CHAP. vil. J APPEAL FOR AUTHORS BY PROFESSION.
one example of the evil, lie instanced the power of a single 1759.
monosyllable in these productions, to express the victory m~%i
over humour amongst us, from which no one in later years
was to suffer as much as himself. * " Does the poet paint
" the absurdities of the vulgar, then he is low: does he
" exaggerate the features of folly to render it more
" thoroughly ridiculous, he is then very low"t And he
laughingly suggested (but this joke he confined to his first
edition) that check might possibly be given to it by some
such law " enacted in the republic of letters as we find
" takes effect in the House of Commons. As no man there
" can show his wisdom, unless qualified by three hundred
" pounds a-year, so none here should possess gravity, unless
" his work amounted to three hundred pages." In other
parts of the treatise he guards himself from being supposed
to wish that a mere money-service, a system of flattery and
beggary, should replace that of the booksellers. He would
object, he says, to indigence and effrontery subjecting
* How admirable are his remarks on style, in the same chapter ! "It were to
" be wished that we no longer found pleasure with the inflated stile that has
" for some years been looked upon as fine writing, and which every young writer
" is now obliged to adopt, if he chooses to be read . . it is not those who make
'' the greatest noise with their wares in the streets that have most to sell. Let us,
" instead of writing finely, try to write naturally; not hunt after lofty expressions
" to deliver mean ideas, nor be for ever gaping, when we only mean to deliver a
" whisper." Not against Johnson was tiiis levelled, however, but at the swarm
of empty imitators begotten of Johnson's success. The author of the Rambler
would think all the more highly of Goldsmith for such remarks. No one better
knew his own defects, or made more candid avowal of them. "Sir," he said to
Boswell, " if Robertson's style be faulty, he owes it to me; that is, having too
" many words, and those too big ones." Life, vi. 316. So when Langton one day
read one of his Ramblers to him, and asked him how he liked it, he shook his
head, and said, "Too wordy." Ib. vii. 353. Langton also tells us that at
another time, when a friend was reading his tragedy of Irene to a company at a
house in the country, he left the room ; and somebody having asked him the reason
of this, he replied, "Sir, I thought it had been better." Ibid. In these
personal mafcters, as in all others, so far as his views and judgment carried him,
Johnson was a just, and righteous man. Boswell often bored him to say that he
thought Goldsmith his imitator; but he would not, nor would he allow others to
say it. "j-Chap. xi.
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