Selected Essays
Twice a week for two years, with the printer's boy waiting at the door, Johnson produced a Rambler essay on sorrow, idleness, marriage, money, or the hunger of imagination — all while single-handedly writing the Dictionary. The Idler followed, looser and funnier. He invented the moral column and set its ceiling: you come for the organ-toned sentences and leave having been personally described.
Every essay is built on the same seesaw: paired abstractions balanced against paired abstractions until the moral drops into place, and you saw the moral coming from the first sentence. He wrote at deadline speed and padded accordingly; idleness is bad, patience is good, hope will disappoint you. Sturdy furniture, but you have sat on it before. The liveliest Johnson is next door in Boswell's book, talking.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.