r by "mannerism," as I
understand the word, is meant the repetition of certain forms of
language in obedience to blind habit and without reference to their
propriety in the particular case. Johnson's sentences seem to be
contorted, as his gigantic limbs used to twitch, by a kind of mechanical
spasmodic action. The most obvious peculiarity is the tendency which he
noticed himself, to "use too big words and too many of them." He had to
explain to Miss Reynolds that the Shakesperian line,--

You must borrow me Garagantua's mouth,

had been applied to him because he used "big words, which require the
mouth of a giant to pronounce them." It was not, however, the mere
bigness of the words that distinguished his style, but a peculiar love
of putting the abstract for the concrete, of using awkward inversions,
and of balancing his sentences in a monotonous rhythm, which gives the
appearance, as it sometimes corresponds to the reality, of elaborate
logical discrimination. With all its faults the style has the merits of
masculine directness. The inversions are not such as to complicate the
construction. As Boswell remarks, he never uses a parenthesis; and his
style, though ponderous and wearisome, is as transparent as the smarter
snip-snap of Macaulay.

This singular mannerism appears in his earliest writings; it is most
marked at the time of the _Rambler_; whilst in the _Lives of the Poets_,
although I think that the trick of inversion has become commoner, the
other peculiarities have been so far softened as (in my judgment, at
least), to be inoffensive. It is perhaps needless to give examples of a
tendency which marks almost every page of his writing. A passage or two
from the _Rambler_ may illustrate the quality of the style, and the
oddity of the effect produced, when it is applied to topics of a trivial
kind. The author of the _Rambler_ is supposed to receive a remonstrance
upon his excessive gravity from the lively Flirtilla, who wishes him to
write in defence of masquerades. Conscious of his own incapacity, he
applies to a man of "high reputation in gay life;" who, on the fifth
perusal of Flirtilla's letter breaks into a rapture, and declares that
he is ready to devote himself to her service. Here is part of the
apostrophe put into the mouth of this brilliant rake. "Behold,
Flirtilla, at thy feet a man grown gray in the study of those noble arts
by which right and wrong may be confounded; by which reason may be
blinded