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Updated: June 13, 2025
I remember well when the fable of the Happy Valley in Rasselas was a reality to me; when I thought the sun rose and set for us alone, and how I pitied the glorious orb, as it sunk behind the western mountain, to think that it must pass through a sort of Hades, through a dark underworld, to come up in the east again.
The Rambler, The Idler and Rasselas fill four volumes out of the twelve in the 1823 library edition of Johnson. When Johnson decided to bring out a periodical paper he, of course, had the model of the Spectator and Tatler before him.
It is plain enough to the modern reader that, if so, both of the ancient orators must have written true Johnsonese; and, in fact, the style of the true author is often as plainly marked in many of these compositions as in the Rambler or Rasselas.
They accompanied him back to the city, on which, as he approached it, he gazed with rapture. A day or two later Rasselas was relating his interview with the hermit at an assembly of learned men, who met at stated intervals to compare their opinions.
A minute or two later we went our respective ways, Thorndyke toward Lombard Street and I to Fetter Lane, not unmindful of those coming events that were casting so agreeable a shadow before them. For the shade of the author of Rasselas still seems to haunt the scenes of his Titanic labors and his ponderous but homely and temperate rejoicings.
According to the custom which has descended from age to age among the monarchs of the torrid zone, Rasselas was confined in a private palace, with the other sons and daughters of Abyssinian royalty, till the order of succession should call him to the throne.
She would have thought it wicked to say more; but so far she thought she might go, considering the sacred tie which was to exist between her pupil and the gentleman in question. "Oh, yes, indeed I do;" and then Mary's eyes fell wishfully on the cover of the book which lay in her lap while her finger kept the place. Rasselas is not very exciting, but it was more so than Mrs. Thomas.
S. Johnson, whose history of "Rasselas" you have never read, my poor soul; and whose tragedy of "Irene" I don't believe any man in these kingdoms ever perused. That tipsy Scotch gentleman who used to come to the chambers sometimes, and at whom everybody laughed, wrote a more amusing book than any of the scholars, your Mr. Burke and your Mr. Johnson, and your Doctor Goldsmith.
Johnson managed to raise twelve guineas, six of them borrowed from his printer, to send to his dying mother. In order to gain money for her funeral expenses and some small debts, he wrote the story of Rasselas. It was composed in the evenings of a single week, and sent to press as it was written.
They are of those who "pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope," and who, since they expect that "the deficiencies of last sentence will be supplied by the next," have been recommended by Dr. Samuel Johnson to "attend to the History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia." They are characterised by a hectic hopefulness. Nothing damps them.
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