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.”  Just so, we may hesitate long between the romance and the worldliness of Johnson, not but what there was a d——­d deal of romance in his worldliness, and a d——­d deal of worldliness in his romance.

The late Lord Alvanley, whose heart was as inflammable as his wit was bright, used to tell how a successful rival in the favour of a married dame offered to retire from the field for 5001., saying, “I am a younger son:  her husband does not give dinners, and they have no country house:  no liaison suits me that does not comprise both.”  At the risk of provoking Mr. Carlyle’s anathema, I now avow my belief that Johnson was, nay, boasted of being, open to similar influences; and as for his “ideal Uranias,” no man past seventy idealises women with whom he has been corresponding for years about his or their “natural history,” to whom he sends recipes for “lubricity of the bowels,” with an assurance that it has had the best effect upon his own.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Letters, vol. ii. p. 397.  The letter containing the recipe actually begins “My dear Angel.”  Had Johnson forgotten Swift’s lines on Celia? or the repudiation of the divine nature by Ermodotus, which occurs twice in Plutarch?  The late Lord Melbourne complained that two ladies of quality, sisters, told him too much of their “natural history.”]

Rough language, too, although not incompatible with affectionate esteem, can hardly be reconciled with imaginative romance—­