204 INDOOK STUDIES 



pression witli his pen. The saying is like another 

 one of his, — namely, that "a man seldom thinks 

 with more earnestness of anything than he does of 

 his dinner." When Johnson wrote his famous 

 letter to Lord Chesterfield, it is safe to say he did 

 not write for money, and that he was thinking of 

 something more earnestly than he was wont to 

 think of his dinner; and it is the one piece of his 

 prose that is likely to live. But these remarks of 

 his, and others like them — this, for instance, that 

 "great abilities are not requisite for an historian; 

 for in historical composition all the greatest powers 

 of the human mind are quiescent, " — such remarks, 

 I say, of themselves show his limitations in the 

 direction of literature. Johnson lives through Bos- 

 well; without Boswell his fame would hardly have 

 reached our time, except as a faint tradition. In 

 the pages of his biographer the actual man lives for 

 us; we can almost see his great chest heave, and 

 hear the terrible " Sir ! " with which he held his 

 interlocutor at good striking distance. If some 

 Boswell had done the same thing for Coleridge, is 

 it probable that he would have lived in the same 

 way ? I think not. As a personality Coleridge was 

 much less striking and impressive than Johnson. 

 As an intellectual force he is, of course, miTch more 

 so. But it is hardly possible to feel a deep interest 

 in or admiration for him on personal grounds alone. 

 Is it possible to feel as deep an interest in and 

 admiration for Carlyle, apart from his works, as we 

 do in Johnson? Different temperaments will an- 



