lately i've been reading a bunch of samuel johnson's collected essays culled from the rambler and the idler. they are a joy to read, and it's been fun to page through the idler compendium from 1790 that i checked out from UW and compare it to other earlier london publications like the spectator and see johnson's genius shine through the bougie-handbook style of writing that was the seemingly requisite style of the times.

the rolling richness of his prose just kills me. nabokov, when he's on, is the only other writer who's ever lit up the page for me like this. last night, i was reading the rambler no. 137 [the need for general knowledge], wherein johnson chides academics for failing to get out of the ivory tower and interact competently/constructively with the rest of the world. he ends the essay with this beautiful paragraph:

By this descent from the pinnacles of art no honour will be lost; for the condescensions of learning are always overpaid by gratitude. An elevated genius employed in little things appears, to use the simile of Longinus, like the sun in his evening declination; he remits his splendor but retains his magnitude, and pleases more, though he dazzles less.

doesn't that last sentence make your heart sing? i haven't been able to get it out of my head all day.