarchy is salique, having ceded this department, with sundry others, totally to the women, by a continual higgling with customers of all ranks and sizes from morning to night, like so many rough pebbles shook along together in a bag, by amicable collisions they have worn down their asperities and sharp angles, and not only become round and sinooth, but will receive, some of them, a polish like a brilliant."

Again, take the following, which is rather an extreme example, and reads almost like caricature "Johnsonese":

"The proverbial oracles of our parsimonious ancestors have informed us, that the fatal waste of fortune is by small expenses, by the profusion of sums too little singly to alarm our caution, and which we never suffer ourselves to consider together. Of the same kind is the prodigality of life; he that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years, must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to the ground.'

A simple writer would have expressed this in some such way as the following:

"Take care of the pennies," says the thrifty old proverb, "and the pounds will take care of themselves." In like manner we might say, Take care of the minutes, and the years will take care of themselves.

The heaviness of Johnson's style does not arise from any abstruseness in the subject-matter. The 'Rambler' took up mainly subjects suitable for light reading. The explanation seems to be that his ear was enamoured of a measured ponderous movement, of a lofty departure from the simple pace of common speech, and that he was not versatile enough to adopt any other, even when this was flagrantly unsuitable to the occasion. Myrtilla, a young lady of sixteen, is made to state her case as follows:

"Sir, you seem in all your papers to be an enemy of tyranny, and to look with impartiality upon the world; I shall therefore lay my case before you, and hope by your decision to be set free from unreasonable restraints, and enabled to justify myself against the accusations which spite and peevishness produce against me.

"At the age of five years I lost my mother, and my father, being not qualified to superintend the education of a girl, committed me to the care of his sister, who instructed me with the authority, and, not to deny her what