have been induced to write his Lives of the Poets, but they would have borne the marks of a mode of composition which must in its very nature be faulty. He would have acquired not only the art, but what is far worse the habit, of making the measure of his words not what he has to say, but the space which he has to fill. To use his own language, he would have gone on day after day diffusing his thoughts into wild exuberance." It is a happy thing that when his Ramblers were to be reprinted he was willing to revise them with great care. According to the editor of the Oxford edition of his Works, "the 'alterations exceeded six thousand"-or about thirty to each number. The following passage taken from the last number affords a good instance of this revision. 2 Revised Edition. "I have never com"plied with temporary curiosity, nor enabled my readers to discuss "the topic of the day; "I have rarely exem"plified my assertions "by living characters; "in my papers no man could look for "censures of his "enemies or praises of "himself; and they 2 Vol. ii., p. x. 66 It is reported that he once said: My other "works are wine and water, but my Rambler is pure wine." Yet one day, we are told, "having "read over one of the numbers, and being asked "how he liked it, he shook his head, and answered "Too wordy.' 112 On another occasion Boswell offered to lay him a bet that he could not make them better. "JOHNSON: 'But I will, sir, if I "'choose. I shall make the best of them you "shall pick out better.' BOSWELL: 'But you 666 'may add to them. I will not allow of that.' "JOHNSON. 'Nay, sir, there are three ways of "making them better :-putting out,—adding,— "'or correcting.' 113 Chalmers suggests that in saying this he had in mind "Quintilian's remarks "on correction, Hujus operis est adjicere, detra1 Boswell's Johnson, i. 210 n. I. 2 Ib. iv. 5. 3 Ib. iv. 309, "here, mutare."1 When he said that they were too wordy he hit the chief blot. There is too much truth in the charge brought by Horace Walpole against his style: "He illustrates till 'he fatigues, and continues to prove after he has convinced." To the same charge Lord Macaulay is equally exposed. Speaking of our language, Johnson boasts of "having added something to "the harmony of its cadence." He too often forgets, however, that, to use his own words, "with the perpetual recurrence of the same 1 British Essayists, vol. xvi., p. xxix. 2 The whole passage in which this piece of criticism occurs is worth reading. The English in which it is written is itself peculiar, as will be seen by the following extract :-"The first criterion that stamps Johnson's Works for his is the loaded style. I will not call it verbose, because verbosity generally implies unmeaning verbiage; a censure he does not deserve. I have allowed, and do allow, that most of his words have an adequate, and frequently an illustrating purport, the true use of epithets; but then his words are indiscriminately select, and too forceful for ordinary occasions. They form a hardness of diction and a muscular toughness that resist all ease and graceful movement. Every sentence is as high-coloured as any; no paragraph improves; the position is as robust as the demonstration; and the weakest part of the sentence (I mean in the effect, not in the solution) is generally the conclusion: he illustrates till he fatigues, and continues to prove after he has convinced, This fault is so usual with him, he is so apt to charge with three different set [sic] of phrases of the same calibre, that if I did not condemn his laboured coinage of new words, I would call his threefold inundation of synonymous expressions, triptology."-Walpole's Works, ed. 1798, iv. 361. That Johnson coined very few new words is shown by Boswell.-Life of Johnson, i. 221. 3 Rambler, No. 208. แ "cadence we are soon wearied." It has been asserted with much truth that "he had no ear "for varied harmony." 112 The charge that is so commonly brought against him of "borrowing Gargantua's mouth," " and using big words, though just at the time, has become somewhat ridiculous, when advanced by those who delight in the modern style. Boswell is now at length almost justified in calling it "an idle charge echoed from one babbler to another." Those who take pleasure in the descriptive writings of the newspaper correspondent, the art critic, and the female novelist, need have no dread of the length of Johnson's words. He was not the man to call an earthquake " a seismic disturbance." Could he have lived to see what he might perhaps have called the strangely concatenated syllables in which these writers delight, he might, with Clive, "have "been astonished at his own moderation." He was content with words derived from a Latin source. They plume themselves only on those which are borrowed from the Greek. "Habebunt verba fidem, si Græco fonte cadant." The Rambler at first met with but a cold. reception. Of all the numbers the one written by Richardson, the author of Clarissa, alone had a 1 Rambler, No. 86. 2 Life of Francis Horner, ii. 454. 3 Boswell's Johnson, iii. 255, and As You Like It, Act iii., sc. 2, 1. 238. 4 Boswell's Johnson, i. 218. prosperous sale.1 In the last number Johnson somewhat proudly owns that he has "never been "much a favourite of the public." was likely to know, said that "the Murphy, who daily sale did 112 not amount to five hundred." A few years later the World, a paper that "wanted matter," but "had all the advantages that could be given "it by the aid of noble and fashionable contri66 butors, reached a sale little short of two thou"sand five hundred." Of the Spectator, it has been estimated that the circulation often rose to thirty thousand.4 Yet for the Rambler much was done by the printer's art to catch the public taste. It is in a large handsome type, on good paper with broad margins, in six folio pages, "and," to quote Cave's words, "considering the late hour "of having the copy it is tolerably printed." Chalmers says "that not above a dozen typo"graphical errors occur in the whole book." It cost no more than two pence. The first number, however, must have met with so rapid a sale that a second impression was required; for at the end of a copy I have seen a notice that "the preced"ing numbers may be had." This announcement does not appear in the three following numbers, but beginning with No. 5 is regularly repeated. By a blunder of the printer it was absurdly 1 Chalmers's British Essayists, vol. xvi., p. xiv. Richardson wrote No. 97. 2 Murphy's Essay on the Life of Johnson, p. 59. 3 Southey's Works of Cowper, i. 46. 4 Forster's Essays, ii. 191. 5 Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, v. 39. 6 Chalmers's British Essayists, vol. xvi., p. xiii, |
