..
Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, appears far greater in
Boswell's books than in his own. His conversation appears to have been
quite equal to his writings in matter, and far superior to them in
manner. When he talked, he clothed his wit and his sense in forcible
and natural expressions. As soon as he took his pen in his hand to write
for the public, his style became systematically vicious. All his books
are written in a learned language; in a language which nobody hears from
his mother or his nurse; in a language in which nobody ever quarrels, or
drives bargains, or makes love; in a language in which nobody ever
thinks. It is clear that Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in
which he wrote. The expressions which came first to his tongue were
simple, energetic, and picturesque. When he wrote for publication he did
his sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His letters from the
Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that work of which the
"Journey to the Hebrides" is the translation; and it is amusing to
compare the two versions. "When we were taken upstairs," says he in one
of his letters, "a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of
us was to lie." This incident is recorded in the Journal as follows:
"Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose started up, at our
entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge.
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