le at that time.

Johnson's Writings, which once had such currency and celebrity, are
now, as it were, disowned by the young generation. It is not
wonderful; Johnson's opinions are fast becoming obsolete: but his
style of thinking and of living, we may hope, will never become
obsolete. I find in Johnson's Books the indisputablest traces of a
great intellect and great heart:--ever welcome, under what
obstructions and perversions soever. They are _sincere_ words, those
of his; he means things by them. A wondrous buckram style,--the best
he could get to then; a measured grandiloquence, stepping or rather
stalking along in a very solemn way, grown obsolete now; sometimes a
tumid _size_ of phraseology not in proportion to the contents of it:
all this you will put-up with. For the phraseology, tumid or not, has
always _something within it_. So many beautiful styles and books, with
_nothing_ in them;--a man is a _male_factor to the world who writes
such! _They_ are the avoidable kind!--Had Johnson left nothing but his
_Dictionary_, one might have traced there a great intellect, a genuine
man. Looking to its clearness of definition, its general solidity,
honesty, insight, and successful method, it may be called the best of
all Dictionaries. There is in it a kind of architectural nobleness; it
stands there like a great solid square-built edifice, finished,
symmetrically complete: you judge that a true Builder did it.

One word, in spite of our haste, must be granted to poor Bozzy. He
passes for a mean, inflated, gluttonous creature; and was so in many
senses. Yet the fact of his reverence for Johnson will ever remain
noteworthy. The foolish conceited Scotch Laird, the most conceited man
of his time, approaching in such awestruck attitude the great dusty
irascible Pedagogue in his mean garret there: it is a genuine reverence
for Excellence; a _worship_ for Heroes, at a time when neither Heroes
nor worship were surmised to exist. Heroes, it would seem exist always,
and a certain worship of them! We will also take the liberty to deny
altogether that of the witty Frenchman, that no man is a Hero to his
valet-de-chambre. Or if so, it is not the Hero's blame, but the
Valet's: that his soul, namely, is a mean _valet_-soul! He expects his
Hero to advance in royal stage-trappings, with measured step, trains
borne behind him, trumpets sounding before him. It should stand rather,
No man can be a _Grand-Monarque_ to his valet-de-chambre. S