ave accumulated a mass of seeming learning
upon easy scenes; but it ought not to be imputed to negligence that,
where nothing was necessary, nothing has been done, or that, where
others have said enough, I have said no more."

A man who writes like this is sure of his public at once. He is
instantly seen to be too proud, as well as too sincere, too great a
man, in fact, altogether, to stoop to the dishonest little artifices by
which vanity tries to steal applause. In his writings as in his talk,
he was not afraid to be seen for what he actually was; and just as,
when asked how he came to explain the word Pastern as meaning the knee
of a horse, he replied at once, "Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance," so
in his books he made no attempt to be thought wiser or more learned
than he was. And this modesty which he showed for himself he showed
for his author too. The common notion that he depreciated {33}
Shakespeare is, indeed, an entire mistake. There were certainly things
in Shakespeare which were out of his reach, but that does not alter the
fact that Shakespeare has never been better praised than in Johnson's
Preface. But he will not say what he does not mean about Shakespeare
any more than about himself. There is in him nothing at all of the
subtle trickery of the common critic who thinks to magnify his own
importance by extravagant and insincere laudation of his author. He is
not afraid to speak of the poet with the same simplicity as he speaks
of the editor. "Yet it must be at last confessed that, as we owe
everything to him, he owes something to us; that, if much of his praise
is paid by perception and judgment, much is likewise given by custom
and veneration." He even adds that Shakespeare has "perhaps not one
play which, if it were now exhibited as the work of a contemporary
writer, would be heard to the conclusion." Whether that is true or not
of Johnson's day or of our own--and let us not be too hastily sure of
its untruth--at least the man who wrote it in the preface to an edition
of Shakespeare lacked neither honesty nor courage. And he had then, as
he has still, the reward which the most popular of the virtues will
always bring.

{34}

With courage and honesty usually go simplicity and directness. That is
not the first praise that Johnson would win from people familiar with
caricatures of his style. But it is a complete mistake to suppose that
he always wore that heavy armour of magniloquence. H