evidence is examined, the more clearly | poles, and that sailors on board ship are does the local character of the infection safe, even though anchored but a few come out. Of the many striking facts yards from a pestilential shore, the rise of pointing in this direction, space will not the ship's side from the sea-level to the allow of the mention of more than a few. port-holes being a sufficient defence. For One of the most remarkable instances has the same reason you may see round Rome already been referred to: the old-standing many houses perched on the top of the healthiness of the Viminal, even when the concrete core of ancient tombs. These surrounding hills of similar height and are occupied with safety throughout the identical conformation were uninhabitable. summer, even when it would be impossiIt would be difficult to find a more crucial ble to spend a single night on the ground example of the use of deep drainage in below without the very greatest risk. Cuchecking malaria. riously enough, it is only an abrupt rise. that will afford protection. A gentle breeze will waft the infection to a considerable height up an inclined plane. A remarkable illustration of this may be found in two neighboring villages, Sezze and Sermoneta, that overlook the Pontine marshes, the most pestilential district in Italy. They both stand at the same altitude of some hundred feet above the plain, but Sermoneta, which is built on the ridge of a hill that slopes gently down to the swamp, is almost uninhabitable. On the other hand, Sezze, though the shoulder on which it stands projects farther out into the plain, and is, therefore, topographically in a worse situation, is free from fever because the sides of the hill are here absolutely precipitous. This fact helps us to understand how the original settlers on the Palatine and the other hills of Rome were able to preserve their health, even when the surrounding plains of the Forum, Vellabrum, and Campus Martius were pestilential swamps. The lofty walls,* built for defence against enemies, rising along the line of cliffs, which, where not naturally abrupt, were cut away to a precipitous escarpment, proved a no less effectual protection against the spirit of the fen. Another noteworthy fact is the continuous spread of the healthy area in Rome. Fifteen years ago the greater part of the Esquiline and Quirinal hills, with their offshoots, was as unhealthy as the open Campagna. Gradually their surface has been covered with houses or paved streets, and they are now at least as healthy as the old town, and even in the new quarter outside the walls the same change may be observed; step by step as the builder advances the spirit of disease flees before him. But the infectious nature of the soil is not, therefore, changed or modified. Again and again it has been proved that, if the streets are broken up for repairs or laying down new drains, the exposed soil will at once, if the season is favorable, become a focus of malarious infection. The men employed have sickened of fever, and even the occupiers of neighboring houses have suffered. Such works, in fact, cannot be safely carried on in the summer or autumn. It might seem strange that so small a surface should be capable of producing such results, but Dr. Crudeli reports and vouches for the truth of a case which is even more curious. A lady in Russia was constantly subject to attacks of ague, which, though they yielded readily to treatment, returned again and again as soon as the patient left the sick-room, till she seemed to be falling into a permanent cachexia. For a long time these relapses puzzled her physician, till at last, at the end of his resources, he ordered the removal of a few pots of flowers, which had been brought from the south and stood in the drawing-room. With the removal of the infected soil the fever ceased, to return no more. Limited as seems to be the diffusive force of malaria horizontally, its ascending power is even less, and is bounded by a very few feet. Every explorer is familiar with the fact that tribes living in malarious districts find immunity from ague by retiring for the night to sleep on plat forms raised above the ground on lofty The superior specific gravity of the strata of the air that are laden with the germs of malaria is further illustrated by a curious change that has come about, during the last few years, in the habits of the Romans. Before the recent changes, the inhabitants of the lower town were careful to keep indoors during the dangerous sunset hours. The malarious air then poured down from the hills into the inhabited quarters. Now that the hills have been reclaimed, this precaution is no longer needed, nor is it observed, not even in the outer zones, which, standing above or on the same level as the Campagna, are not exposed to the downward The walls of Romulus round the Palatine, as may he inferred from the existing remains, were not less than forty feet high. draft, and cannot become a reservoir for the accumulation of malaria. Thus, while men of science have been disputing over the causes of the evil, the builders have made one great step towards providing a solution of the difficulty. But it is useless to deny that it is but the easier part of the problem that has been dealt with. To cover the entire Campagna with bricks and mortar is impossible; and if the expense should, as is probable, prevent a return to the ancient system of deep local