Dr. Johnson, it must be owned even by his adversaries, has left his mark upon the literature of his country. Gibbon’s style is most ornate, but it is cumbrous and unnatural, and the author of the “Decline and Fall” has found no one to copy him. It was otherwise with Johnson. He was fond of Ciceronian Latin, and his English smacked as strongly of the Ciceronian flavour as did Dr. Pusey’s style of the Augustinian. For myself, I infinitely prefer the short and simple words which come from the Anglo-Saxon mint to what is now sneeringly called “Johnsonese.” But I cannot shut my eyes to that “union of perspicuity and splendour,” that nervous vigour, that “expansion and harmony” which mark the stately flow of Johnson when he is at his best. Towards the end of every unmutilated edition of Boswell’s “Life” is given a list of those who in earnest or in jest have set themselves to imitate the burly Doctor’s style. Foremost amongst these are the historians Robertson and Gibbon, the Rev. Dr. Nares, George Colman, Professor Young, of Glasgow, the Rev. Dr. Knox, the popularity of whose writings is ascribed to this very feature, and some of the best contributors to the old Edinburgh _Mirror_. There is no doubt also that Dr. Johnson’s style was very largely but almost insensibly copied and reproduced in the sermons, charges, and essays of most Bishops and dignitaries of the Established Church for some sixty or seventy years after his death. In fact, Dr. Johnson may be said in a very great degree to have “tuned their pulpits.” It is only of later years, concurrently with the study of German and of Anglo-Saxon literature in this country, that a simpler and less stilted style has prevailed. And this is no small testimony to the great powers of the “learned lexicographer.” The value of his Dictionary has, of course, declined since the study of Etymology has been raised to the dignity of a science; for Dr. Johnson knew little or nothing of those primitive languages from which all the European languages are derived, and of which they are at the root only variations and dialects. His Dictionary, therefore, must be judged by the standard of a century ago, not by that of the Victorian Era. Were Dr. Johnson now alive, he would be among the first to say to Professor Skeat, to Max Müller, and our other lexicographers, “_agnosco procerem_,” and to own that since his own day in this branch of learning, at least, we have made giant strides.