The hero is a sort of Grandison-Buncle, as proper though scarcely as priggish as the one, and as eccentric and discursive as the other; the story is chaos: the book is stuffed with disquisitions on all sorts of moral, social, and political problems.

It is excellently written; it is clear from it that Brooke (who was for a time actually mad) did not belie the connection of great wits with madness.

But it is, perhaps, most valuable as an evidence of the unconquerable set of the time towards novel.
Of this, however, as of some other points, we have greater evidence still in the shape of two books, each of them, as nothing else yet mentioned in this chapter can claim to be, a permanent and capital contribution to English literature--Johnson's _Rasselas_ (1759) and Goldsmith's _Vicar of Wakefield_ (1766).
It is not from the present writer that any one need look for an attempt to belittle Johnson: and there is no doubt (for the _Lives of the Poets_ is but a bundle of essays) that _Rasselas_ is Johnson's greatest _book_.
But there may be, in some minds, as little doubt that attempts to defend it from the charge of not being a novel are only instances of that not wholly unamiable frenzy of eagerness to "say _not_ ditto to Mr.Burke" which is characteristic of clever undergraduates, and of periods which are not quite of the greatest in literature.

_Rasselas_ is simply an extended and glorified moral apologue--an enlarged "Vision of Mirza." It has no real story; it has no real characters; its dialogue is "talking book;" it indulges in some but not much description.

It is in fact a prose _Vanity of Human Wishes_, admirably if somewhat stiffly arranged in form, and as true to life as life itself.