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will wish a thousand times for these seats of quiet, and willingly quit hope to be free from fear." When, finally, the prince suggests that at least one lot must be happier than another, Imlac gives two answers, not wholly consistent with each other, but both implying the impossibility of happiness in this world. The first is to the effect that the different conditions of men are so similar as to require a lifetime for selection; the second, that few have any privilege of choice.2

In the search which the prince then begins, the words of Imlac are verified. The seeker for happiness is disgusted with the frivolous and inconsistent conceptions of pleasure which govern young men. Next, led away by the rhetorical praise of moral truth, he finds that teachers of morality may "discourse like angels, but they live like men." " Again, on their way to test the happiness of solitude, the royal wanderers learn both that the enjoyments of pastoral life, lauded by the poets in all ages, are a myth and that material prosperity brings care and sometimes danger. Besides, the hermit, instead of praising his own state, is ready to return with them to the society which he had left in chagrin at lost preferment. The prince then seeks the philosophers, but the life according to nature, recommended by Rousseau and others, is found to be incapable of intelligible definition. So does Johnson brush away Rousseauism. When the prince and princess divide the search between them, Rasselas finds that "high stations" are full of danger, and Nekayah finds that 1 See 39: 22-30. 250: 3-9, 14-19. 354: 21-22.

"private life also presents no certain happiness. The discourse on marriage which then begins makes it appear that marriage may be a means of more happiness than celibacy, but that perfect happiness is by no means to be found in the conjugal relation. The princess is now almost ready to believe with Imlac, that, leaving the search for happiness, one must be content with the life set before him.

But Imlac had pointed out that happiness is not to be found, because the evil as the good of this life does not depend upon choice. To enforce such an idea, perhaps, Johnson inserted at this point in the narrative the episode of Pekuah. The misfortune of the favorite is an accident, yet it causes much discomfort to herself and much sorrow to the royal party. The search for happiness must stand still, until the return of the lost Pekuah makes life at least endurable.

With the return of the favorite the search again continues, but with a somewhat different aim. There is no longer an attempt to find the desired end in external conditions. All turn to intellectual pleasures. The prince 'began to love learning.' But to show that this source of pleasure is not without its dangers, Imlae tells the story of the mad astronomer, who is in turn introduced to confess that he at least had chosen wrongly. The sage also, grown old in learning, assures his listeners that 'praise is to an old man an empty sound,'' that recollection only recalled opportunities neglected, that the hope of age is not pleasure, but ease, and the happiness in a better state which here cannot be found. Finally, the visit to the 2 124: IO.

1 See 112: 21.

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catacombs gives Imlac an opportunity of emphasizing the future life of the soul, in which the evils of this life should be remedied and happiness, impossible here, should be perpetually enjoyed.

The title of the concluding chapter of Rasselas is somewhat misleading. It might perhaps be supposed that Johnson intentionally breaks off in the story, unable to answer satisfactorily the question of the choice of life. But in reality the conclusion is directly in accord with the teachings of the great moralist. For if the search after happiness is unavailing, if one's sphere is determined without power of choice on his part, the only proper thing for the royal fugitives to do is to return to the valley in which the laws of their country had originally placed them. Unsatisfactory as this conclusion is to us, it pointedly emphasizes the very principle Johnson wished to establish with his contemporaries.

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firmly believed that this world is full of misery, and that for this there is no certain remedy. All that man can hope is to soften the effects of evil Be content with what you have. Work without complaint. Look only to the future for a better life.This was Johnson's gospel to his age. And this he meant to inculcate by the 'Conclusion in which nothing is concluded,' as truly as in the following passage from the Rambler (No. 32):

The controversy about the reality of external evils is now at an end. That life has many miseries, and that those miseries are

1 Cf. Leslie Stephen's History of Eighteenth Century Thought, I. 374.

sometimes at least equal to all the powers of fortitude, is now universally confessed; and therefore it is useful to consider not only how we may escape them, but by what means those which either the accidents of affairs or the infirmities of nature must bring upon us may be mitigated and lightened, and how we may make those hours less wretched which the condition of our present existence will not allow to be very happy.

The cure for the greatest part of human miseries is not radical but palliative. Infelicity is involved in corporeal nature and interwoven with our being; all attempts therefore to decline it wholly are vain; the armies of pain send their arrows against us on every side, the choice is only between those which are more or less sharp, or tinged with greater or less malignity; and the strongest armor which reason can supply will only blunt their points 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.

IV. JOHNSON'S STYLE AS EXHIBITED IN "RASSELAS."

Perhaps no English writer has had a style more distinctively his own than Samuel Johnson. No one can fail to perceive marked peculiarities in his form of expression. Yet to define or describe accurately the style of any writer is not easy, and Johnson is no exception to the rule. It is possible, however, to set down some of the most striking peculiarities of what Macaulay aptly called 'Johnsonese.' This may be done in a consideration of the vocabulary, the sentence, and the paragraph of Johnson as shown in Rasselas.

In the first place, it has been said that Johnson's

style, at least in diction and sentence structure, shows some considerable change in the course of his life. This does not mean that he ever lost the strongly marked individuality which characterizes his writings. But the works of an earlier time show certain mannerisms more clearly than do those of a later period. The Rambler, for instance, is the best example of the earlier style, the Lives of the Poets of the later. It is important here to note that Rasselas belongs to the first period, its style being more like that of the Rambler than that of the later works.

The most noteworthy characteristic of Johnson's earlier diction is his use of large and unusual words. In Rasselas, as a few of many examples, may be noted endeavor for try, require for ask, gratifications for pleasures, discover for show, controvertist for disputant, admiration for wonder, accidents for chances. This peculiarity of Johnson's style was early pointed out, for the reviewer in the Gentleman's Magazine (April, 1759) remarked that "he sometimes deals in sesquipedalia, such as excogitation, exaggeratory, . . . multifarious, transcendental, indiscerptible, etc." The peculiarity is more striking when, as often, Johnson states some simple truth in his elaborate manner, as "Knowledge will always predominate over ignorance (32: 22); Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance" (42: 27). Such an elaborate. diction becomes ludicrous when the words lack appropriateness to the speaker, as in "Dear princess, you fall into the common errors of exaggeratory declamation, by producing in a familiar disquisition examples of national calamities and scenes of exten

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