Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies II.djvu/359

 by Thomas Tyers.

��to others. Goldsmith declared, that a system of morals might be drawn from these Essays : this idea is taken up and executed by a publication in an alphabetical series of moral maxims r.

The Rambler is a great task for one person to accomplish, single-handed. For he was assisted only in two Essays by Richardson, two by Mrs. Carter, and one by Miss Talbot 2. His Idlers had more hands 3. The World*, the Connoisseur 5 , (the Gray's Inn Journal an exception 6 ,) the Mirror 1, the Adventurer* \ the Old Maid 9, all had helpmates. The toilet as well as the shelf and table have these volumes, lately re- published with decorations. Shenstone, his fellow collegian, calls his style a learned one 10. There is indeed too much Latin in his English. He seems to have caught the infectious language of Sir Thomas Brown, whose works he read, in order to write his life ". Though it cannot be said, as Campbell did of his own last work I2 ,

��the world at large, that even in the closing number the authour says, " I have never been much a favourite of the publick.' " Life, i. 208.

1 In The Beauties of the Rambler. Ib. i. 214. In note i on this page 1 have confused this book with The Beauties of Johnson.

2 Ib. i. 203 ; ante, i. 465.

3 Life, i. 330.

4 Ib. i. 257, h. 3.

5 Ib. i. 420, n. 3.

6 * It was successfully carried on by Mr. Murphy alone, when a very young man.' Ib. i. 356 ; ante, i. 408.

7 Life, iv. 390.

8 Ib. i. 252.

9 By Frances Brooke, 1755-6*

10 Shenstone matriculated on May 25, 1732, more than two years after Johnson left. Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his Critics, p. 345. Writing on Feb. 9, 1760, Shenstone says : * I have lately been reading one or two volumes of The Rambler ; who, excepting against some few hardnesses in his manner, and the

��want of more examples to enliven, is one of the most nervous, most per spicuous, most concise, [and] most harmonious prose writers I know. A learned diction improves by time.' Life, ii. 452.

11 ' Sir Thomas Brown, whose life Johnson wrote, was remarkably fond of Anglo-Latian diction ; and to his example we are to ascribe Johnson's sometimes indulging himself in this kind of phraseology.' Ib. i. 221. See ib. i. 308 for an example of Johnson's Brownism. Nevertheless he con demned Brown's style as ' a tissue of many languages ; a mixture of hete rogeneous words brought together from distant regions,' c. Works, vi. 500. Murphy traces Johnson's learned diction to his work on the Dictionary. Ante, i. 466.

12 A Political Survey of Great Britain. 'Johnson said to me, that he believed Campbell's disappoint ment, on account of the bad success of that work, had killed him.' Life, ii. 447.

that

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