... is in essence a Doctor of human man- ners ; throughout The Rambler, Johnson assimilates a wide assortment of scien- tific ideas, in various metaphoric ways, to moral and psychological themes. The metaphor between spirit and matter, the “more complicated and subtilized description of the inner...

... to Johnson. Austen mentions and footnotes Rambler 97, by Richardson (NA, p. 30)’ and this is the only specific appearance of Johnson’s periodical essays in Austen’s fiction until Mansfield Park. Eleanor Tilney’s warning that Henry will overpower Catherine with ‘tjohnson and [Hugh] Blair” if she...

..., La BruyGre, and Overbury. Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill and L. F. Powell (Oxford, 1934, 1950), 11, 76, V, 378. There is, however, frequent evidence of Johnson’s familiarity with La Bruyhe. Rambler, No. 143 ; Letters of Samwl Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill (New York, 1892), I, 184; “Addison...

... of the forces op- posed to moral sense seem on many occasions like surrenders to them, and casual surrenders at that. At the end of Rambler 14, for instance, when Johnson explains to his readers why he does not want to meet them in person, the surrender is so casual that it is easily missed...

....6 Two Rambler essays (Nos. 204 and 205, which were published seven years before Russelus) tell of the failure of Seged, lord of Ethiopia, to find happiness in an idyllic seclusion even for ten days. Seged (the historic Emperor Segued, elder brother of the historic Ras Cella Christos...

... to sense as “petty excellencies unworthy his ambition” ( Rambler no. 94, February 9, 1751, in Johnson 1977 : 190). Johnson’s critiques of Milton’s versification are anchored in antipathy toward his politics. They suggest that variety valued over conformity is a dangerous principle, for verse...

... ofgeneralization, by the kind of reflection the poem exemplifies. All of this, I think, contributes to making the poem’s illusion of completeness convincing. The examples are not clearly connected. They are “random” instances chosen from “The Vanity of Human Wishes” and Two “Rambler” Papers...

... took the greatest satisfaction in reprinting The Rambler. In 1750 they reproduced twenty-one of Dr. Johnson’s essays, and until The Rambler’s demise in 1752 they continued to draw on it heavily.8 Letters to the editor were from the beginning an essential feature of the magazine. Nearly...

...; see also Rambler, No. 4 (1750) : “The purpose of these writings is.. . to tea;h the means of avoiding the Snares which are laid by Treachery for Innocence. 80 Preface to the 1st edition. 81 Dialogue No. 28. For a later comment see T. S. Mathias, Pwsuits of Lit- erature, 16th ed...

...” This attitude toward biography actually had Johnson’s approval, expressed in a Rambler essay and later practiced in his Lives of the Pocts. Wardle’s similar devotion to truth necessarily results in the preservation of ...

... moral considerations triumph over the particular political issue. The speeches are basically a set of moral essays, composed in a style which is shown to be close to that of the Rambler of ten years later. Professor Hoover makes some progress in defending the “Debates” against...

... to be close to that of the Rambler of ten years later. Professor Hoover makes some progress in defending the “Debates” against the charge that they are all monotonously glazed in the same stately and abstract manner of expression. But if this substantial book leaves anything to be desired...

... to the works of Fielding, Richardson, and Smol- lett is well known. Three years before the dedication to Shakespeare Illustrated he warned in the Rambler no. 4 (arguably the most cited of his critical essays) that the curious ‘tvorks of fiction with which the pre- sent generation seems...

... of nouveau riche initiates into the privileges of having substantial reserves of time and money. Johnson’s Idler series, like other periodical essays such as Joseph Addison’s Spectator or Johnson’s own Rambler , addresses itself to this social type, featuring a variety of topics that will appeal...

... to the heavier censures of the moralists (e.g., Rambler no. 79a reference that hardly helps unless we have our Dr. .Johnson by heart. I also think it a disservice both to his audi- ence and to his own counterarguments that I’ave should habitually confine himself to referring so obliquely and anonymously...

...., Jr. Philosophic Words: A Study of Style and Meaning in the Rambler and Dictionary of Samuel Johnson. New Haven: Yale University Press ; London : Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1948. Pp. xvi + 167. $3.75. FRENCH Dieckmann, Herbert...

... precedent in his Life of Nash and in his Memoir of Kdtaire, of which he wrote, “truth only is my aim” This attitude toward biography actually had Johnson’s approval, expressed in a Rambler essay and later practiced in his Lives of the Pocts. Wardle’s similar devotion to truth necessarily...

... policy, that of allow- ing himself “to be driven along the stream of life.” Inert passivity may be the only sensible course to follow in an environment in which it is “impossible to know the consequences of action” (Rambler No. 184). We may now return to the various positive readings...

.... 147 148 The English Novel: A ‘Critical‘ View, 1756-1785 pleasures of the fair sex, who have an indisputable right to amuse themselves in what manner they please. . . .4 In the same vein, Samuel Johnson had commented in the Rambler in 1750: These books are written chiefly...

..., or Johnson’s use of truisms about man and life with which to start his Rambler papers, it differs from the use of intro- ductory aphorisms that have little to do with the main idea of the essay. It is worthy of comment that the proportion of Hazlitt’s essays beginning aphoristically...