Page:Boswell - Life of Johnson.djvu/288
mistaken; or if he imagined at first that he was imitating Temple he was very unsuccessful; for nothing can be more unlike than the simplicity of Temple, and the richness of Johnson. Their styles differ as plain cloth and brocade. Temple, indeed, seems equally erroneous in supposing that he himself had formed his style upon Sandys's View of the State of Religion in the Western parts of the World.
The style of Johnson was, undoubtedly, much formed upon that of the great writers in the last century, Hooker, Bacon, Sanderson, Hakewell, and others; those 'Giants[1],' as they were well characterised by A Great Personage.[2], whose
- ↑ 'There were giants in the earth in those days.' Gen. vi. 4.
- ↑ A Great Personage first appears in the second edition. In the first edition we merely find 'by one whose authority,' &c. {Boswell in his Hebrides, Aug. 28. 1773, speaks of George III. as 'a Great Personage.' In his Letter to the People of Scotland (p. 90) he thus introduces an anecdote about the King and Paoli:—'I have one other circumstance to communicate; but it is of the highest value. I communicate it with a mixture of awe and fondness.—That Great Personage, who is allowed by all to have the best memory of any man born a Briton,' &c. In the Probationary Odes for the Laureateship, published a few months after Boswell's Letter, a 'Great Personage ' is ludicrously introduced; pp. xxx. 63.
vulgatus, paucis notus, qui vitam inter lucem et umbram, nee eruditus nee idioticis Uteris deditus, transegit.' In the Gent. Mag. for 1740, p. 262, the last line is given, no doubt correctly, as:—'Nee eruditus nee idiota, literis deditus.' The second edition of Chambers's Cyclopædia was published in 1738. There is no copy of his Proposal in the British Museum or Bodleian. The resemblance between his style and Johnson's is not great. The following passage is the most Johnsonian that I could find:—'None of my predecessors can blame me for the use I have made of them; since it is their own avowed practice. It is a kind of privilege attached to the office of lexicographer; if not by any formal grant, yet by connivance at least. I have already assumed the bee for my device, and who ever brought an action of trover or trespass against that avowed free-booter? 'Tis vain to pretend anything of property in things of this nature. To offer our thoughts to the public, and yet pretend a right reserved therein to oneself, if it be not absurd, yet it is sordid. The words we speak, nay the breath we emit, is not more vague and common than our thoughts, when divulged in print.' Chambers's Preface, p. xxiii.