"
Imaginative romance in politics, in religion, and in musings on the
supernatural world, is here only another term for prejudice,
intolerance, bigotry, and credulity--for rabid Toryism, High Church
doctrines verging on Romanism, and a confirmed belief in ghosts.
Imaginative romance in love and friendship is an elevating,
softening, and refining influence, which, especially when it forms
the basis of character, cannot co-exist with habitual rudeness,
uncouthness, arrogance, love of toadying, selfishness, and disregard
of what Johnson himself called the minor morals. Equally
heterogeneous is the "compound of the bright lady of fashion and the
ideal Urania." A goddess in crinoline would be a semi-mundane
creature at best; and the image unluckily suggests that Johnson was
unphilosophically, not to say vulgarly, fond of rank, fashion, and
their appendages.
His imagination, far from being of the richest or highest kind, was
insufficient for the attainment of dramatic excellence, was
insufficient even for the nobler parts of criticism. Nor had he much
to boast of in the way of delicacy of perception or sensibility. His
strength lay in his understanding; his most powerful weapon was
argument: his grandest quality was his good sense.
Thurlow, speaking of the choice of a successor to Lord Mansfield,
said, "I hesitated long between the intemperance of Kenyon, and the
corruption of Buller; not but what there was a d----d deal of
corruption in Kenyon's intemperance, and a d----d deal of
intemperance in Buller's corruption.
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