e could be as free
from pedantry of phrase as he always was from pedantry of thought. He
is not only a supreme master of common sense; he is a supreme master of
the language of common sense. He has the gift of saying things which
no one can misunderstand and no one can forget. His common sense is
what its name implies, no private possession thrust upon the minds of
others, but their own thoughts expressed for them. That was one of the
secrets of the unique confidence he inspired. The jury gave him their
verdict because he always put the issue on a basis they could
understand. His answer to the specious arguments of the learned is
always an appeal to what it needs no learning to know. The critics of
Pope's _Homer_ are met by the unanswerable retort: "To a thousand
cavils one answer is sufficient. The purpose of a writer is to be
read." To Pope himself affecting scorn of the great, the same
merciless measure of common knowledge is dealt. "His scorn of the
great is too often repeated to be real: no man thinks {35} much of that
which he despises." And so once more to Pope's victims. If they would
have kept quiet, he says, the _Dunciad_ would have been little read:
"For whom did it concern to know that one or another scribbler was a
dunce?" But this is what the dunces are the last people to realize:
indeed, "every man is of importance to himself, and therefore, in his
own opinion, to others"; so the victim is the first to "publish
injuries or misfortunes which had never been known unless related by
himself, and at which those that hear them will only laugh; for no man
sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity."

Every one who is much read in Johnson will recall for himself other and
perhaps better instances than these of his rare faculty of gathering
together into a sentence some piece of the common stock of wisdom or
observation, and applying it simply, directly and unanswerably to the
immediate business in hand. Is there anything which clears and
relieves an argument so well? "The true state of every nation is the
state of common life"; "If one was to think constantly of death the
business of life would stand still"; "To be happy at home is the
ultimate result of all ambition." How firm on one's feet, on the solid
ground of truth, one feels when one reads such sentences! The writer
of them {36} is at once recognized as no maker of phrases, no victim of
cloudy speculations, self-deceived and the deceiver of ot