a face out of a cherry stone as well as hew a Colossus out of the rock. Dryden and Pope surpassed all mankind in the majestic art of reasoning in rime, and in the skill with which they wielded the keenest of weapons. One of the best passages in our literature is, where these two great poets are nicely weighed in the scales against each other by a kindred spirit.[1]
Johnson has said, ‘Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.’ Would that the adviser had practised what he preached! He was misled by Sir Thomas Browne, and he corrupted our tongue by bringing in outlandish stuff which would have moved the scorn of Swift, and from which our best writers have only of late shaken themselves free.[2] Johnson was in his lifetime revered by a tasteless generation as the greatest of all masters of English; his disciples, more especially Gibbon, have still further Latinized our tongue. The Dictator, however, seems in his old age to have felt a lurking consciousness that he had gone too far; his last works show a far purer taste than those he wrote at forty. He now no more ‘depeditated obtunding anfractuosities;’ he was no longer the deep-mouthed Bœotian —
Thebes did his green, unknowing youth engage;
He chooses Athens in his riper age.
