re_ 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 malefactor 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 awe-struck 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. Strip your Louis
Quatorze of his king-gear, and there _is_ left nothing but a poor forked
radish with a head fantastically carved;--admirable to no valet. The
Valet does not know a Hero when he sees him! Alas, no: it requires a
kind of _Hero_ to do that;--and one of the world's wants, in _this_ as
in other senses, is for most part want of such.

On the whole, shall we not say, that Boswell's admiration was well
bestowed; that he could have found no soul