These defects have consigned the Rambler to the dustiest shelves of libraries, and account for the wonder expressed by such a critic as M. Taine at the English love of Johnson.  Certainly if that love were nourished, as he seems to fancy, by assiduous study of the Rambler, it would be a curious phenomenon.  And yet with all its faults, the reader who can plod through its pages will at least feel respect for the author.  It is not unworthy of the man whose great lesson is “clear your mind of cant;"[1] who felt most deeply the misery of the world, but from the bottom of his heart despised querulous and sentimental complaints on one side, and optimist glasses upon the other.  To him, as to some others of his temperament, the affectation of looking at the bright side of things seems to have presented itself as the bitterest of mockeries; and nothing would tempt him to let fine words pass themselves off for genuine sense.  Here are some remarks upon the vanity in which some authors seek for consolation, which may illustrate this love of realities and conclude our quotations from the Rambler.

[Footnote 1:  Of this well-known sentiment it may be said, as of some other familiar quotations, that its direct meaning has been slightly modified in use.  The emphasis is changed.  Johnson’s words were “Clear your mind of cant.  You may talk as other people do; you may say to a man, sir, I am your humble servant; you are not his most humble servant....  You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in society; but don’t think foolishly.”]

“By such acts of voluntary delusion does every man endeavour to conceal his own unimportance from himself.  It is long before we are convinced of the small proportion which every individual bears to the collective body of mankind; or learn how few can be interested in the fortune of any single man; how little vacancy is left in the world for any new object of attention; to how small extent the brightest blaze of merit can be spread amidst the mists of business and of folly; and how soon it is clouded by the intervention of other novelties.  Not only the writer of books, but the commander of armies, and the deliverer of nations, will easily outlive all noisy and popular reputation:  he may be celebrated for a time by the public voice, but his actions and his name will soon be considered as remote and unaffecting, and be rarely mentioned but by those whose alliance gives them some vanity to gratify by frequent commemoration.  It seems not to be sufficiently considered how little renown can be admitted in the world.  Mankind are kept perpetually busy by their fears or desires, and have not more leisure from their own affairs than to acquaint themselves with the accidents of the current day.  Engaged in contriving some refuge from calamity, or in shortening their way to some new possession, they seldom suffer their thoughts to wander to the past or future; none but a few solitary students have leisure