magnificence, or from his endeavours after harmony; for to these two heads they may almost all be referred.

Not that it is denied, that magnificence and harmony are objects worthy an author's regard; but the means, made use of to attain these, if not skilfully selected, may fail of their intended effect; may substitute measurement for harmony, and make that only pompous which was designed to be magnificent. On dignified subjects they are no doubt to be attended to, for the stile should always be proportioned to the subject; but on familiar and meaner topics they should, by a parity of reasoning, be avoided: and however well adapted to excite attention, it may be remarked, that in general they rather fix it on the expression, than on the sentiment, and too often cloy that appetite they were intended but to stimulate

Johnson's study of splendor and magnificence, by inducing him as much as possible to reject the weaker words of language, and to display only the important, has filled his pages with many peculiarities. His sentences, deprived of those feeble ties which restrained them to individual cases and circumstances, seem so many detached aphorisms, applicable to many other particulars, and certainly more dignified as more universal. But though he may have employed this art with some advantage, it is yet hardly to be recommended, Johnson's thoughts were so precise, and his expressions so minutely discriminated, that he was able to keep the leading circumstances of the particular case distinctly in view, and in the form of an universal sentence implicitly to insinuate them to the reader: an injudicious imitator, by generalizing his expressions, might in some instances make that false which under restrictions might have been true; and in almost all, make that obscure which otherwise would have been perspicuous.

As every substantive presents a determinate image to the mind, and is of course a word of importance, Johnson takes care to crowd his sentences with substantives, and to give them on all occasions the most distinguished place. The instrument, the motive, or the quality therefore, which ordinary writers would have in the oblique case, usually takes the lead in Johnson's sentences; while the person, which, in connected writing is often expressed by some weak pronoun, is either entirely omitted, or thrown into a less conspicuous part. Thus, "fruition left them "nothing to ask, and innocence left them nothing to fear"" tri

#fles written by idleness and published by vanity" wealth may, "by hiring flattery or laying diligence asleep, confirm error and "harden stupidity." This practice doubtless gives activity and importance, but caution must be used to prevent its exceeding the bounds of moderation. When the person is to be dethroned from its natural preeminence, it is not every quality which has sufficient dignity to assume its place: besides, in narration, or continued writing of any sort, the too frequent change of leading objects in sentences contributes to dissipate the attention, and withdraw it from the great and primary one: and even in Johnson's hands this ornament has become too luxuriant, when affections, instead of being personified, are absolutely humanized, and we are teized with the repeated mention of "ear of greatness,"--" the "bosom of suspicion," and "the eye of wealth, of hope, and of “beauty.”

This attachment to substantives has led him, wherever it was possible by a change of construction, to substitute them in place of the other parts of speech; instead therefore of the usual construction, where the adjective agrees with the substantive, he forms a new substantive from the adjective, which governs the other in the possessive case. Thus, instead of "with as easy an "approach," he always writes, "with the same facility of ap"proach. :" instead of " with such lively turns, such elegant irony, ❝and such severe sarcasms," he says, "with such vivacity of "turn, such elegance of irony, and such asperity of sarcasm.” When the effect produced no otherwise arises from the substan tive, than as possessed of the quality which the adjective denotes, this change of construction is an happy one; it expresses that which is necessary in the thought, by a necessary member of the sentence; whereas the usual form lays the whole stress of the idea on a word, which, without the smallest injury to the construction, may be safely removed. An instance however may shew, that Johnson sometimes uses it where the same reasoning would shew it to be absolutely improper. "Steele's imprudence of generosi❝ty, or vanity of profusion," he says, "kept him always incura "bly necessitous."-Here, since Steele's generosity could not have kept him necessitous if it had not been excessive or impru dent, "imprudence of generosity" is proper: but as his being vain of profusion, if he had not actually been profuse, never could have produced this effect; since his vanity is but the very remote cause

of that which his profusion would have effected, whether he had been vain of it or not, "vanity of profusion" is an improper expression.

This ambition of denoting every thing by substantives has done considerable violence to Johnson's constructions:-" places of "little frequentation,"" circumstances of no elegant recital," "with emulation of price,"—" the library which is of late erec❝tion,"—" too much temerity of conclusion,"-"Philips's ad"diction to tobacco," are expressions of affected and ungraceful harshness. This, however, is not the worst fault such constructions may have, for they often become unnecessarily obscure : as "he will continue the road by annual elongation;" that is, by compleating some additional part of it each year:-" Swift "now lost distinction;" that is, he could not now distinguish his acquaintances. Many of the substantives too which are thus introduced, are words absolutely foreign to the language: as "ebriety of amusement,"" perpetual perflation,"" to obtain "an obstruction of the protits, though not an inhibition of the performance," "Community of possession must always in"clude spontaneity of production." One of our most usual forms of substantives, the participle of the verb used substantively, to give room for such introduced words he has on all occasions studiously avoided: Yet Dr, Lowth would scarcely have given the rule for a construction repugnant to the genius of our language; and some arguments will be necessary to prove that the words, ❝renewing, vanishing, shadowing and recalling," should give place to" renovation, evanescence, adumbration and revocation," when it is considered, that all who understand English know the meaning of the former, while the latter are intelligible to such only of them as understand Latin; but of this I have elsewhere treated fully.

