Page:An Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson.djvu/111

 refine them. Others employ, at once, memory and invention, and, with little intermediate use of the pen, form and polish large masses by continued meditation, and write their productions only, when, in their opinion, they have completed them. This last was Johnson's method. He never took his pen in hand till he had well weighed his subject, and grasped, in his mind, the sentiments, the train of argument, and the arrangement of the whole. As he often thought aloud, he had, perhaps, talked it over to himself. This may account for that rapidity with which, in general, he despatched his sheets to the press, without being at the trouble of a fair copy. Whatever may be the logic or eloquence of The False Alarm, the house of commons have since erased the resolution from the journals. But whether they have not left materials for a future controversy may be made a question.

In 1771, he published another tract, on the subject of. The design was to show the impropriety of going to war with Spain for an island, thrown aside from human use, stormy in winter, and barren in summer.