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species of fiction.

The attempt completely suc

ceeded; for Rasselas is a production which, as

Mr. Boswell has remarked, "

though he had written nothing else, would have rendered his name immortal in the world of literature.

The language of this excellent work is uncommonly pure and elegant; its imagery rich and vivid, and full of strength; and its display of human life and manners profound and various. It is defective, however, in incident and plot, and its representations of our portion in this world are too uniformly gloomy and desponding.

Rasselas appears to have been intended by its author as the vehicle for the communication of his peculiar opinions of, and experience in life; and these we well know to have been tinctured by prejudice, and narrowed by too much indivi duality of feeling. Perfect happiness, it is true, is not attainable on earth; but does it therefore follow, that perpetual vexation and disappointment are to be our inseparable companions? If the former would render a future state of bliss nugatory, the latter would totally unfit us for the duties of existence, and annihilate the apprehension of ulterior punishment. Yet there is, notwithstanding this tendency, so much deep and original thinking, so much just reflection in the volume, * Life of Johnson, vol. 1, p. 301.

that, if the author's intention be steadily held in view, which was, by exhibiting the vanity of all sublunary things, to fix the affections on another and a better state of being, it will be impossible to study it without an increase of wisdom and of virtue.

Many of the topics which are eagerly discussed in the History of Rasselas are known to have greatly interested, and even agitated, the mind of Johnson. Of these the most remarkable are, on the Efficacy of Pilgrimage, on the State of Departed Souls, on the Probability of the Re-appearance of the Dead, and on the Danger of Insanity. The apprehension of mental derangement seems to have haunted the mind of Johnson during the greater part of his life; and he has therefore very emphatically declared, that " of the uncertainties in our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of reason." * It is highly probable, that his fears and feelings on this head gave rise to the character of the Mad Astronomer in Rasselas, who declared to Imlac, that he had possessed for five years the regulation of the weather, and the distribution of the seasons; that the sun had listened to his dictates, and passed from tropic to tropic by his direction; that the clouds at his call had poured their waters,

Rasselas, chap. 42.

and the Nile had overflowed at his command. This tremendous visitation he has ascribed principally to the indulgence of imagination in the shades of solitude.

"Disorders of intellect," he remarks, "happen much more often than superficial observers will easily believe. Perhaps, if we speak with rigorous exactness, no human mind is in its right state. There is no man whose imagination does not sometimes predominate over his reason, who can regulate his attention wholly by his will, and whose ideas will come and go at his command. No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability. All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity; but while this power is such as we can control and repress, it is not visible to others, nor considered as any depravation of the mental faculties: it is not pronounced madness but when it becomes ungovernable, and apparently influences speech or action.

"To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation. When we are alone we are not always busy; the labour of excogitation is too violent to last long; the ardour of inquiry will sometimes give

way to idleness or satiety. He who has nothing external that can divert him, must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is? He then expatiates in boundless futurity, and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the present moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combinations, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow.

"In time, some particular train of ideas fixes the attention; all other intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favourite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood, whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth. By degrees the reign of Fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time despotick. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish.

"老

"This, Sir, is one of the dangers of solitude." In the paragraphs which we have just quoted there is much reason to suppose, that our moralist Rasselas, chap. 43.

was describing what he had himself repeatedly experienced; and to this circumstance Sir John Hawkins has attributed his uncommon attachment to society.

Notwithstanding the deficiency of character and incident which marks the pages of Rasselas, it soon became a favourite with the public; nor was its reception upon the Continent less auspicious; it was early taught to charm and to instruct in the most polished languages of Europe; and there is every probability that, from its harmony of diction, from its beauty and sublimity of description, it will long continue to be admired. ・The abrupt and unsatisfactory nature of its conclusion, however, must have been felt with regret by every reader; especially when we learn, on the authority of Sir John Hawkins, that it was thus purposely left incomplete by Johnson, in order to admit of a continuation; that he had, in fact, meditated a second part, and that "he meant to marry his hero, and place him in a state of permanent felicity." This anecdote gave origin, in the year 1790, to an anonymous continuation of Rasselas, under the title of Dinarbus; in the introduction to which, the ingenious author remarks, that "it is much to be regretted, that the same pencil which so forcibly painted the evils attendant on humanity, had not delineated

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