Jortin's sermons are very
elegant. Sherlock's style, too, is very elegant, though he has not
made it his principal study.--And you may add Smalridge. BOSWELL: I
like Ogden's Sermons on Prayer very much, both for neatness of style
and subtility of reasoning. JOHNSON: I should like to read all that
Ogden has written. BOSWELL: What I want to know is, what sermons
afford the best specimen of English pulpit eloquence. JOHNSON: We have
no sermons addressed to the passions, that are good for anything; if
you mean that kind of eloquence. A CLERGYMAN, whose name I do not
recollect: Were not Dodd's sermons addressed to the passions? JOHNSON:
They were nothing, Sir, be they addressed to what they may.'
The suddenness of it! Bang!--and the rabbit that had popped from its
burrow was no more.
I know not which is the more startling--the de'but of the unfortunate
clergyman, or the instantaneousness of his end. Why hadn't Boswell
told us there was a clergyman present? Well, we may be sure that so
careful and acute an artist had some good reason. And I suppose the
clergyman was left to take us unawares because just so did he take the
company. Had we been told he was there, we might have expected that
sooner or later he would join in the conversation. He would have had a
place in our minds.
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