ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the periodical essays written for The Rambler and The Idler, which demonstrate what have been termed the “peculiarities” that “distinguish the prose of Johnson’s maturity”. Johnson asserts that the contemplation of death is necessary for a virtuous life. A number of The Rambler essays reveal Johnson’s awareness of both the necessity of attending to the passing of time and his horror at the thought of its destructive action. There are clearly grounds on which to align this mode of representation with what has been identified as Johnson’s “emphasis on the common and the general” and to a universalizing tendency in his work. The frequency of Johnson’s repetition of the adverbs in conjunction with the progressive construction, therefore, can also be construed as a representation of his personal experience of this state of “permanent imminence” as well as his insistent determination to attend to what horrifies him.
