excellence no less in matters of taste than of morals.

He was more intent in balancing the period, than in developing the
thought or image that was present to his mind. Sometimes we find that he
multiplies words without amplifying the sense, and that the ear is
gratified at the expense of the understanding. This is more particularly
the case in the Ramblers, which being called for at short and stated
intervals, were sometimes composed in such haste, that he had not
leasure even to read them before they were printed; nor can we wonder at
the dissatisfaction he expressed some years afterwards, when he
exclaimed that he thought they had been better. In the Idler there is
more brevity, and consequently more compression.

When Johnson trusts to his own strong understanding in a matter of which
he has the full command, and does not aim at setting it off by futile
decorations, he is always respectable, and sometimes great. But when he
attempts the ornamental, he is heavy and inelegant; and the awkwardness
of his efforts is more perceptible from the hugeness of the body that is
put in motion to produce them. He is like the animal whom Milton
describes as making sport for our first parents in Paradise--

--Th' unwieldy elephant,
To make them mirth, used all his might.

It is a good beast for carrying a burden or trampling down a foe, but a
very indifferent one at a lavolta or a coranto.

His swelling style is readily counterfeited. Our common advertisements
have amply revenged themselves for his ridicule of their large promises
in the Idler, by clothing those promises in language as magnificent as