FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128  
129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   >>  
kindling with rapture and attention swelling into praise." In that shrewd observation lies the secret {201} of the comparative unproductiveness of his later years. Men like Dryden and Gibbon and Lecky are the men to get through immense literary labours: to a great talker like Johnson what can the praises of reviewers or of posterity be in comparison with the flashing eyes, and attentive ears, the expectant silence and spontaneous applause, of the friends in whom he has an immediate mirror of his success? It is impossible and unnecessary to multiply illustrations. The only thing that need be added is that even in _Rasselas_ and the essays, Johnson's slow-moving style is constantly relieved by those brief and pregnant generalizations of which he is one of the greatest masters in our language. They are so close to life as all men know it, that the careless reader, as we have already seen, is apt to take them for platitudes; but there is all the difference between the stale superficiality which coldly repeats what only its ears have heard, and these sayings of Johnson heated to new energy in the fires of conscience, thought and experience. "I have already enjoyed too much," says the Prince in _Rasselas_; "give me something to desire." And then, a little later, as so often happens with the wise, comes the other side of the medal of truth: "Human life is everywhere {202} a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed." Or take such sentences as that embodying the favourite Johnsonian and Socratic distinction: "to man is permitted the contemplation of the skies, but the practice of virtue is commanded"; or, "we will not endeavour to fix the destiny of kingdoms: it is our business to consider what beings like us may perform"; or such sayings as, "the truth is that no mind is much employed upon the present: recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments"; "marriage has many pains but celibacy has no pleasures"; "envy is almost the only vice which is practicable at all times and in every place"; "no place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library"; "I have always thought it the duty of an anonymous author to write as if he expected to be hereafter known"; or, last of all, to bring citation to an end, that characteristic saying about the omnipresence of the temptations of idleness: "to do nothing is in every man's power: we can never want an oppor
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128  
129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   >>  



Top keywords:
Johnson
 

Rasselas

 

thought

 

enjoyed

 

sayings

 
destiny
 
business
 

kingdoms

 
commanded
 

endeavour


beings

 

virtue

 
Socratic
 

endured

 
distinction
 

permitted

 
contemplation
 
Johnsonian
 

sentences

 

embodying


favourite

 

practice

 

moments

 

expected

 

author

 

library

 

public

 

anonymous

 

citation

 

idleness


characteristic

 
omnipresence
 

temptations

 

marriage

 

anticipation

 
recollection
 

perform

 
employed
 

present

 
celibacy

striking
 

conviction

 
vanity
 
affords
 

pleasures

 

practicable

 
coldly
 

attentive

 
expectant
 

silence