Johnson wrote a kind of rhyming prose, in
which he was as much compelled to finish the different clauses of
his sentences, and to balance one period against another, as the
writer of heroic verse is to keep to lines of ten syllables with
similar terminations. He no sooner acknowledges the merits of his
author in one line than the periodical revolution in his style
carries the weight of his opinion completely over to the side of
objection, thus keeping up a perpetual alternation of perfections
and absurdities.
We do not otherwise know how to account for such assertions as the
following: 'In his tragic scenes, there is always something wanting,
but his comedy often surpasses expectation or desire. His comedy
pleases by the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy, for the
greater part, by incident and action. His tragedy seems to be skill,
his comedy to be instinct.' Yet after saying that 'his tragedy was
skill', he affirms in the next page, 'His declamations or set
speeches are commonly cold and weak, for his power was the power of
nature: when he endeavoured, like other tragic writers, to catch
opportunities of amplification, and instead of inquiring what the
occasion demanded, to show how much his stores of knowledge could
supply, he seldom escapes without the pity or resentment of his
reader.' Poor Shakespeare! Between the charges here brought against
him, of want of nature in the first instance, and of want of skill
in the second, he could hardly escape being condemned.
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