interstices between the intersections"--but with the quibbler we have no
time to dally. Some people insist on having their literature illustrated,
just as others refuse to attend lectures that are not reinforced by a
stereopticon.

Johnson had a style that is stately, dignified, splendid. It moves from
point to point with absolute precision, and in it there is seldom anything
ambiguous, muddy, confused or uncertain. Get down a volume of "Lives of
the Poets," and prove my point for yourself, by opening at any page. It
was Boswell who set his own light, chatty and amusing gossip over against
the wise, stately diction of Johnson, and allowed Goldsmith to say, "Dear
Doctor, if you were to write a story about little fishes, you would make
them talk like whales," and the mud ball has stuck. The average man is
much more willing to take the wily Boswell's word for it than to read
Johnson for himself.

The balanced power of Johnson's English can not fail to delight the
student of letters who cares to interest himself in the matter of
sentence-building. Johnson handles a thought with such ease! He makes you
think of the circus "strong man" who tosses the cannon-ball, marked
"weight 250 lbs." What if the balls are sometimes only wood painted black!
Have we not been entertained? Read this specimen paragraph:

"Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very
small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by Nature upon
few, and the labor of learning those sciences which may by continuous
effort be obtained is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can
exert such judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom
Nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his
vanity by the name of 'critic,'"