drainage, it seems likely that Rome, however healthy itself, will continue to be a mere oasis in a desolate plain to which the lines of the mediæval writer will still be applicable: Roma vorax hominum domat ardua colla viro rum; Romanæ febres stabili sunt iure perennes. From Macmillan's Magazine. "As is maintained, much simpler and easier THE critic who examines the variations in Dr. Johnson's style labors under the disadvantages of one who deals with a subject probably unfamiliar to most of his readers. Of his prose works scarcely any thing is now read except a few of the "Lives of the Poets; ""Rasselas " indeed is not forgotten, yet the chances are that an allusion to it is not understood even among people of some reading. "The Rambler" and "The Idler" have even passed beyond the affectation of those who are unwilling to be thought ignorant of the great monuments of literature. No one is tempted to pretend that he has read them, for no reputation would be gained thereby. They have, to use Johnson's own words, been "swept away by time," and now lie "among the refuse of fame." It is idle to ask whether this neglect is deserved. Johnson himself, when speaking of the judgment which had been slowly formed of Addison's "Cato," maintained that "about things on which the public thinks long, it commonly attains to think Sir Thomas Browne was born at London f right." In another passage he remarks the parish of St. Michael that "what is good only because it pleases the 19th of Octob cannot be pronounced good till it has been merchant, of found to please.' "The Rambler" and Cheshire. "The Idler" did not greatly please even the generation for which they were writ ten. It has been asserted that in Joh writings three periods can be tra his earlier works and in his lat What, to quote an instance from another greatest and the most contemptible of kind of writing, can be freer from "pomp writers. If he forces foreign words into of diction" than the following sarcastic attack on Soame Jenyns? I am told that this pamphlet is not the effort of hunger; what can it be then but the product of vanity? And yet how can vanity be gratified by plagiarism or transcription? When this speculatist finds himself prompted to another performance, let him consider whether he is about to disburden his mind or employ his fingers; and if I might venture to offer him a subject I should wish that he would solve this question: Why he that has nothing to write should desire to be a writer? the language he never forces foreign idioms. He protests, both by words and by example, against "the license of translat ors, whose idleness and ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble a dialect of France." He charges Milton with "forming his style by a perverse and pedantic principle. He was desirous to use English words with a foreign idiom." of the change in Johnson's style, though The explanation that I have just given it accounts for much, yet it does not acThe difference in style which Malone count for all the amplifications that weary and Murphy insist on, which Boswell to the reader in "The Rambler" and "The some extent allows, and for which Lord Adventurer." In both these papers he Macaulay, as I shall presently show, has was writing under conditions which are an explanation of his own, must, I readily the greatest temptation to diffuseness. admit, strike any one who, after some fa- He had not only to express his thoughts, miliarity with Johnson's biographical but to make them in each number cover writings, takes up for the first time his a certain space. If they in themselves essays. The "Ramblers" undoubtedly would not go far enough, the gaps had to differ in style from Johnson's earlier writ- be filled up with words. With his wonings. In his previous compositions scat derful command of language it was the tered passages can be readily found which easiest of tasks to support each substanare cast in the same mould, but the very tive with three adjectives, where two or first"Rambler "is all of one piece, woven even one would have sufficed; and in a of one texture, of more gorgeous threads, second swelling sentence to tell over again of a more elaborate pattern, and in a more in fresh and sonorous phrases what he stately loom. For this "pomp of diction," had already perfectly well expressed in a this exuberance of language, a simpler first. Many a "Rambler," no doubt, or and a more natural explanation may be at all events, many a passage in many a found than that which Murphy gives."Rambler," was written with a full mind, Johnson came before the world in a new the words fitly clothing and not padding character a character which, as it com- out the thoughts. Nevertheless this su monly seeks a peculiar and a dignified perabundance of language too generally dress, so still more commonly adopts a characterizes his essays. It was a fault certain stateliness of language. In his into which he too easily fell. Buswell "Rambler" he appeared as "a majestic has pointed out, how even in his talk he teacher of moral and religious wisdom." would sometimes repeat his thoughts in If he did not wear the gown of the preach- varied style. "Talking of the comedy of er, or of the doctor in some ancient uni-The Rehearsal,' he said, 'It has not wit versity, at all events he clothed his lessons enough to keep it sweet.' This was easy; in a style which, to borrow his own words, he therefore caught himself, and prowould have