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of Macpherson1 was indeed just; but it was, we suspect, just by chance. He was undoubtedly an excellent judge of compositions fashioned on his own principles; but when a deeper philosophy was required, when he undertook to pronounce judgment on the works of those great minds which "yield homage only to eternal laws," his failure was ignominious. He criticised Pope's Epitaphs excellently; but his observations on Shakespeare's plays and Milton's poems seem to us, for the most part, as wretched as if they had been written by Rymer himself, whom we take to have been the worst critic that ever lived.

Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, appears far greater in Boswell's books than in his own. His conversation appears to have been quite equal to his writings in matter, and far superior to them in manner. When he talked, he clothed his wit and his sense in forcible and natural expressions. As soon as he took his pen in his hand to write for the public, his style became systematically vicious. All his books are written in a learned language, in a language which nobody hears from his mother or his nurse; in a language in which nobody ever quarrels, or drives bargains, or makes love; in a language in which nobody ever thinks.

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It is clear that Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in which he wrote. The expressions which came

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1 trash of Macpherson. James | Johnson pronounced these forgeMacpherson, a Scotch doctor (1738-ries; but a more favorable view of 1796), published during Johnson's Macpherson is now held. time two poems reputed to be translations from Gaelic originals by a certain "Ossian, son of Fingal."

2 When he talked . . . vicious. Point out the antithetical terms. 3 dialect. Give a synonym.

first to his tongue were simple, energetic, and picturesque. When he wrote for publication, he did his sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that work of which the Journey to the Hebrides is the translation; and it is amusing to compare the two versions. "When we were taken up-stairs," says he in one of his letters, "a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of us was to lie." This incident is recorded in the Journey, as follows: "Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose started up, at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge." Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. "The Rehearsal," he said, very unjustly, "has not wit enough to keep it sweet;” then, after a pause, "it has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction."

Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even agreeable, when the manner, though vicious, is natural. Few readers, for example, would be willing to part with the mannerism of Milton or of Burke. But a mannerism which does not sit easy on the mannerist, which has been adopted on principle, and which can be sustained only by constant effort, is always offensive; and such is the mannerism of Johnson.

As we close this book, the club-room 3 is before us, and the table on which stands the omelet for Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those

1 The Rehearsal, a comedy written by the Duke of Buckingham and others, and first produced in 1671.

2 this book: that is, Boswell's Life of Johnson:

3 the club-room. See the sketch of Burke, page 196.

heads which live for ever on the canvas of Reynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke, and the tall, thin form of Langton; the courtly sneer of Beauclerk, and the beaming smile of Garrick; Gibbon tapping his snuffbox, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we have been brought up, the gigantic body, the huge massy face seamed with the scars of disease, the brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the gray wig with the scorched foretop, the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches; we see the heavy form rolling; we hear it puffing; and then comes the "Why, sir!" and the "What then, sir?" and the "No, sir;" and the "You don't see your way through the question, sir!”

What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man! To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion! To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity! To be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries! That kind of fame which is commonly the most transient is, in his case, the most durable. The reputation of those writings, which he probably expected to be immortal, is every day fading; while those peculiarities of manner and that careless table-talk, the memory of which, he probably thought, would die with him, are likely to be remembered as long as the English language is spoken in any quarter of the globe.

XIII. RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

LIFE AND WORKS.

THE life of a scholar is seldom eventful, and that of the poet-philosopher of Concord was little marked by the vicissitudes that make the stir and movement of biography. His life was indeed but the unfolding of his spiritual nature,-an unfolding placid, beautiful, as the development of a flower. Of his external experiences, the most marked were his three visits to Europe. The grand climacteric of his year was the winter lecture-tour: for the rest, his days were measured by thought-beats, and Lowell wittily gives us a specimen of his intellectual calendar in the supposed jotting, "October:- Indian Summer: now is the time to get in your early Vedas."

Emerson's fame, his acceptance by the public, was of a like gentle, almost imperceptible growth. At his first appearance, forty or more years ago, people rubbed their eyes to see what manner of man he could be. To the hard-heads of New England he was both a stumbling-block and foolishness, with his doctrine of transcendentalism and the "over-soul," and his magiclantern pictures on the mist; while even those who were not mere hard-heads could not forbear asking, "Who is this propounder of Sphinx riddles?"

As the years passed, however, he came to be understood, first a little, then better, then sympathetically, till in all our centers of culture he had a select following; and all fine-brained and aspiring young men,

whether in college-hall or on frontier outpost, began to feel the quickening impulse of this seer, whose doctrine was the doctrine of "plain living and high thinking." The circle of his inspiration widened with the years; he came to be understood and loved; and when on a spring day of 1882 he died, it was felt that there had passed away one of the finest spirits that ever took on the garb of flesh.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born May 28, 1803, in Boston, where his father, Rev. William Emerson, was pastor of the First Congregational Church. If there is any thing in hereditary influence that prophesies a man's career, Emerson was marked out for the ministry, seeing that for eight generations there had been a clergyman in the family, either on the paternal or maternal side. His father, previously to his removal to Boston, had been pastor of a flock in Concord; and when he died, the lad Ralph Waldo, then seven years old, was taken to that town, and lived in the old manse from the study-window of which his father had witnessed the Concord fight.

After receiving his scholastic training at Harvard College, from which he was graduated in 1821, Emerson entered the Divinity School, and on the completion of his studies began the ancestral profession. In 1826 he was "approbated to preach," and from 1829 to 1832 he was colleague of Henry Ware of the Second Unitarian Church of Boston; but then his ministerial career closed, and he quitted the pulpit to devote himself to a life of thought and letters.

When he was thirty years old Emerson made his

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