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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: or the Guardian, the Mirror or the Lounger, as my poor abilities
may be able to accomplish. Not that I have any purpose of
imitating Johnson, whose general learning and power of expression
I do not deny, but many of whose Ramblers are little better than
a sort of pageant, where trite and obvious maxims are made to
swagger in lofty and mystic language, and get some credit only
because they are not easily understood. There are some of the
great moralist's papers which I cannot peruse without thinking on
a second-rate masquerade, where the best-known and least-esteemed
characters in town march in as heroes, and sultans, and so forth,
and, by dint of tawdry dresses, get some consideration until they
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