First, he loved a ponderous style in which there was an excess of the Latin element. He liked to have his statements sound well. He once said in forcible Saxon: "The Rehearsal! has not wit enough to keep it sweet," but a moment later he translated this into: "It has not sufficient vitality to preserve it from putrefaction." In his Dictionary he defined "network" as "anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances with interstices between the intersections." Some wits of the day said that he used long words to make his Dictionary necessary.
In the second place, Johnson loved formal balance so much that he used too many antitheses. Many of his balancing clauses are out of place or add nothing to the sense. The following shows excess of antithesis:—
"If the flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight."
As a rule, Johnson's prose is too abstract and general, and it awakens too few images. This is a characteristic failing of his essays in The Rambler and The Idler. Even in Rasselas, his great work of fiction, he speaks of passing through the fields and seeing the animals around him; but he does not mention definite trees, flowers, or animals. Shakespeare's wounded stag or "winking Mary-buds" would have given a touch of life to the whole scene.
Johnson's latest and greatest work, Lives of the English Poets, is comparatively free from most of these faults. The sentences are energetic and full of meaning. Although we may not agree with some of the criticism, shall find it stimulating and suggestive. Before Johnson gave these critical essays to the world, he had been doing little for years except talking in a straightforward manner. His constant practice in speaking English reacted on his later written work. Unfortunately this work has been the least imitated.
SUMMARY
The second part of the eighteenth century was a time of changing standards in church, state, and literature. The downfall of Walpole, the religious revivals of Wesley, the victories of Clive in India and of Wolfe in Canada, show the progress that England was making at home and abroad. Even her loss of the American colonies left her the greatest maritime and colonial power.
There began to be a revolt against the narrow classical standards in literature. A longing gradually manifested itself for more freedom of imagination, such as we find in Ossian, The Castle of Otranto, Percy's Reliques, and translations of the Norse mythology. There was a departure from the hackneyed forms and subjects of the preceding age and an introduction of more of the individual and ideal element, such as can be found in Gray's Elegy and Collins's Ode to Evening. Dr. Johnson, however, threw his powerful influence against this romantic movement, and curbed somewhat such tendencies in Goldsmith, who, nevertheless, gave fine romantic touches to The Deserted Village and to much of his other work. This period was one of preparation for the glorious romantic outburst at the end of the century.
In prose, the most important achievement of the age was the creation of the modern novel in works like Richardson's Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe, Fielding's Tom Jones, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Smollett's Humphrey Clinker, and Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. There were also noted prose works in philosophy and history by Hume and Gibbon, in politics by Burke, in criticism by Johnson, and in biography by Boswell. Goldsmith's comedy of manners, She Stoops to Conquer, won a decided victory over the insipid sentimental drama.