sonorous phrases what he had already perfectly well expressed in a first. Many a Rambler, no doubt, or at all events, many a passage in many a Rambler, was written with a full mind, the words fitly clothing and not padding out the thoughts. Nevertheless this superabundance of language too generally characterises his essays. It was a fault into which he too easily fell. Boswell has pointed out, how even in his talk he would sometimes repeat his thoughts in varied style. "Talking of the comedy of The Rehearsal, he said, 'It has not wit enough to keep it sweet.' This was easy; he therefore caught himself, and pronounced a more round sentence: It has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction.'" But if he had begun with a sentence that was not easy but round, he could just as readily follow it up with another that was no less round, in which he should do very little more than say over again what he had already said with great force and perfect propriety. Perhaps Burke was thinking of this habit of his old friend when, in opposing Boswell vehemently in his admiration of Croft's imitation of Johnson's style, he exclaimed: "No, no, it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all his pomp without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak without its strength; it has all the contortions of the sybil without the inspiration." "I hate triplets in prose," said Cowper, when writing about Johnson's needless multiplication of words. Cowper, happily for him, author though he was, knew nothing of that state of life in which

triplets in prose," or some substitute for them, are a temptation which often overcomes the severest virtue.

If this needless parade of language is partly due to the necessity under which Johnson lay in each number to fill up a certain space, we should expect to find fewer signs of it in The Idler. It is not only a shorter paper than The Rambler or The Adventurer, but, unlike them, it varies

in length. Numbers fifty-eight and fifty-nine, for instance, taken together are not so long by half a page as Number sixty, while the one hundred and three Idlers fill no more pages in the edition of Johnson's collected writings than sixty-two Ramblers. It was published originally in the columns of a newspaper. Johnson, as it seems probable, wrote for each number as much as he found convenient. While composing his weekly essay (for it appeared but once a week) he no longer was tempted, to use his own words, to "run his finger down the margin to see how many lines he had written, and how few he had to make."

Now Boswell himself states, and states with perfect justice, that "The Idler has less body and more spirit than The Rambler, and greater facility of language." Part of this is no doubt due to the fact that the subjects selected are, generally speaking, somewhat lighter, but part also may be attributed to the freedom in which Johnson wrote. In his Debates in Parliament, which were finished seven years before Malone's second period begins, his style was not much less laboured than in The Rambler. In these he was exposed to just the same temptation. He had a certain number of columns of the Gentleman's Magazine to fill, and Cave, the proprietor, was "a penurious paymaster, who would contract for lines by the hundred, and expect the long hundred." Fielding, in one of his happiest images, compares a certain class of "painful and voluminous historians" first of all, "to a newspaper, which consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not" ;"; and secondly, "to a stage-coach, which performs constantly the same course empty as well as full." Johnson, both in his Debates and his periodical essays, now and then lets the world see what a brave show he could still make as he rattled along, though he had next to no luggage and scarcely a passenger left.

When he wrote with a full mind and

untroubled by any thoughts of columns to be filled, at all periods of his life he showed his ease and his vigour. In his letters little change in his diction can be traced from the first one to the last. They vary indeed greatly, but the variety is due not to the effect of years, but to the subject. In his long correspondence with Mrs. Thrale his last letters are less easy than those which he wrote when he was still sure of her affection, and when he was not overshadowed by the gloom of his own rapidly-approaching end. Lord Macaulay, in writing of the Lives of the Poets, says:

"Savage's Life Johnson reprinted nearly as it had appeared in 1744. Whoever, after reading that life, will turn to the other lives will be struck by the difference of style. Since Johnson had been at ease in his circumstances he had written little and had talked much. When therefore he, after the lapse of years, resumed his pen, the mannerism which he had contracted while he was in the constant habit of elaborate composition was less perceptible than formerly; and his diction frequently had a colloquial ease which it had formerly wanted. The improvement may be discerned by a skilful critic in the Journey to the Hebrides, and in the Lives of the Poets it is so obvious that it cannot escape the notice of the most careless reader.'

Taxation no Tyranny was written after the Journey to the Hebrides. Can the skilful critic discern the improvement in colloquial ease in it? Boswell himself describes it as 66 a rhapsody," and denies that it has "that felicity of expression for which Johnson was upon other occasions so eminent." I venture to assert that, to both the skilful critic and the uncritical reader, the Life of Savage, which was written when Johnson was "in the constant habit of elaborate composition," will be found freer from mannerism than the Journey to the Hebrides, in spite of the twelve years which he had enjoyed of almost complete freedom from writing and of unrestrained indulgence in talk. If we look for " colloquial ease" in his compositions, where can we find more than in the following extract from a letter to Mrs. Thrale, written almost nine years before the No. 339-VOL. LVII.

publication of the Lives of the Poets began? He is jesting, as he often does jest, about his host, Dr. Taylor of Ashbourne, a divine "whose size and figure and countenance and manner were that of a hearty English squire, with the parson super-induced," and whose "talk was of bullocks."

