"
This seems to me to be the noblest passage that Johnson ever wrote.
Almost all the most magnificent utterances of man are tinged with
sadness. In this they possess a quality that is almost inseparable from
grandeur wherever displayed. No man of sensibility and taste feels it
possible to make jokes himself, or to tolerate them from others when in
the presence of the Falls of Niagara, or a tempest at sea, or when he
views from a peak in the Andes--as I have done--the sun descent into
the Pacific. The greatest pictures painted by man touch the heart rather
than elate it; and genius finds its highest expression not in comedy, but
in tragedy.
And this need cause us no surprise when we consider how much of the
great work in letters and in art is directly due to the writer possessing
in full measure the gift of sympathy.
People with this gift, even if they are without the faculty of expression,
are beloved by those about them, which must bring them happiness.
Till he was over fifty Dr. Johnson's life was a weary struggle with
poverty. He wrote _Rasselas_ under the pressure of an urgent need of
money to send to his dying mother. His wife died some few years
earlier. I have always thought that the sad reflections he put into the
mouth of an old philosopher towards the end of the story were indeed
the true expressions of his own tired heart:--
"Praise," said the sage with a sigh, "is to an old man an empty
sound.
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