3. Johnson’s earlier style was full of Latin words; his later style is more purely English than most of the journalistic writing of the present day. His Rambler is full of “long-tailed words in _osity_ and _ation_;” but his ‘Lives of the Poets’ is written in manly, vigorous, and idiomatic English. In verse, he occupies a place between Pope and Goldsmith, and is one of the masters in the “didactic school” of English poetry. His rhythm and periods are swelling and sonorous; and here and there he equals Pope in the terseness and condensation of his language. The following is a fair specimen:-- “Of all the griefs that harass the distressed, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart, Than when a blockhead’s insult points the dart.” 4. OLIVER GOLDSMITH (+1728-1774+), poet, essayist, historian, and dramatist, was born at Pallas, in the county of Longford, Ireland, in the year 1728. His father was an Irish clergyman, careless, good-hearted, and the original of the famous Dr Primrose, in +The Vicar of Wakefield+. He was also the original of the “village preacher” in +The Deserted Village+. “A man he was to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a-year.” Oliver was educated at Trinity College, Dublin; but he left it with no fixed aim. He thought of law, and set off for London, but spent all his money in Dublin. He thought of medicine, and resided two years in Edinburgh. He started for Leyden, in Holland, to continue what he called his medical studies; but he had a thirst to see the world-- and so, with a guinea in his pocket, one shirt, and a flute, he set out on his travels through the continent of Europe. At length, on the 1st of February 1756, he landed at Dover, after an absence of two years, without a farthing in his pocket. London reached, he tried many ways of making a living, as assistant to an apothecary, physician, reader for the press, usher in a school, writer in journals. His first work was ‘An Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe,’ in 1759; but it appeared without his name. From that date he wrote books of all kinds, poems, and plays. He died in his chambers in Brick Court, Temple, London, in 1774.