"I have seen the great bull, and very great he is. I have seen likewise his heir apparent, who promises to inherit all the bulk and all the virtues of his sire. I have seen the man who offered an hundred guineas for the great bull, while he was little better than a calf. Matlock, I am afraid, I shall not see, but I purpose to see Dovedale; and after all this seeing I hope to see you."

Six years later, when his style should have become easier, if Macaulay's criticism is sound, he wrote to her,

"Every man has those about him who wish to soothe him into inactivity and delitescence, nor is there any semblance of kindness more vigorously to be repelled than that which voluntarily offers a vicarious performance of the tasks of life, and conspires with the natural love of ease against diligence and perseverance."

Such a passage as this is in the true Rambler style, having all the mannerism which Johnson was supposed to have lost by his long intermission from "the constant habit of elaborate composition." That some

effect was produced by this repose cannot be questioned, for in the case of any man who had a style to be affected such a change could not fail to exert its influence. That it had any great effect I see no reason to believe. Two causes, and two alone, are, in my opinion, sufficient to account for the ease of the diction of the Lives of the Poets. The subject was such as naturally clothed itself in a lighter style, and the author was under no restraint to write a single word more than he pleased. It is true that Johnson, in comparing himself with his contemporaries as a writer of biography, said, "The dogs don't know how to write trifles with dignity." But his dignity in his Lives very rarely oppresses his readers. There

is nothing of the bishop about it. He has many tales to tell, but few morals to point. From the unhappy slavery of " copy " he was now altogether free. He had undertaken to write a brief preface to each poet, "an advertisement," to use his own words, "like those which we find in the French Miscellanies, containing a few dates and a general character." It was by his love of his subject that he was carried away to swell these Advertisements into those admirable Lives, which by the student of literature are read and read again and again with ever-increasing admiration and delight. "I have been led," he says, "beyond my intention, I hope, by the honest desire of giving useful pleasure." From his capacious mind, stored with the memories and the reflections of the forty years that he had passed in "the full tide of human existence," and with the anecdotes and the traditions handed down from one generation of literary men to another, his narrative flowed in all the freedom

of perfect ease. He had nothing but his indolence with which to struggle. There was "no penurious paymaster," no printer calling for more "copy," no fixed number of sheets which must be covered with a fixed number of words before the hand had moved to a fixed place on the clock. He was free, to use his own words, "from the great temptation to beat his little gold to a spacious surface, to work that to foam which no art or diligence can exalt to spirit." The measure which he gave was indeed good, for it ran over from very abundance.

Lord Macaulay, in his admirable biography of Johnson, silently corrects the harsh judgment which five-and-twenty years before he had passed on Johnson's style. He can

now see its merits as well as its faults, and no longer condemns it as "systematically vicious." This censure is, in my eyes, not only harsh, but even ungrateful, for among the imitators of Johnson I have long reckoned his critic. I do not for one moment maintain that the style of the younger writer is founded on the style of the elder. But in Johnson, and in Johnson alone among the older authors, I find parallels for certain peculiarities in Macaulay. He would be an acute critic who could, without any hesita tion, decide from the style alone that the following passages, which I have taken from the Lives of the Poets, are not to be found in the Essays contributed to the Edinburgh Review or in the History of England:

"Criticism was for a while lost in wonder; no rules of judgment were applied to a book written in open defiance of truth and regularity. But when distinction came to be made, the part which gave the least pleasure was that which describes the Flying Island, and that which gave most disgust must be the history of the Houyhnhnms.'

"He is proud that his book was presented to the King and Queen by the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole; he is proud that they had read it before; he is proud that the edition was taken off by the nobility and persons of the first distinction."

"For many years the name of George Lyttelton was seen in every account of every debate in the House of Commons. He opposed the standing army; he opposed the excise; he supported the motion for petitioning the King to remove Walpole."

As in Lord Macaulay's writings I come upon passage after passage that seems formed on such models as these, I am tempted to apply to them the words which he applied to Miss Burney's imitations of the author of The Rambler: "This is a good style of its kind. .. We say with confidence either Sam Johnson or the Devil." G. BIRKBECK HILL.

I HAVE heard people talk a good deal about my grandfather's clock, but I really think that my uncle's clock was a more remarkable thing. I did not notice anything peculiar about it in his lifetime, except that it was always stopped, being in this respect the exact opposite of that wellknown clock of everybody's grandfather which went on ticking to the exact moment of the old gentleman's death. My uncle's clock stood in his bed-room, on the mantelpiece; and I always wondered that he, who liked everything about him to be in order, wound up, and working punctually, should allow this solitary specimen of incapacity to stare him in the face night and morning with a lying account of the hour. Once or twice when my uncle has been ill and I have gone to see him, I have walked up to that clock with the intention of setting it going and putting it right, but my uncle always stopped me with the significant remark: "I rather think I'd let that clock alone, if I were you, James."

