int's Rest_, and the _Pilgrim's
Progress_--despised by the polite but beloved by the popular class in
spite of the critics; and among the dissenters such a work as Boston's
_Fourfold State_, or in the Church, Law's _Serious Call_. Your polite
author had ignored the devil, and he plays a part in human affairs
which, as Carlyle pointed out in later days, cannot be permanently
overlooked. The old horned and hoofed devil, indeed, for whom Defoe had
still a weakness, shown in his _History of the Devil_, was becoming a
little incredible; witchcraft was dying out, though Wesley still felt
bound to profess some belief in it; and the old Calvinistic dogmatism,
though it could produce a certain amount of controversy among the
Methodists, had been made obsolete by the growth of rationalism. Still
the new public wanted something more savoury than its elegant teachers
had given; and, if sermons had ceased to be so stimulating as of old, it
could find it in secular moralisers. Defoe, always keenly alive to the
general taste, had tried to supply the demand not only by his queer
_History of the Devil_ but by appending a set of moral reflections to
_Robinson Crusoe_ and other edifying works, which disgusted Charles Lamb
by their petty tradesman morality, and which hardly represent a very
lofty ideal. But the recognised representative of the moralists was the
ponderous Samuel Johnson. It is hard when reading the _Rambler_ to
recognise the massive common sense and deep feeling struggling with the
ponderous verbiage and elephantine facetiousness; yet it was not only a
treasure of wisdom to the learned ladies, Mrs. Chapone, and Mrs.
Elizabeth Carter and the like, who were now beginning to appear, but was
received, without provoking ridicule, by the whole literary class.
_Rasselas_, in spite of its formality, is still a very impressive book.
The literary critic may amuse himself with the question how Johnson came
to acquire the peculiar style which imposed upon contemporaries and
excited the ridicule of the next generation. According to Boswell, it
was due to his reading of Sir Thomas Browne, and a kind of reversion to
the earlier period in which the Latinisms of Browne were still natural,
when the revolt to simple prose had not begun. Addison, at any rate, as
Boswell truly remarks, writes like a 'companion,' and Johnson like a
teacher. He puts on his academical robes to deliver his message to
mankind, and is no longer the Wit, echoing the cof