Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/91

Rh in which Shakespeare is admittedly pre-eminent; and dared to enumerate Shakespeare’s faults. The whole tale of these, as they are catalogued by Johnson, might be ranged under two heads—carelessness, and excess of conceit. It would be foolish to deny these charges: the only possible reply to them is that Shakespeare’s faults are never defects; they belong to superabundant power—power not putting forth its full resources even in the crisis of events; or power neglecting the task in hand to amuse itself with irresponsible display. The faults are of a piece with the virtues; and Johnson as good as admits this when he says that they are ‘sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit.’ None but Shakespeare, that is to say, could move easily and triumphantly under the weight of Shakespeare’s faults. The detailed analysis of the faults is a fine piece of criticism, and has never been seriously challenged.

A deep-lying cause, not very easy to explain, which has interfered with the modern appreciation of Johnson, is to be found in the difference between the criticism of his day and the criticism which is now addressed to a large and ignorant audience. He assumed in his public a fair measure of knowledge and judgement; he ventured to take many things for granted, and to discuss knotty points as a man might discuss them in the society of his friends and equals. He was not always successful in his assumptions, and more than once had to complain of the stupidity which imagined him to deny the truths that he honoured with silence. When he quoted the description of the temple, in Congreve’s Mourning Bride, as being superior in its kind to