Such writing is like ethical sandpaper. By means of literary surprise it out-manoeuvres expectation, and re-sensitizes us to the moral realities from which the carapace of quotidian life will effectively separate us unless it is vigorously challenged. It is a kind of writing which Johnson himself could achieve in The Rambler, as the conclusion of the second essay shows:

But, though it should happen that an author is capable of excelling, yet his merit may pass without notice, huddled in the variety of things, and thrown into the general miscellany of life. He that endeavours after fame by writing, solicits the regard of a multitude fluctuating in pleasures, or immersed in business, without time for intellectual amusements; he appeals to judges prepossessed by passions, or corrupted by prejudices, which preclude their approbation of any new performance. Some are too indolent to read any thing, till its reputation is established; others too envious to promote that fame, which gives them pain by its increase. What is new is opposed, because most are unwilling to be taught; and what is known is rejected, because it is not sufficiently considered, that men more frequently require to be reminded than informed. The learned are afraid to declare their opinion early, lest they should put their reputation in hazard; the ignorant always imagine themselves giving some proof of delicacy, when they refuse to be pleased: and he that finds his way to reputation, through all these obstructions, must acknowledge that he is indebted to other causes besides his industry, his learning, or his wit.44

The paragraph opens with the proposition that fame is elusive, and then goes on to offer a series of particular reasons why this is so. At this point, then, Johnson seems to be offering consolation to the obscure. However, the final limb of the concluding sentence springs the mine: ‘and he that finds his way to reputation, through all these obstructions, must acknowledge that he is indebted to other causes besides his industry, his learning, or his wit’. The shift in perspective, from consoling the obscure to mortifying the proud, is abrupt and complete, and arises from Johnson’s astute perception of the further implication hidden within the instances explaining the elusiveness of fame: for what is balm to the overlooked may be wormwood to the celebrated. The startling pivot jolts the complacent, and reminds us that the conditions of our moral life are more surprising and reticulated than we slackly suppose them to be. As a result, all readers should be unsettled by this writing: the lowly should feel less securely tethered to their lowliness, the eminent more precarious in their elevation. In Adventurer No. III Johnson revealingly misremembers one of Robert South’s sermons.45 South had proposed that men would find ‘a Continuall un-intermitted Pleasure’ intolerable. Johnson characteristically substitutes idleness for South’s pleasure. Notwithstanding – indeed, perhaps because of – all his temptations to sloth, Johnson recognized that for men work was a condition of happiness. The resistances of his own moral style create for his reader an opportunity of healthily laborious struggle, in which they may find Johnson an overmatch for them, just as William Law had been for Johnson. For, as Arthur Murphy understood, ‘Johnson is always profound, and of course gives the fatigue of thinking.’46

The Rambler did not sell well (though unless we recall that it was widely reprinted in provincial newspapers we are likely seriously to underestimate the contemporary readership of these essays).47 This may have been due to the unexpected seriousness of its moral appeal. However, there is also evidence to suggest that Johnson’s style was difficult for some readers, even repugnant for others. Like any literary manner, it could be guyed. ‘The ludicrous imitators of Johnson’s style are innumerable,’ as Boswell pointed out.48 Bonnell Thornton’s parody shows that imitation could be done with affection.49 A sharper emotion, however, seems to have prompted Horace Walpole’s strictures on Johnson’s style. The Journey to the Western Islands he dismissed as verbose: ‘What a heap of words to express very little! and though it is the least cumbrous of any style he ever used, how far from easy and natural!’50 But the much more cumbrous style of The Rambler inspired Walpole to a freak of satiric imagination. Writing to the Countess of Ossory on 1 February 1779, he began by distancing himself from the popular mania for David Garrick, before moving on to Johnson himself:

… I have always thought that he [Garrick] was just the counterpart of Shakespeare; this, the first of writers, and an indifferent actor; that, the first of actors, and a woeful author. Posterity would believe me, who will see only his writings; and who will see those of another modern idol, far less deservedly enshrined, Dr. Johnson. I have been saying this morning, that the latter deals so much in triple tautology, or the fault of repeating the same sense in three different phrases, that I believe it would be possible, taking the ground-work for all three, to make one of his ‘Ramblers’ into three different papers, that should all have exactly the same purport and meaning, but in different phrases. It would be a good trick for somebody to produce one and read it; a second would say, “Bless me, I have this very paper in my pocket, but in quite another diction”; and so a third…51

If one recollects the conclusion of Rambler 2 quoted above, it is easy to see what prompted this Walpolean fantasy. The very premise of Johnson’s moral essays, that men more often require to be reminded than informed, perhaps by itself drives their author towards an iterative style.52 Moreover, it may be that Johnson himself after a while found the character of the ‘Rambler’ constricting. If, when he first forged that character, it offered release by allowing him to give voice to the fund of information and reflection which he had accumulated as a result of earlier study and the labours of the Dictionary, it was also a character he found it increasingly hard to shake off. Certainly towards the end of his life Johnson was troubled by thoughts of the path not taken:

Johnson, however, had a noble ambition floating in his mind, and had, undoubtedly, often speculated on the possibility of his supereminent powers being rewarded in this great and liberal country by the highest honours of the state.