his worthy knight and his satellites, and Johnson, in his Idler, would occasionally introduce imaginary friends to the public, as his Drugget and Minim. And it is remarkable that this does in fact give a lighter tone, and that the commonly heavy doctor does attain to some degree of sprightly vivacity in the employment of this machinery, that distinguishes these sketches pleasantly enough from their more ponderous companions.

Johnson was not, as a rule, overweighted with thought. He was apt to dress up delicate ideas in rather incongruous robes, like young children in the armour of full-grown men. He could, with anyone, make little fishes talk like whales; but if he could have attained an easy style, or if he had chosen to drop the cumbrous method he affected, he would have been no unworthy successor to Addison. It is wonderful what a pretty fancy occasionally peeps, half stifled, through the chinks of his laboured sentences. In wit and sound scholarship he was more than a match for his model, but his love of form was too strong. Antithesis was his bane; he permitted what should have been a dainty flower to spread unchecked through his garden of thought until it became a straggling weed.

Some of his sentences resemble a heavily weighted pack-saddle, accurately balanced and even pleasing to the eye, with just an equal number of clauses on either side, but the total burden of which is almost too much for the sturdiest mule of a reader. But this was the case not because he was striving to express by inadequate means thoughts that were too subtle for him to grasp, but merely because he preferred to equip quite ordinary ideas with a disproportionate amount of travelling paraphernalia. He was wont to habit them with solicitous care, as though he feared that they might catch cold from the raw air of criticism, until they came forth at last from his hands with as many garments as the Esquimaux, or as the British fisherman when he sets out for the winter season in the North Sea. In fact, he was too anxious as to the manner he employed to be a great or deep thinker. It is worth remarking that these latter are not commonly stylists. They have in general too serious an occupation in the matter of what they are saying to harass themselves about minor graces of form. might be pleasanter if they did, but it is idle to hope for everything. The ideal essayist, I imagine, has yet to be evolved-the man who

It

shall combine in his own person the original power of Bacon, the grace of Addison, the transcendental insight of Emerson, the gay fancy of Charles Lamb, with any unconsidered trifles that he may chance to pick up from other masters. But, until we see his work, we may well be content with his component parts, which, after all, may possibly afford us more pleasure separately than they would in never so cunning a combination.

It is, to my mind, a blemish in Emerson's writings that he seems to state his matter with so slight an adornment. Indeed, his fault is the exact reverse of this of Johnson's, inasmuch as the thought here often steps boldly-and baldly-forth without so much as a rag of covering to give it a decent appearance. He has the air of shovelling down his opinions, and they are frequently weighty ones, as one shovels coal down into the cellar. They lie in a heap, in any order, for the industrious reader to quarry out as he can. It is possible that this may be done purposely, in a refinement of art, to the end that in its coarse setting the diamond here and there may show up with a finer lustre, or that the traveller may hail with a keener delight the unexpected flower in the

midst of a studiously barren wilderness. I do not myself believe it to be artificial—it is tolerably obvious that Emerson was careless of style-but, if it be so, I maintain that it is bad art. The reader is wearied with stumbling over harsh phrases, and, when he comes at length to the finely expressed thought, he is probably in no mood to appreciate it. One may walk too far even for the finest view. But it is more likely that an unfortunate turn for epigram diverted the author into this particular channel of style. His sentences hang together but loosely, and frequently one has to look long to see the connection between them. Individually they are stimulating, full of nourishment; but they present the appearance of being insufficiently cooked. There is material in each essay enough to furnish a man with thought for a week, but it is only those with strong digestions who can assimilate it. And, however much we may like beef tea, the majority of us prefer it with a certain admixture of a weaker element.

There is almost something of an insult to one's readers in a neglect of the finer graces of writing. The world is ready, no doubt, to excuse a man who, like Emerson or Carlyle,

has truths to utter; and it is ungracious to quarrel with a prophet who preaches forcibly and earnestly what he believes to be eternal verities. But no one will deny that, even so, the best language will prove a powerful adjunct to his work. It is easy to sneer at the artist in words, and some people seem to assume that because an author writes good-and musicalEnglish, he can, therefore, have nothing of any especial moment to say. Prettiness is their pet aversion, and for this fault they will leave their Ruskin or Tennyson with contempt unread, and turn for relaxation to Herbert Spencer or Robert Browning. I am not so sure that word-painting (as it is generally styled) is by any means a bad thing. I like well enough to meet with a picturesque piece of writing, and I am far more inclined to pardon even a man whose effort at fine language is rather too apparent than one who is content to plod along in unrelieved mediocrity. It does not detract sensibly from my enjoyment of Lowell's essays, for example, to watch him preparing, as he not infrequently does, for a perhaps somewhat rhetorical outburst; and, when it arrives, I am the more ready to enjoy it for the note of warning. And it is probably the case that most people really