"He was sublime without haughtiness, courteous without formality, and communicative without ostentation."-CHAP. XL.

Of the quaternion, the following is an instance :

"The plants of the garden, the animals of the wood, the minerals of the earth, and meteors of the sky, must all concur to store his mind with inexhaustible variety."CHAP. X.

It is chiefly the concatenation of preposition phrases, as in the last two examples, which is regarded as the Johnsonian triad or quaternion, and "Rasselas " contains much fewer triads than quaternions of this kind, but is not characterised by either so copiously as the "Rambler" is.

The following observations are from Lord Macaulay's biography of Johnson :-"The success of Rasselas was great, though such ladies as Miss Lydia Languish* must have been grievously disappointed when they found that the new volume from the circulating library was little more than a dissertation on the author's favourite theme, the Vanity of Human Wishes; that the Prince of Abyssinia was without a mistress, and the Princess without a lover; and that the story set the hero and the heroine down exactly where it had taken them up. The style was the subject of much eager controversy. The Monthly Review and the Critical Review took different sides. Many readers pronounced the writer a pompous pedant, who would never use a word of two syllables where it was possible to use a word of six, and

*In Sheridan's comedy of "The Rivals."

who could not make a waiting-woman relate her adventures without balancing every noun with another noun, and every epithet with another epithet. Another party, not less zealous, cited with delight numerous passages in which weighty meaning was expressed with accuracy and illustrated with splendour. And both the censure and the praise were merited.

"About the plan of Rasselas, little was said by the critics; and yet the plan might seem to invite severe criticism. Johnson has frequently blamed Shakspeare for neglecting the proprieties of time and place, and for ascribing to one age or nation the manners and opinions of another. Yet Shakspeare has not sinned in this way more grievously than Johnson. Rasselas and Imlac, Nekayah and Pekuah, are evidently meant to be Abyssinians of the eighteenth century for the Europe which Imlac describes is the Europe of the eighteenth century; and the inmates of the Happy Valley talk familiarly of that law of gravitation which Newton discovered, and which was not fully received even at Cambridge till the eighteenth century. What a real company of Abyssinians would have been may be learned from Bruce's Travels. But Johnson, not content with turning filthy savages, ignorant of their letters, and gorged with raw steaks cut from living cows, into philosophers as eloquent and enlightened as himself, or his friend Burke, and into ladies as highly accomplished as Mrs. Lennox or Mrs. Sheridan,* transferred the whole domestic system of England to Egypt."

* Mrs. Charlotte Lennox was an authoress of some celebrity, as was also Mrs. Frances Sheridan, wife of Thomas Sheridan the player. Both these ladies were contemporaries of Dr. Johnson, and much esteemed by him.

The justice of these observations must be admitted. Uniformity was the great imperfection of Johnson's style; and neglect of the proprieties of time and place is of too frequent occurrence in Rasselas to allow of the book receiving any commendation as a narrative. But the moral and intellectual purposes contemplated by the sage of Lichfield in this little work of fiction were no doubt connected in his mind with the consideration that they would be more popularly stated and more effectually promoted by the form of narrative, although they might oblige him to make much sacrifice of probability in the narrative itself.

As an excellent illustration of the moral purpose of the story, we subjoin the concluding paragraph of the author's "Vanity of Human Wishes."

"Where, then, shall Hope and Fear their objects find?

Must dull Suspense corrupt the stagnant mind?

Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,

Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?

Must no dislike alarm, no wishes rise,

No cries attempt the mercy of the skies?
Inquirer, cease; petitions yet remain

Which Heaven may hear; nor deem religion vain,
Still raise for good the supplicating voice,

But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice;

Safe in His power, whose eyes discern afar
The secret ambush of a specious prayer.
Implore His aid, in His decisions rest,
Secure, whate'er He gives, He gives the best.
Yet when the sense of sacred presence fires,
And strong devotion to the skies aspires,
Pour forth thy fervours for a healthful mind,

For love, which scarce collective man can fill;
For patience, sovereign o'er transmuted ill;
For faith that panting for a happier seat,
Counts death kind Nature's signal of retreat.
These goods for man the laws of Heaven ordain;
These goods He grants who grants the power to gain;
With these Celestial Wisdom calms the mind,
And makes the happiness she does not find."

THE

HISTORY OF RASSELAS,

PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA.

CHAPTER I.

DESCRIPTION OF A PALACE IN A VALLEY.

Credulity, credo. Fancy, Phantoms, phaino. Monarchs, monos, archo. Passage, Paces, pas. Cavern, Cavities, cavus. Disputed, puto. Superfluities, fuo. Pastures, pastum. Extracted, traho. Excluded, Seclusion, claudo. Captivity, capio. Novelty, novus. Competitors, peto. Century, centum. Deriding, rideo. Solstitial, sol, sisto. Equinoctial, æquus, nox. Subterranean, terra.

YE who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and 1 pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope, who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow,- -attend to the history of Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia.

Rasselas was the fourth son of the mighty emperor, in 2 whose dominions the Father of Waters begins his course; whose bounty pours down the streams of plenty, and scatters over half the world the harvests of Egypt.

B