Johnson's licentious constructions however are not to be conceived as flowing entirely from his passion for substantives. His endeavours to attain magnificence, by removing his stile from the vulgarity, removed it also from the simplicity of common diction, and taught him the abundant use of inversions and licentious constructions of every sort. Almost all his sentences begin with an oblique case, and words used in uncommon significations, with Latin and Greek idioms, are strewed too plentifully in his pages. Of this sort are the following: "I was only not a boy"

"Part they did"-" Shakspeare approximates the remote""Cowley was ejected from Cambridge"-" Brogues are a kind. "of artless shoes"-" Milk liberal of curd," Such expressions it is unnecessary to mark with censure; they bear in themselves an harshness so repulsive, that easy writing must be held in more than ordinary contempt, when they are considered as patterns worthy of imitation.

Metaphorical expression is one of those arts of splendor which Johnson has most frequently employed; and while he has availed himseli of all its advantages, he has escaped most of its coucomitant faults. Here is no muse, which in one line is a horse and in the next a boat; * nor is there any pains requisite to keep the horse and boat from singing. Johnson presents to your view no chaos of discordant elements, no feeble interlining of the literal with the figurative. In his metaphors and similes the picture is always compleat in itself, and some particulars of exact resemblance are distinctly impressed upon the reader. What image can be more beautiful than that which represents the beginnings of madness as "the variable weather of the mind, the flying va"pours which from time to time cloud reason without eclipsing "it?" Or what more apposite than that which calls Congreve's personages a sort of intellectual gladiators?"

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Sometimes, indeed, it must be acknowledged, his metaphors succeed each other in too quick succession, and are followed up too elaborately: but to commit this fault he was solicited by temptations scracely to be resisted. Much of his life had been consumed in enquiring into the various acceptations of each word, all of which except the primary one are so many metaphorical uses of it; so that every word suggested many metaphors to his mind, presenting also from his quotations a variety of other terms of the same class, with which it would wish to be associated. Thus ardour, which in his preface to his Dictionary, he observes, is never used to denote material heat, yet to an etymologist would naturally suggest it; and Johnson accordingly, speaking of the "ardour of posthumous fame," says that "some have considered ❝it as little better than splendid madness; as a flame kindled by pride and fanned by folly." Thinking of a deep stratagem, he is naturally led from the depth to the surface, and declares that

* Vide Johnson's Life of Addison.

"Addison knew the heart of man from the depths of stratagem to "the surface of affectation" His subjects too were such as scarcely could be treated of without figurative diction: the powers of the understanding require the aid of illustration to become intelligible to common readers. But to enquire how our author illustrates them, is to detect the greatest and almost the only fault in his metaphors. "The mind stagnates without external ventila❝tion”—“An intellectual digestion, which concocted the pulp of "learning, but refused the husks”—“ An accumulation of knowl"edge impregnated his mind, fermented by study, and sublimed by imagination." From such illustrations common readers will, it is feared, receive but little assistance. The sources from which his allusions are borrowed are so abstruse and scientific, and bis expressions so studiously technical, that even those who most commend his similes as apposite, cannot pretend that many of them are explanatory.

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Of the peculiarities of Johnson's stile, which I proposed to treat of under my second head, as arising from his study of harmony, the principal I may call the parallelisin of his sentences; which admits no clause, without one or two concomitants, exactly similar in order and construction. There is scarcely a page of the Rambler which does not produce abundant instances of this peculiarity and what is the ornament, which, if introduced so often, can be always introduced happily? Or what is the ornament, however happily introduced, which will not disgust by such frequent repetitions? Johnson's mind was so comprehensive, that no circumstance occurred to him unaccompanied by many others similar; no effect, without many others depending on the same or similar causes. So close an alliance in the thought natu rally demanded a corresponding similitude in the expression: yet surely all similar circumstances, all the effects of each cause, are not equally necessary to be communicated; and as it is acknowledged that even a continued poem of pure iambics would disgust, variety must appear an indispensably necessary ingredient to harmony. Were we even to admit then, that in any particular triod the construction of one of its clauses could not be altered without injuring the harmony of the sentence, yet a regard to the harmony of the whole treatise will occasionally make such an alteration necessary.

But these parallel sentences are not always faultless in them