, while they were still in the original form, and had
a large sale when collected into volumes. The Idler may be described as
a second part of the Rambler, somewhat livelier and somewhat weaker than
the first part.

While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his mother, who had
accomplished her ninetieth year, died at Lichfield. It was long since
he had seen her; but he had not failed to contribute largely, out of
his small means, to her comfort. In order to defray the charges of her
funeral, and to pay some debts which she had left, he wrote a little
book in a single week, and sent off the sheets to the press without
reading them over. A hundred pounds were paid him for the copyright; and
the purchasers had great cause to be pleased with their bargain; for the
book was Rasselas.

The success of Rasselas was great, though such ladies as Miss Lydia
Languish must have been grievously disappointed when they found that
the new volume from the circulating library was little more than a
dissertation on the author's favourite theme, the Vanity of Human
Wishes; that the Prince of Abyssinia was without a mistress, and the
princess without a lover; and that the story set the hero and the
heroine down exactly where it had taken them up. The style was the
subject of much eager controversy. The Monthly Review and the Critical
Review took different sides. Many readers pronounced the writer a
pompous pedant, who would never use a word of two syllables where it was
possible to use a word of six, and who could not make a waiting woman
relate her adventures without balancing every noun with another noun,
and every epithet with another epithet. Another party, not less zealous,
cited with delight numerous passages in which weighty meaning was
expressed with accuracy and illustrated with splendour. And both the
censure and the praise were merited.

About the plan of Rasselas little was said by the critics; and yet the
faults of the plan might seem to invite severe criticism. Johnson has
frequently blamed Shakspeare for neglecting the proprieties of time and
place, and for ascribing to one age or nation the manners and opinions
of another. Yet Shakspeare has not sinned in this way more grievously
than Johnson. Rasselas and Imlac, Nekayah and Pekuah, are evidently
meant to be Abyssinians of the eighteenth century: for the Europe which
Imlac describes is the Europe of the eighteenth century; and the inmates
of the Happy Valley talk familiarl