r birthright of
the people of this island. It is that quality which was the central
thing in the mind of Johnson, and it is to his possession of it, and to
our unique knowledge of it through Boswell, that more than anything
else he owes this position of the typical Englishman among our men of
letters. We can all imagine that {10} under other conditions, and with
an added store of brains and character, we might each have been Doctor
Johnson. Before we could fancy ourselves Shelley or Keats the self
that we know would have to be not developed but destroyed. But in
Johnson we see our own magnified and glorified selves.

It has sometimes been asserted to be the function of the man of letters
to say what others can feel or think but only he can express. Whatever
may be thought of such a definition of literature, it is certain that
Johnson discharged this particular function with almost unique success.
And he continues to do so still, especially in certain fields.
Whenever we feel strongly the point of view of common sense we almost
expect to be able to find some trenchant phrase of Johnson's with which
to express it. If it cannot be found it is often invented. A few
years ago, a lover of Johnson walking along a London street passed by
the side of a cabmen's shelter. Two cabmen were getting their dinner
ready, and the Johnsonian was amused and pleased to hear one say to the
other: "After all, as Doctor Johnson says, a man may travel all over
the world without seeing anything better than his dinner." The saying
was new to him and probably apocryphal, though the sentiment is one
which can well be imagined {11} as coming from the great man's mouth.
But whether apocryphal or authentic, the remark well illustrates both
the extent and the particular nature of Johnson's fame. You would not
find a cabman ascribing to Milton or Pope a shrewd saying that he had
heard and liked. Is there any man but Johnson in all our literary
history whom he would be likely to call in on such an occasion? That
is the measure of Johnson's universality of appeal. And the secret of
it lies, to use his own phrase, not used of himself of course, in the
"bottom of sense," which is the primary quality in all he wrote and
said, and is not altogether absent from his ingrained prejudices, or
even from the perversities of opinion which his love of argument and
opposition so constantly led him to adopt. Whether right or wrong
there is always somethin