given dignity to a bishop."nounced a more round sentence: 'It has In his last "Rambler "he tells his readers not vitality enough to preserve it from that "it has been his principal design to putrefaction.' But if he had begun with inculcate wisdom or piety." It will be a sentence that was not easy but round, found, if I am not mistaken, that when he he could just as readily follow it up with is didactic, when he is "pointing a mor- another that was no less round, in which al," he labors the most. To him who he should do very little more than say preaches and to him who teaches, amplifi- over again what he had already said with cation and repetition come almost natu- great force and perfect propriety. Per rally. Each truth, as it is enunciated, is haps Burke was thinking of this habit of first set forth with a certain simplicity of his old friend when, in opposing Boswell language, and is then decked in all the vehemently in his admiration of Croft's pomp that words can lend. It should not imitation of Johnson's style, he exclaimed: be forgotten that Johnson, in the midst of "No, no, it is not a good imitation of all his big words, is entirely free from one Johnson; it has all his pomp without his fault which is common to some of the force; it has all the nodosities of the oak VOL. LXI. 3139 LIVING AGE. without its strength; it has all the con- | world see what a brave show he could tortions of the sybil without the inspira- still make as he rattled along, though he tion." "I hate triplets in prose," said had next to no luggage and scarcely a Cowper, when writing about Johnson's passenger left. needless multiplication of words. Cowper, happily for him, author though he was, knew nothing of that state of life in which "triplets in prose," or some substitute for them, are a temptation which often overcomes the severest virtue. If this needless parade of language is partly due to the necessity under which Johnson lay in each number to fill up a certain space, we should expect to find fewer signs of it in "The Idler." It is not only a shorter paper than "The Rambler" or "The Adventurer," but, unlike them, it varies in length. Numbers fiftyeight and fifty-nine, for instance, taken together are not so long by half a page as number sixty, while the one hundred and three "Idlers" fill no more pages in the edition of Johnson's collected writings than sixty-two" Ramblers." It was published originally in the columns of a news paper. Johnson, as it seems probable, wrote for each number as much as he found convenient. While composing his weekly essay (for it appeared but once a week) he no longer was tempted, to use his own words, to "run his finger down the margin to see how many lines he had written, and how few he had to make." Now Boswell himself states, and states with perfect justice, that "The Idler' has less body and more spirit than 'The Rambler,' and greater facility of language." Part of this is no doubt due to the fact that the subjects selected are, generally speaking, somewhat lighter, but part also may be attributed to the freedom in which Johnson wrote. In his "Debates in Parliament," which were finished seven years before Malone's second period begins, his style was not much less labored than in "The Rambler." In these he was exposed to just the same temptation. He had a certain number of columns of the Gentle man's Magazine to fill and Cave, the proprietor, was "a penurious paymaster, who would contract for lines by the hundred, and expect the long hundred." Fielding, in one of his happiest images, compares a certain class of "painful and voluminous historians" first of all, "to a newspaper, which consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not; " and secondly, "to a stage-coach, which performs constantly the same course empty as well as full." Johnson, both in his "Debates" and his periodical essays, now and then lets the When he wrote with a full mind and untroubled by any thoughts of columns to be filled, at all periods of his life he showed his ease and his vigor. In his letters little change in his diction can be traced from the first one to the last. They vary indeed greatly, but the variety is due not to the effect of years, but to the subject. In his long correspondence with Mrs. Thrale his last letters are less easy than those which he wrote when he was still sure of her affection, and when he was not overshadowed by the gloom of his own rapidly approaching end. Lord Macaulay, in writing of the Lives of the Poets," says: Savage's Life Johnson reprinted nearly as it had appeared in 1744. reading that life, will turn to the other lives Whoever, after will be struck by the difference of style. Since Johnson had been at ease in his circumstances he had written little and had talked much. When therefore he, after the lapse of years, resumed his pen, the mannerism which he had contracted while he was in the constant habit of elaborate composition was less perceptible than formerly; and his diction frequently had a colloquial ease which it had formerly wanted. The improvement may be discerned by a skilful critic in the "Journey to the Hebrides," and in the "Lives of the Poets" it is so obvious that it cannot escape the notice of the most careless reader. "Taxation no Tyranny" was written after the "Journey to the Hebrides." Can the skilful critic discern the improvement in colloquial ease in it? Boswell himself describes it as "a rhapsody," and denies