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The great, the prevailing excellence of the Rambler, depends upon its moral and religious tendency; upon the vigor and originality of style and manner with which it inculcates the purest precepts of practical virtue. (Drake.) As the reader pursues his way through apologues and allegories, he will be rewarded by many delightful sketches of character, enlivened by jest and humor. (Duyckinck.) Johnson as an essayist is most happy when he analyzes a character, mingling criticism with narrative. (Gosse.) In the graver and more solemn passages, it may be questioned whether the palm does not rest with the later writer rather than with Addison. (Millar.) 5. Biography.-There is danger lest his [the biographer's] interest, his fear, his gratitude, or his tenderness, overpower his fidelity, and tempt him to conceal, if not to invent. If we owe regard to the memory of the dead, there yet more respect to be paid to knowledge, to virtue, and to truth. (Rambler.)

Johnson was far from being carried away by hero-worship. He is rather chary than enthusiastic in his allowance of merit, and scatters without mercy any air of romance or exaggeration that may have been gathered about an eminent name by the zeal of admirers. (Minto.) No one had a more piercing insight into character than Johnson. . . . This deep penetration, and the sagacious reflections which everywhere abound, make the human interest of his Lives equal, if not superior, to their literary criticism. (Elwin.)

6. Criticism.—The duty of criticism is neither to depreciate nor dignify by partial representations, but to hold out the light of reason, whatever it may discover. (Rambler.) In order to make a true estimate of the abilities and merits of a writer, it is always necessary to examine the genius of his age and the opinions of his contemporaries. (Observations on Macbeth.) The criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside. . . . Spence was a critic without malevolence, who thought it as much his duty to display beauties as expose faults; who censured with respect, and praised with alacrity. (Life of Pope.)

The merits of his literary criticisms were the result of his good sense, their defects the result of his narrow sympathies and frag

mentary knowledge. . This [second quotation above] was a perfection-height of critical qualification that indolence would not suffer himself to attain. (Minto.) If he does not convince us of his complete impartiality, he at least bases his decisions upon solid and worthy grounds. (Stephen.) The bulk of the Lives consists of criticism which, for acuteness of discrimination, warmth of praise, justness of censure, and force of expression, is still unrivaled. (Elwin.) The more we study him, the higher will be our esteem for the power of his mind, the largeness of his knowledge, the freshness, fearlessness, and strength of his judgments. (Arnold.)

7. Travels. Every writer of travels should consider that, like all other authors, he undertakes either to instruct or please, or to mingle pleasure with instruction. . . . He that pleases must offer new images to his reader, and should remember that the great object of remark is human life. (Idler.)

Johnson's Journey has the indescribable but irresistible charm of a monument of literary genius. (Craik.) It abounds in extensive philosophical views of society, and in ingenious sentiment and lively description. (Boswell.) The general speculations form the real interest and value of the work, and bear the impress of his acute and vigorous understanding. (Elwin.) 8. Controversy. He that shall peruse the political pamphlets of any past reign will wonder why they were so eagerly read or so loudly praised. Many of the performances which had power to inflame factions and fill a kingdom with confusion have now very little effect upon a frigid critic; and the time is coming when the compositions of later hirelings shall lie equally despised. (Rambler.)

Johnson's political pamphlets were forcible, but entirely without historical breadth or sympathy. (Gosse.) Few have ever equaled him in gladiatorial skill. (Elwin.) It may be doubted if his pamphlets fall much behind even the best of Burke's writings on the French Revolution. . . . They excel in the trenchant vigor of their language, in the sturdy fortitude of their tone, and in the overwhelming force of their attack. (Millar.)

JOHNSON'S INFLUENCE AND SERVICES.

He that wishes to be counted among the benefactors of posterity must add by his own toil to the acquisitions of his ancestors, and secure his memory from neglect by some valuable improvement. (Johnson, The Rambler.)

Literature.

