The vehicle for that teaching was the periodical essay, or what we would now call the "think piece" of our more serious journalism. The Spectator and The Tatler of Addison and Steele had fallen by the wayside, so Johnson single-handedly revived the genre with The Rambler, in which he pronounced twice weekly (publication Tuesdays and Saturdays) on books, on politics, on morals, on life. He keeps returning his reader to the essential things. The opening of Rambler 81 condenses his idea of a Christian society into two sentences of compelling lucidity:

The measure of Justice prescribed to us, in our transactions with others, is remarkably clear and comprehensive: "whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do unto them." A law by which every claim of right may be immediately adjusted, as far as the private conscience requires to be informed; a law, of which every man may find exposition in his own breast, and which may always be observed by honesty of intention and purity of will.

A High Church Anglican who wrestled with his conscience and his melancholy in prayers and meditation of deep humility, Johnson found both personal comfort and political wisdom in the words of Jesus. In building a theory of rights on the basis of the Sermon on the Mount, he became zealous against every form of slavery. Invited back to Oxford as a celebrity, he shocked the dons with his post-prandial toast, "Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies." More importantly, he carried his principles into his private life, taking a motley assortment of waifs and strays into his household. And loving them.

He was a man of prodigious industry, who singlehandedly compiled A Dictionary of the English Language:

ADAMS But, Sir, how can you do this in three years?

JOHNSON Sir, I have no doubt that I can do it in three years.

ADAMS But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their Dictionary.

JOHNSON Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.

To be fair, the Dictionary took him eight years. But that was no reason for him constantly to berate himself for sloth.

No sooner had he finished the dictionary than he set to work on a new edition of the complete plays of Shakespeare, with commentary. Where the words of Jesus gave him his model of virtue, in those of Shakespeare he found the perfect account of human failings, especially his own. There is no better example than his note to the duke's great speech on life and death in the third act of Measure for Measure. "Thou hast nor youth, nor age; / But as it were an after-dinner's sleep, / Dreaming on both." Johnson glosses, with a clear eye on his own restless inability to live in the moment: