Johnson is religious through and through, but there are passages in the _Rambler_ and _Idler_ dark as starless, moonless midnight. ‘None would have recourse to an invisible power, but that all other subjects have eluded their hopes . . . That misery does not make all virtuous, experience too certainly informs us; but it is no less certain that of what virtue there is, misery produces far the greatest part.’
There is seldom in life any occasion for great virtues, and we must not be disappointed if it passes without great passion. We must expect to be related to one another by nothing more than ordinary bonds and satisfied if human beings give us pleasure without excitement.
I have good reason to believe that I am passing on life’s journey through what almost all wayfarers therein have had to pass through, but nobody has told me of it.
How wonderful is the withdrawal of heat! It silently departs, the iron grows cold, but the heat spreads and lives!
‘Who knows, though he sees the snow-cold blossom shed, If haply the heart that burned within the rose, The spirit in sense, the life of life be dead? If haply the wind that slays with storming snows Be one with the wind that quickens?’
With increase of reading we have fallen into a fireside, dilettante culture of ideas as an intellectual pleasure. Amos and Isaiah do not deal in ideas. Their strength lies in love and hatred, in the keenness and depth of their division between right and wrong. They repeat the work of God the Creator: chaotic sameness becomes diverse; the heavenly firmament mounts on high; there is Light and there is Darkness.
‘Glory to thee in the highest, thou confidant of our Creator!’ (Landor, _Imaginary Conversations_, Delille and Landor).
2 _Henry VI._ iii. 3.—The lines beginning with the one which follows are not in the old play and are Shakespeare’s own:
‘O thou eternal Mover of the heavens,’ etc.
Johnson’s note is: ‘This is one of the scenes which have been applauded by the criticks, and which will continue to be admired when prejudices shall cease, and bigotry give way to impartial examination. These are beauties that rise out of nature and of truth; the superficial reader cannot miss them, the profound can image nothing beyond them.’ We talk idly of Johnson’s pompous redundance. His sentences are balanced, and it is therefore supposed that the second part repeats the first, but the truth is that each part contains a new thought. It was his manner to throw successive ideas into this form. Those who are acquainted with his history and his awful mental struggles will find infinite pathos in this restrained comment.