There is perhaps no subsequent prose-writer upon whose style that of Johnson has been altogether without its effect. (G. Craik.) If Addison be excepted, no writer of the eighteenth century can be said to have contributed so highly, so copiously, and so permanently to the improvement of our literature and language as Johnson. (Drake.) All that is best in English prose since his day is his debtor in respect of not a few of its highest qualities, above all, in respect of absolute lucidity, unfailing vigor, and saving common sense. (H. Craik.)

Life. — His influence was so wide, and withal so wholesome, that literary life in this country has never been since his day what it was before it. He has made the more sordid parts of its weakness shameful, and he has raised a standard of personal conduct that every one admits. (Gosse.) His mighty power is yet sending forth a mild influence over lands and seas, like the gentle movements of the dew and the sunbeam. (Barnes.) If to-day the man of letters is honored and even opulent, if it be his great vocation to mold the minds of myriads through the press, and to preach in a secular temple as wide as the horizons, it was old Samuel Johnson that won for him this liberty, and by his poverty and sorrow made many rich. (Dawson.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

MACAULAY.

BIOGRAPHY.

a. Life of Macaulay.

1. By G. O. Trevelyan.
2. By J. Cotter Morison.

millan.)

(2 vols., Harpers.)

English Men of Letters. (Mac

3. By C. H. Jones. (Appleton.)

b. Macvey Napier's Correspondence, Arnold's Public Life of Macaulay.

CRITICISM.

a. Macaulay, Essayist and Historian. By A. S. G. Canning. b. Essays on Macaulay.

1. By Walter Bagehot. Literary Studies, Vol. II.

2. By Frederic Harrison. Early Victorian Literature.
3. By John Morley. Miscellanies, Vol. II.

4. By George Saintsbury.

Corrected Impressions.

5. By Leslie Stephen. Hours in a Library, Vol. III.
c. Saintsbury's 19th Century Literature, Oliphant's Victorian
Age, Walker's Age of Tennyson, Shorter's Victorian
Literature.

d. Minto's English Prose Literature, Dawson's Makers of
Modern Prose, Taine's English Literature, Nicoll's
Landmarks of English Literature, Clark's English
Prose Writers, Gilfillan's Literary Portraits.

JOHNSON.
BIOGRAPHY.

a. Life of Johnson.

1. By James Boswell. Ed. Hill (6 vols., Clarendon), Napier (4 vols., Bell), Morris (1 vol., Macmillan), etc.

2. By Leslie Stephen. English Men of Letters. (Macmillan.)

3. By Whitwell Elwin. 18th Century Men of Letters, Vol. II. 4. By F. Grant. Great Writers. (Scribner.)

b. Johnsonian Miscellanies (Piozzi, Hawkins, etc.), Drake's Essays on the Rambler, etc., Johnson Club Papers, Waller's Boswell and Johnson, Hill's Dr. Johnson.

CRITICISM.

a. Essays on Johnson.

1. By W. R. Barker.
2. By Augustine Birrell.
3. By Thomas Carlyle.

(London, Robinson.)

Essays and Obiter Dicta, Vol. II.
Essay on Croker's Boswell and

Heroes and Hero-Worship.

4. By T. B. Macaulay.

Essay on Croker's Boswell.

5. By Leslie Stephen. Hours in a Library, Vol. II. b. Millar's Mid-18th Century, Seccombe's Age of Johnson, Gosse's 18th Century Literature, Minto's Georgian Era, Hazlitt's English Poets, Perry's 18th Century Literature, Ward's English Poets.

c. See above, "Macaulay," Criticism, d.

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY.

a. Besides the above, Leask's Boswell, Boswelliana, Graham's Scottish Men of Letters; Johnson's Lives of the Poets, Thackeray's English Humorists, Scott's Novelists; Walpole's Memoirs, D'Arblay's Diary and Letters; Nichols' Literary Anecdotes, Dobson's 18th Century Vignettes, Stephen's English Thought, Saunders' Macpherson, Macaulay's Essays.

b. History of England: Gardiner, Green, and Macaulay; 18th Century: Lecky, and Sidney.

c. Besant's London in the 18th Century, Hutton's Literary Landmarks, Hare's Walks in London.

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