I took the hint without asking any questions. My uncle was not the sort of man who would stand a catechism very well; indeed, there were some points concerning his personal history, and the manner in which he had made his fortune, about which his most intimate friend, if at all a prudent man, would judge it best to make few inquiries. I do not mean that my uncle was not an honourable member of society, and a very useful one too: many owners of valuable estates, many county families remember him still with respectful gratitude; but his occupation was of a very peculiar sort, one which would not bear much talking about he was, in fact, a remover of ghosts.

What he did with the ghosts when he had got them nobody could guess. He did not travel with much luggage, and could not have carried them away in his boxes. They were not in his own home: a quieter, better-ordered establishment than that never existed: the very rats were not allowed to make a noise there. One thing only was certain, that when he undertook to remove a ghost that ghost never went back again: it was heard of no more. His knowledge of the world of phantoms was immense: I think I may say unique. He had studied all the existing literature of the subject, until there was not a ghost anywhere in the three kingdoms with whose habits, weaknesses, and prejudices he was not familiar. Not a phantom of

:

them all could resist him he could twist the whole spectre-world (it is not, I believe, a very intelligent world) round his little finger. There was nothing he enjoyed more than facing an obstinate and self-opinionated old ghost-a ghost of a few hundred years' standing, with a conceit to match his age-having it out with that old ghost, and reducing him to submission.

My uncle never advertised himself in any way, and had to be approached cautiously by all who desired his services. He kept his ghost-laying within the strict limits of a profession, though one not generally acknow ledged or frequently followed, and refused wages, though he would take a fee. His first effort was, I believe, achieved solely to oblige a friend: afterwards a whisper of his extraordinary powers went round, and every man who had a haunted house which he could not let, every family pursued by a dogged phantom which stuck to the ancestral residence after its natural term was over, every person afflicted

by an attendant spectre, applied to my uncle for relief. He never refused it, when it was properly asked for. On receiving a summons to the practice of his profession, he packed up his traps

and went off with his manservant. Sometimes it would take him weeks to remove a ghost: sometimes he would do it in half an hour. The fees he received for his services varied from a hundred pounds (he never would take less, rather than that, he did his work for nothing) to a thousand. There was one old gentleman who had been very much bothered for many years by an irritating phantom, who was always washing his hands in his presence, and asking him for a towel

-an under-bred ghost that, and one without any sense of the fitness of things! When this old gentleman was relieved of his trouble his gratitude was so great that, besides paying the customary fee, he left in his will five thousand pounds and perpetual right in the ghost, to my uncle and his heirs for ever. I was my uncle's heir, but I did not know of the whole extent of his possessions when I stepped into them.

Well, my uncle died, and the secret of the ghosts, and what he had done with them, died with him. He left everything to me, and I immediately determined to have that clock put to rights. I could not do away with it, because there was a special clause in his will that it was to be left where it was, in the same room, on the same mantelpiece, facing the bed in which I intended to sleep. If I sent away that clock I forfeited my uncle's fortune: the estate and the clock went together, and were by no means, nor at any time, to be separated. However, if I could not get rid of this piece of furniture, I could make it go; and this I resolved to do.

The first night that I slept in that particular room I had reached home late after a long journey, and, being very tired, forgot my resolution.

I

never had a better night's sleep in my

life. But the next morning when I awoke, the clock faced me with its fingers impudently and lyingly pointing to half-past two, when, as a matter of fact, I knew that it was just eight. I sprang out of bed and attacked that false witness. It wound up easily, and ticked regularly. Its internal organisation had evidently suffered nothing from a prolonged holiday. Throughout the whole of that day it ticked cheerfully and kept well up to time; and as I put my head on the pillow that night, and heard it ticking industriously in the darkness, I felt that I had begun well my stewardship of the fortune left to me: the only thing which wanted doing in my uncle's house I had promptly done. Then followed the peace of a well-earned sleep.

Rats! could it be rats making that noise? Were there ever such impudent, ingenious, multifarious, abominable, and riotous rats as these? I don't know how long I had been asleep, but the noise which awoke me was something distracting. I sat up in bed and listened. No, it could not be rats. Rats could not groan dismally, rats could not giggle foolishly, nor could they wail hysterically. They might run about the passages with the sound as of a hundred pattering feet, but they could not talk in confidential whispers, nor could they appeal piteously for help, nor could they denounce one another in angry human tones.

A happy thought occurred to me. The servants were indulging in private theatricals. They had presumed on my youthful inexperience, and relied on the soundness of my slumbers: they were doubtless giving a ball or some similar entertainment to their friends in the small hours of the night. I got out of bed and made for the door. The passage beyond was in utter darkness. I thought I heard the sound of scuttling feet; then all was still. As I groped my way towards the butler's room, some one seemed to be following me with stealthy steps. I felt for a match, which I had in my