BEIEF ESSAYS 203 



Again, Johnson owed much more to his times 

 than Carlyle did to his. Both his religion and his 

 politics were the religion and the politics of his age 

 and country, and they were like ready-made high- 

 ways along which his mind and soul traveled. In 

 comparison, Carlyle was adrift in the wilderness, 

 where the way and the bridges had to be built by 

 himself. What gulfs he encountered, what quag- 

 mires he floundered through ! Johnson " stood by 

 the old formulas," says Carlyle; and adds signifi- 

 cantly, "the happier was it for him that he could 

 so stand." What would the great hulking hypo- 

 chondriac have done in such a world as Carlyle trav- 

 ersed, the ground cut clean from under him. by 

 German thought and modern science, awful depths 

 opening where before was solid earth ? 



Johnson has survived his works. Mr. Birrell 

 declares very emphatically that they are still alive, 

 and are likely to remain so; but the specimens he 

 gives, whether of prose or of verse, are not at all 

 reassuring. But our interest in the man seems 

 likely to be perennial. This is probably because 

 he was a much greater and more picturesque force 

 personally than he was intellectually. His power 

 was of a kind that could not fully be brought to 

 bear in literature, that is to say, he is greater as a 

 talker in personal encounter than in his writings, or 

 in the depth of his thought. He said that "no 

 man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." 

 But the man who writes for money alone, it is 

 pretty sure, will not make a deep and lasting im- 