that it has "that felicity of expression for which Johnson was upon other occasions so eminent." I venture to assert that, to both the skilful critic and the uncritical reader, the "Life of Savage," which was written when Johnson was "in the constant habit of elaborate composition," will be found freer from mannerism than the "Journey to the Hebrides," in spite of the twelve years which he had enjoyed of almost complete freedom from writing and of unrestrained indulgence in talk. If we look for "colloquial case " in his compositions, where can we find more than in the following extract from a letter to Mrs. Thrale, written almost nine years before the publication of the "Lives of the Poets" began? He is jesting, as he often does jest, about his host, Dr. Taylor of Ashbourne, a divine "whose size and figure and countenance and manner were | led," he says, "beyond my intention, I that of a hearty English squire, with the hope, by the honest desire of giving useparson super-induced," and whose "talk was of bullocks." I have seen the great bull, and very great he is. I have seen likewise his heir apparent, who promises to inherit all the bulk and all the virtues of his sire. I have seen the man who offered a hundred guineas for the great bull, while he was little better than a calf. Matlock, I am afraid, I shall not see, but I purpose to see Dovedale; and after all this seeing I hope to see you. ful pleasure." From his capacious mind, stored with the memories and the reflec tions of the forty years that he had passed in "the full tide of human existence," and with the anecdotes and the traditions handed down from one generation of literary men to another, his narrative flowed in all the freedom of perfect ease. He had nothing but his indolence with which to struggle. There was "no penurious paymaster, no printer calling for more Six years later, when his style should" copy," no fixed number of sheets which have become easier, if Macaulay's criticism is sound, he wrote to her, must be covered with a fixed number of words before the hand had moved to a fixed place on the clock. He was free, to use his own words, " from the great temptation | to beat his little gold to a spacious surface, L to work that to foam which no art or diligence can exalt to spirit." The measure which he gave was indeed good, for it ran over from very abundance. Lord Macaulay, in his admirable biog raphy of Johnson, silently corrects the harsh judgment which five-and-twenty years before he had passed on Johnson's style. He can now see its merits as well as its faults, and no longer condemns it as "systematically vicious." This censure is, in my eyes, not only harsh, but even ungrateful, for among the imitators of Johnson I have long reckoned his critic. I do not for one moment maintain that the style of the younger writer is founded on the style of the elder. But in Johnson, and in Johnson alone among the older authors, I find parallels for certain peculiarities in Macaulay. He would be an acute critic who could, without any hesitation, decide from the style alone that the following passages, which I have taken from the "Lives of the Poets," are not to be found in the essays contributed to the Edinburgh Review or in the "History of England:" Such a passage as this is in the true "Rambler" style, having all the mannerism which Johnson was supposed to have lost by his long intermission from "the constant habit of elaborate composition." That some effect was produced by this repose cannot be questioned, for in the case of any man who had a style to be affected such a change could not fail to exert its influence. That it had any great effect I see no reason to believe. Two causes, and two alone, are, in my opinion, sufficient to account for the ease of the diction of the "Lives of the Poets." The subject was such as naturally clothed itself in a lighter style, and the author was under no restraint to write a single word more than he pleased. It is true that Johnson, in comparing himself with his contemporaries as a writer of biography, said, "The dogs don't know how to write trifles with dignity." But his dignity in his Lives" very rarely oppresses his readers. There is nothing of the bishop about it. He has many tales to tell, but no rules of judgment were applied to a book few morals to point. From the unhappy larity. But when distinction came to be made, written in open defiance of truth and regu slavery of " copy" he was now altogether the part which gave the least pleasure was free. He had undertaken to write a brief that which describes the Flying Island, and preface to each poet, "an advertisement," that which gave most disgust must be the histo use his own words, "like those which tory of the Houyhnhnms. we find in the French Miscellanies, containing a few dates and a general character." It was by his love of his subject that he was carried away to swell these advertisements into those admirable "Lives," which by the student of literature are read and read again and again with ever-increasing admiration and delight. "I have been Criticism was for a while lost in wonder; He is proud that his book was presented to the King and Queen by the Right Honorable Sir Robert Walpole; he is proud that they had read it before; he is proud that the edition was taken off by the nobility and persons of the first distinction. For many years the name of George Lyttel ton was seen in every account of every debate |