JOHNSON & CHESTERFIELD

Bid scenic Virtue form the rising age

And Truth diffuse her radiance from the

Stage."

Garrick must have been proud to act under such banner of song as that. The tragedy of Irene came to its first representation a short time afterward; and surely it would have been worth one's while to see the stout, awkward gerund-grinder of forty, slipping into a sidebox, or even behind the scenes “in a scarlet waistcoat, with rich gold lace and a gold-laced hat!" The play, however, did not prove a great success either then or thereafter. The Dictionary, for which proposals had already been issued, promised better things. That Dictionary did ultimately give him a great lift -as it has to a good many, since. The ponderous volume furnished very many New England households seventy years ago; and I can remember sitting upon it, in my child-days, to bring my head properly above the level of the table. An immense and long-continued toil went to the Dictionary. Lord Chesterfield,1 the

1

1 Philip Dormer Stanhope (Earl of Chesterfield), b. 1694; d. 1773, best known by his Letters to His Son, first published in 1774. Johnson said they taught "the morals of a courtesan, and the manners of a dancingmaster." This was perhaps over-severe. People who do

finished orator and the elegant man-not unwilling to have so great a work bear his name -called attention to the book and the author, when nearly ready; but Johnson was too sore with hope deferred to catch that bait; he writes an indignant letter (not published until 1790) to the elegant Chesterfield:

"Seven years have now passed, my Lord, since I waited in your outward-rooms, or was repulsed from your door-during which time I have been pushing on my work, thro' difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. The notice

which you have been pleased to take of my labors -had it been early-had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary [his wife dead now] and cannot impart it, till I am known and do not want it."

This does not show the stuff which went to the making of such a man as Walpole!

The Rambler, too, it must be remembered, is making its periodic visits in those early days

not love to disport in fashionable waters are apt to be severe upon those who spend their faculties upon the coquetries of bathing costume.

of the Dictionary toil. Heavy it is, like the master; and his prejudices as arrant Churchman and sturdy Tory do indeed break through its piled-up pages; but never insidiously: he sounds a trumpet before he strikes. Perhaps a little over-fond of trumpeting; loving so much his long sonorous roll of Ciceronian vocables.

But I have not the same dislike of long Johnsonian periods that a good many people have provided always there is a Johnson to utter them. They belong to him; they match with their wordy convolutions his great billowy make of mind; and short, sharp sentences would be as incongruous as a little spurting jet d'eau where great waves' come rocking on the beach.

In fact, I have a large unbelief in much of current pedagogic talk about style, and "getting a good style," and "reforming style," and "Saxon style," and so on. To be thoroughly possessed of one's own thought, and then to tell it, in the clearest possible way, is the best law I know for a good style; and a proper following of it will give to every mind that has any color of its own a style of its own. To putter about the rhetorics in search of fine phrases to wrap your thoughts in, is like going

in masquerade; furbish it as you will, people will see the smear of old wear in the tinsel trappings, and smell it too.

If short, homely Saxon will serve one's purpose best in giving sharp, shrewd expression to thought, as most times it will, use Saxon; but if a Latin derivation will hit the very shade of your thinking more aptly, do not affect to scorn the Latin. Even if a French word-provided always it be at once and easily comprehensible by all whom you address—shall touch the very eye of your purpose better than another, do not scruple to use it.

But we must ask pardon for this intrusion of small school-mastery talk, while the great master of the Dictionary and of the Rambler waits. As yet we have followed him through only half of his career; a stalwart man, still in the full prime of his years; and I see grouping about him at the Turk's Head many another whom we wish to follow; a Boswell and a Burke; Reynolds and Beauclerk and Goldsmith-these all are in waiting. But for a fuller and nearer view of these old club-men of more than a century ago, we open upon another chapter of these Lands and Letters.

I

CHAPTER III

was a little after the middle of the last century that our story opens again.

George II., whose virtues and vices were clock-like in their regularities, was on the throne; Queen Caroline, whom he had always abused and always venerated, was in her grave for twelve or more years past. Outside politics were ripening for that French and English war-in which a Montcalm and a Wolfe figured upon our side the water, and which has been put in picturesque array by Francis Parkman; the geraniums and oleanders were blossoming over the Portuguese grave of Harry Fielding; Thomson had sung his last notes in his Castle of Indolence and was laid to restnot in Kelso, or Dryburgh, where his body should have mouldered-but in a little Richmond Church, within gunshot of the "Star and Garter." Gray was still studying the scholarly measures of the Bard, in his beloved Cambridge; Horace Walpole playing the élégant was fattening on his revenues at