but cannot repel them.

"The great remedy which Heaven has put in our hands is patience, by
which, though we cannot lessen the torments of the body, we can in a
great measure preserve the peace of the mind, and shall suffer only the
natural and genuine force of an evil, without heightening its acrimony
or prolonging its effects."

It is hardly desirable for a moralist to aim at originality in his
precepts. We must be content if he enforces old truths in such a manner
as to convince us of the depth and sincerity of his feeling. Johnson, it
must be confessed, rather abuses the moralist's privilege of being
commonplace. He descants not unfrequently upon propositions so trite
that even the most earnest enforcement can give them little interest.
With all drawbacks, however, the moralizing is the best part of the
_Rambler_. Many of the papers follow the precedent set by Addison in the
_Spectator_, but without Addison's felicity. Like Addison, he indulges
in allegory, which, in his hands, becomes unendurably frigid and clumsy;
he tries light social satire, and is fain to confess that we can spy a
beard under the muffler of his feminine characters; he treats us to
criticism which, like Addison's, goes upon exploded principles, but
unlike Addison's, is apt to be almost wilfully outrageous. His odd
remarks upon Milton's versification are the worst example of this
weakness. The result is what one might expect from the attempt of a
writer without an ear to sit in judgment upon the greatest master of
harmony in the language.

These defects have consigned the _Rambler_ to the dustiest shelves of
libraries, and account for the wonder expressed by such a critic as M.
Taine at the English love of Johnson. Certainly if that love were