This description was drawn by a bard who, not prejudiced against the lover of the New Heloise, still keenly saw the practical effects which his philosophy wrought in the mass of society, and how it tended to debase our moral and intellectual natures.[29] Byron well knew, and needed not to be told, that Rousseau's sentimentality was but a highly polished instinct; though, like the scornful and unpitying Democritus,[30] he would bitterly smile amidst the tombs, where man's pride and pleasures were alike laid desolate. But Johnson sought to alleviate the woes over which he wept; and no one ever sunk in sensuality from a despondency produced by his lamentations over human misery. In none of his varied writings has he lured others from the paths of virtue, or smoothed the road of perdition, or covered with flowers the thorns of guilt, or taught temptation sweeter notes, softer blandishments, or stronger allurements.[31] He never smiles, like Boileau, at vice, as if half pleased with the ludicrous images it impresses on his fancy; nor, with Swift, does he mangle human nature, and then scowl with a tyrant's exultation on the wounds he has inflicted.[32] He bemoans our miseries with the tender pity of a Cowper, who, in warning us of life's grovelling pursuits and empty joys, seeks, by withdrawing us from their delusive dominion, to prepare us for "another and a better world." * * * * * [Footnote 1: The Champion by Fielding. 1741. 12mo. vol. i. p. 258.] [Footnote 2: Dr. Drake, in his Essays on the Rambler, &c. enumerates eighty-two periodical papers published during that period. For the comparative state of female literature, see Dr. Johnson himself, in Rambler 173.] [Footnote 3: Rambler, Number 208.] [Footnote 4: Tatler, Number 94.] [Footnote 5: Guardian, Numbers 98. 114. 124. 140.] [Footnote 6: Chalmers' Preface to the Idler; British Essayists, vol. xxxiii.] [Footnote 7: Prayer on the Rambler.] [Footnote 8: See Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson, vol. i. and Chalmers' Preface to Rambler.] [Footnote 9: Precepts of morality, besides the natural corruption of our tempers, are abstracted from ideas of sense.--ADDISON.] [Footnote 10: Rambler, Number 96.] [Footnote 11: This fact was communicated, on the authority of Mr. Payne, (the original publisher of the Rambler,) by Mr. Nichols to Mr. Chalmers. See Dr. Drake's Literary Life of Dr. Johnson in his Essays on the Rambler, &c. His Rambler, which is almost all essence of thought, unalloyed by those baser ingredients which so commonly add to the quantity without adding to the worth of human compositions, experienced at first a general coldness, discouragement, and even censure and ridicule. Censura Literaria, vol. viii. p. 361, first edition.] [Footnote 12: Addisoniana, 12mo. vol. ii. p. 52.] [Footnote 13: Plan of an English Dictionary.] [Footnote 14: Preface to the English Dictionary.] [Footnote 15: Chalmers' Prefaces to Rambler and Adventurer.]