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Pope has faid of Homer: "It is the fentiment that fwells and fills out the diction, which rifes with it, and forms itself about it; which grows to

like glass in the furnace, which

a greater magnitude, as the breath within is more powerful, and the heat more intenfe."

ter,

"The effays written by Johnson in the Adventurer," may be called a continuation of the Rambler. The Idler, in order to be confiftent with the affumed characis written with abated vigour, in a style of eafe and unlaboured elegance. It is the Odyssey after the Iliad. Intense thinking would not become the Idler. The firft number presents a well-drawn portrait of an idler; and from that character no deviation could be made. Accordingly Johnson forgets his auftere manner, and plays us into fenfe. He ftill continues his lectures on human life; but he adverts to common occurrences, and is often content

with the topic of the day. This account of the Idler may be closed, after observing, that the author's mother being buried on the 23d of January 1759, there is an admirable paper, occafioned by that event, on Saturday the 27th of the fame month, No. 41. The reader, if he pleases, may compare it with another fine paper in the Rambler, No. 41, on the conviction that rushes on the mind at the bed of a dying friend.

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Raffelas," fays Sir John Hawkins, "is a specimen of our language fcarcely to be paralleled; it is written in a style refined to a degree of immaculate purity, and difplays the whole force of turgid eloquence." One cannot but fmile at this encomium. Raffelas is undoubtedly both elegant and fublime. It is a view of human life, difplayed, it must be owned, in gloomy colours. The author's natural melancholy, depreffed at the time by the approaching diffolu

tion of his mother, darkened the picture. A tale that should keep curiofity awake by the artifice of unexpected incidents, was not the defign of a mind pregnant with better things. He who reads the heads of the chapters, will find that it is not a courfe of adventures that invites him forward, but a difcuffion of interesting queftions; Reflections on Human Life; the Hiftory of Imlac, the Man of Learning; a Differtation upon Poetry; the Character of a Wife and Happy Man, who difcourfes with energy on the govern ment of the paffions, and on a sudden, when death deprives him of his daughter, forgets all his maxims of wisdom, and the eloquence that adorned them, yielding to the ftroke of affliction with all the vehemence of the bitterest anguish. It is by pictures of life, and profound moral reflection, that expectation is engaged and gratified throughout the work. The Hif

tory of the Mad Aftronomer, who imagines that for five years he poffeffed the regulation of the weather, and that the fun paffed from tropic to tropic by his direction, reprefents, in ftriking colours, the fad effects of a diftempered imagination. It becomes the more affecting, when we recollect that it proceeds from one who lived in fear of the fame dreadful vifitation; from one, who fays emphatically, "Of the uncertainties in our present ftate, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of reafon." The inquiry into the cause of madness, and the dangerous prevalence of imagination, till in time fome particular train of ideas fixes the attention, and the mind recurs conftantly to the favourite conception, is carried on in a strain of acute obfervation; but it leaves us room to think that the author was tranfcribing from his own apprehenfions. The dif courfe on the nature of the foul gives us .

all that philofophy knows; not without a tincture of fuperftition. It is remarkable that the vanity of human purfuits was, about the same time, the subject that employed both Johnfon and Voltaire; but Candide is the work of a lively imagination, and Raffelas, with all its splendour of eloquence, exhibits a gloomy picture.

"The Dictionary, though in fome inftances abuse has been loud, and in others malice has endeavoured to undetermine its fame, ftill remains the Mount Atlas of Eng. lish literature.

Though ftorms and tempefts thunder on its brow,
And oceans break their billows at its feet,

It ftands unmov'd, and glories in its height.

"That Johnson was eminently qualified for the office of a commentator on Shakfpeare, no man can doubt; but it was an office which he never cordially embraced. The public expected more than he had

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