advance of the public mind to that last stage of intellectual
refinement, in which alone a relish exists for delicate and half latent
irony. The plain and literal citizens of an earlier period, who conned
over what was "so nominated in the bend," would have misapprehended that
graceful playfulness of satire, elegant and fanciful as ever charmed the
leisure of the literary loungers of Athens. For, in the writings of
Bonnel Thornton and Colman, the philosophy of Aristippus may indeed be
said to be revived[8]. We would not, however, be supposed, by these
allusions, to imply that all the papers of the Idler are light and
sportive; or that Johnson for a moment lost sight of a grand moral end
in all his discussions. His mind only accommodated itself to the
circumstances in which it was placed, and diligently sought to avail
itself of each varying opportunity to admonish and to benefit, whether
from the chair of philosophic reproof or in the cheerful, social circle.
Whatever faults have been charged upon the Idler may be traced, we
conceive, to this source. Nobody at times, said Johnson, talks more
laxly than I do[9]. And this acknowledged propensity may well be
presumed to have affected the humorous and almost conversational tone of
the work before us. In the conscious pride of mental might and in the
easier moments of conversations, that illuminated the minds of
Reynolds[10] and of Burke, Johnson delighted to indulge in a lively
sophistry which might sometimes deceive himself, when at first he merely
wished to sport in elegant raillery or ludicrous paradox. When these
sallies were recorded and brought to bear against him on future
occasions, irritated at their misconstruction and conscious to himself
of an upright intention, or at most of only a wish to promote innocent
cheerfulness, he was too stubborn in retracting what he had thus
advanced. Hence, when menaced with a prosecution for his definition of
Excise in his Dictionary, so far from offering apology or promising
alteration, he called, in his Idler, a Commissioner of Excise the lowest