JOHNSON THE ESSAYIST

"Mr Christie has gone about his work in the right way; he has soaked and saturated himself with his epoch, and discusses it in one aspect after another with easy famili arity. A pleasing set of humorous and epigrammatic essays."-Times Literary Supplement.

"To write a history of the eighteenth century in England in verse was a bold undertaking. The way wherein it has been done by Mr Christie seems to me a triumph for him and for the heroic couplets he has fittingly and rightly chosen as his metre.

The essays abound with witty phrases that can be remembered with pleasure and could be quoted with effect."-New Witness.

"It is, however, not necessary, that a man should for-
bear to write, till he has discovered some truth unknown
before; he may be sufficiently useful, by only diversifying
the surface of knowledge, and luring the mind by a new
appearance to a second view of those beauties which it
had passed over inattentively before." The Adventurer,
No. 137.

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PREFACE

IN Johnson's lifetime a selection of "the most condensed and brilliant sentences " from The Rambler was published under the name of Beauties. In 1888 Dr Birkbeck Hill made a collection of extracts from his sayings and writings entitled The Wit and Wisdom of Dr Johnson, and in 1889 edited some Select Essays. In 1907 Mr W. Hale White edited, with an interesting Preface, for the Clarendon Press, Selections from Dr Johnson's Rambler. But I am not aware that his Essays have yet been examined with a view to grouping his opinions on various subjects, religious, moral and social. This has been my endeavour, and to show that these opinions, though they may not form a system of philosophy, do form a consistent and coherent whole.

Whenever the occasion offered, I have compared Johnson's opinions with those of previous essayists, and especially with Addison's. This comparison is sometimes instructive as illustrating not only the difference between Johnson's mind and character and Addison's, but also between English manners and ideas in 1710 and in 1750.

I have also here and there contrasted Johnson's point of view with that of Lord Chesterfield. Chesterfield's Letters are in substance essays, albeit written mostly on one principal favourite topic. Not seldom were these two notable men in agreement, and it is to be regretted that their relations were not more friendly; for no man of his time rated wit and genius higher than did Lord Chesterfield.

It is of obvious interest to compare Johnson the Essayist with Johnson the Talker. The two are not always in

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