In the succeeding generation we become aware of a certain leaven of dissatisfaction with the aesthetic and intellectual code thus inherited.  The supremacy of common sense, the superlative importance of clearness, is still fully acknowledged, but there is a growing undertone of dissent in form and substance.  Attempts are made to restore philosophical conceptions assailed by Locke and his followers; the rationalism, of the deistic or semi-deistic writers is declared to be superficial; their optimistic theories disregard the dark side of nature, and provide no sufficient utterance for the sadness caused by the contemplation of human suffering; and the polished monotony of Pope’s verses begins to fall upon those who shall tread in his steps.  Some daring sceptics are even inquiring whether he is a poet at all.  And simultaneously, though Addison is still a kind of sacred model, the best prose writers are beginning to aim at a more complex structure of sentence, fitted for the expression of a wider range of thought and emotion.

Johnson, though no conscious revolutionist, shares this growing discontent.  The Spectator is written in the language of the drawing-room and the coffee-house.  Nothing is ever said which might not pass in conversation between a couple of “wits,” with, at most, some graceful indulgence in passing moods of solemn or tender sentiment.  Johnson, though devoted to society in his own way, was anything but a producer of small talk.  Society meant to him an escape from the gloom which beset him whenever he was abandoned to his thoughts.  Neither his education nor the manners acquired in Grub Street had qualified him to be an observer of those lighter foibles which were touched by Addison with so dexterous a hand.  When he ventures upon such topics he flounders dreadfully, and rather reminds us of an artist who should attempt to paint miniatures with a mop.  No man, indeed, took more of interest in what is called the science of human nature; and, when roused by the stimulus of argument, he could talk, as has been shown, with almost unrivalled vigour and point.  But his favourite topics are the deeper springs of character, rather than superficial peculiarities; and his vigorous sayings are concentrated essence of strong sense and deep feeling, not dainty epigrams or graceful embodiments of delicate observation.  Johnson was not, like some contemporary antiquarians, a systematic student of the English literature of the preceding centuries, but he had a strong affection for some of its chief masterpieces.  Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy was, he declared, the only book which ever got him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished.  Sir Thomas Browne was another congenial writer, who is supposed to have had some influence upon his style.  He never seems to have directly imitated any one, though some nonsense has been talked about his “forming a style;” but it is probable that he felt a closer affinity to those old scholars, with their