“ His personal habits, his tricks of speech, his outlook upon life, all have become part of our national consciousness, and have encouraged both men in the past and men now living to support life with a manlier fortitude and an enlarged hope. The courage and beneficence of his own life, confirmed by the reports of all who knew him best, have justly become a treasured possession of the English race, of whose good points and of whose foibles he was an epitome. His intellect was not unworthy of his other qualities, the strength and weakness of which it reflected with fidelity. ”

“ Art cannot be more finished or nature more forced. None has confined ideas in straiter compartments; none has given stronger relief to dissertation and proof; none has imposed more despotically on story and dialogue the forms of argumentation and violent declamation. We understand now that an oratorical age would recognize him as a master, and attribute to him in eloquence the mastery which it attributed to Pope in verse.—History of English Literature. ”

“ The chief characteristic of Johnson's ethical poetry is the depth of feeling with which he illustrates universal truths by individual examples. . . . Nowhere is the character of Johnson reflected more strongly than in his Prologues. Only a great man would dare to preach morality to a crowded theatre.—History of English Poetry. ”