ABSTRACT
Johnson displayed high intellectual quality, but he and his generation lacked lightness and informality. The “principal design” of The Rambler was “to inculcate wisdom or piety.” Possibly, as Johnson said in his concluding paper, he
The Rambler
produced some essays “of which the highest excellence is harmless merriment,” but gaiety of tone is not here really obtrusive. He had little assistance, and that little came also from persons of sobriety: Elizabeth Carter, Catherine Talbot, Hester Mulso (later Mrs. Chapone), each wrote one or two, and Samuel Richardson, the novelist, wrote No. 97, which is said to have outsold all other numbers. Significantly, Richardson suggests that more attention be paid in The Rambler to ridicule of “fashionable follies” in the manner of The Spectator. Johnson recognized this lack of lightness and variety, and at the end feared that “the severity of dictatorial instruction has been too seldom relieved, and that he [the reader] is driven by the sternness of The Rambler’s philosophy to more cheerful and airy companions”; but if the author “can be numbered among the writers who have given ardor to virtue and confidence to truth,” he will rest content. He has some amusing papers: No. 16, about the woes of eminence in authorship, is facetious in tone, and so is the project analogous to Fielding’s “universal register” in No. 105. He gives us also allegories, Oriental tales, and sketches-not too vivid-of London life. It is the critical essays that have most permanent interest: No. 4 on modern romance, No. 60 on biography, No. 93 on prejudice in criticism; No. 125 on tragedy and comedy, No. 152 on letterwriting, and Nos. 156 and 158, in which he attacks the rules-all these and others demonstrate Johnson’s ability. These, standing out above the Johnsonian average, are among the best brief critical essays of the century; they are models of thoughtfulness. Later Johnson wrote at least twentyfive essays3 for The Adventurer (1752-54) of his friend John Hawkesworth (1715?–1773), Swift’s editor and a notable figure in the periodical literature of the day.
