sfied, overbearing in
argument, or, as Sir Walter Scott styles it, _despotic_. As distinguished
for his powers of conversation as for his writings, he always talked _ex
cathedra_, and was exceedingly impatient of opposition. Brutal in his word
attacks, he concealed by tone and manner a generous heart. Grandiloquent
in ordinary matters, he "made little fishes talk like whales."

Always swayed by religious influences, he was intolerant of the sects
around him; habitually pious, he was not without superstition; he was not
an unbeliever in ghostly apparitions, and had a great fear of death; he
also had the touching mania--touching every post as he walked along the
street, thereby to avoid some unknown evil.

Although of rural origin, he became a thorough London cockney, and his
hatred of Scotchmen and dissenters is at once pitiful and ludicrous. His
manners and gestures were uncouth and disagreeable. He devoured rather
than eat his food, and was a remarkable tea-drinker; on one occasion,
perhaps for bravado, taking twenty-five cups at a sitting.

Massive in figure, seamed with scrofulous scars and marks, seeing with but
one eye, he had convulsive motions and twitches, and his slovenly dress
added to the uncouthness and oddity of his appearance. In all respects he
was an original, and even his defects and peculiarities seemed to conduce
to make him famous.

Considered the first among the critics of his own day, later judgments
have reversed his decisions; many of those whom he praised have sunk into
obscurity, and those whom he failed to appreciate have been elevated to
the highest pedestals in the literary House of Fame.

STYLE.--His style is full-sounding and antithetic, his periods are
carefully balanced, his manner eminently respectable and good; but his
words, very many of them of Latin derivation, constitute what the later
critics have named _Johnsonese_, which is certainly capable of translation
into plainer Saxon English, with good results. Thus, in speaking of
Addison's style, he says: "It is pure without scrupulosity, and exact
without apparent elaboration; ... he seeks no ambitious ornaments, and
tries no hazardous innovations; his page is always luminous, but never
blazes in unexpected splendor." Very numerous examples might be given of
sentences most of the words in which might be replaced by simpler
expressions with great advantage to the sound and to the sense.

As a critic, his word was law: his opinio