No More Learning

He thought
that no adventitious or foreign pain was requisite; that decrepi-
tude itself was an epitome of whatever is dreadful; and nothing
could be added to the curse of age, but that it should be ex-
tended beyond its natural limits.
The most indifferent or negligent spectator can indeed scarcely
retire without heaviness of heart from a view of the last scenes
of the tragedy of life, in which he finds those who in the former


## p. 8305 (#509) ###########################################

SAMUEL JOHNSON
8305
parts of the drama were distinguished by opposition of conduct,
contrariety of designs, and dissimilitude of personal qualities, all
involved in one common distress, and all struggling with afflic-
tion which they cannot hope to overcome.
The other miseries which waylay our passage through the
world, wisdom may escape and fortitude may conquer: by cau-
tion and circumspection we may steal along with very little to
obstruct or incommode us; by spirit and vigor we may force a
way, and reward the vexation of contest by the pleasures of vic-
tory. But a time must come when our policy and bravery shall
be equally useless; when we shall all sink into helplessness and
sadness, without any power of receiving solace from the pleasures
that have formerly delighted us, or any prospect of emerging into
a second possession of the blessings that we have lost.
The industry of man has indeed not been wanting in endeav-
ors to procure comforts for these hours of dejection and melan-
choly, and to gild the dreadful gloom with artificial light. The
most usual support of old age is wealth. He whose possessions
are large and whose chests are full imagines himself always for-
tified against invasions on his authority. If he has lost all other
means of government, if his strength and his reason fail him,
he can at last alter his will; and therefore all that have hopes
must likewise have fears, and he may still continue to give laws
to such as have not ceased to regard their own interest.
This is indeed too frequently the citadel of the dotard; the
last fortress to which age retires, and in which he makes the
stand against the upstart race that seizes his domains, disputes
his commands, and cancels his prescriptions. But here, though
there may be safety, there is no pleasure; and what remains is
but a proof that more was once possessed.
Nothing seems to have been more universally dreaded by the
ancients than orbity, or want of children; and indeed to a man
who has survived all the companions of his youth,— all who
have participated his pleasures and his cares, have been engaged
in the same events and filled their minds with the same concep-
tions, - this full-peopled world is a dismal solitude. He stands
forlorn and silent, neglected or insulted, in the midst of multi-
tudes animated with hopes which he cannot share and employed
in business which he is no longer able to forward or retard; nor
can he find any to whom his life or his death are of importance,
unless he has secured some domestic gratifications, some tender
XIV-520


## p. 8306 (#510) ###########################################

8306
SAMUEL JOHNSON
employments, and endeared himself to some whose interest and
gratitude may unite them to him.
So different are the colors of life as we look forward to the
future or backward to the past, and so different the opinions
and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally
produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends gen-
erally with contempt or pity on either side. To a young man
entering the world with fullness of hope and ardor of pursuit,
nothing is so unpleasing as the cold caution, the faint expecta-
tions, the scrupulous diffidence, which experience and disappoint-
ments certainly infuse: and the old man wonders in his turn
that the world never can grow wiser; that neither precepts nor
testimonies can cure boys of their credulity and sufficiency; and
that no one can be convinced that snares are laid for him, till
he finds himself entangled.
Thus one generation is always the scorn and wonder of the
other; and the notions of the old and young are like liquors of
different gravity and texture, which never can unite. The spir-
its of youth, sublimed by health and volatilized by passion, soon
leave behind them the phlegmatic sediment of weariness and
deliberation, and burst out in temerity and enterprise. The
tenderness therefore which nature infuses, and which long habits
of beneficence confirm, is necessary to reconcile such opposition;
and an old man must be a father, to bear with patience those
follies and absurdities which he will perpetually imagine himself
to find in the schemes and expectations, the pleasures and the
sorrows, of those who have not yet been hardened by time and
chilled by frustration.
Yet it may be doubted whether the pleasure of seeing child-
ren ripening into strength be not overbalanced by the pain of
seeing some fall in the blossom, and others blasted in their
growth; some shaken down with storms, some tainted with can-
kers, and some shriveled in the shade: and whether he that
extends his care beyond himself does not multiply his anxieties
more than his pleasures, and weary himself to no purpose by
superintending what he cannot regulate.
But though age be to every order of human beings suffi-
ciently terrible, it is particularly to be dreaded by fine ladies,
who have no other end or ambition than to fill up the day and
the night with dress, diversions, and flattery; and who, having
made no acquaintance with knowledge or with business, have


## p. 8307 (#511) ###########################################

SAMUEL JOHNSON
8307
constantly caught all their ideas from the current prattle of the
hour, and been indebted for all their happiness to compliments
and treats. With these ladies age begins early, and very often
lasts long: it begins when their beauty fades, when their mirth
loses its sprightliness and their motion its ease. From that time
all which gave them joy vanishes from about them. They hear
the praises bestowed on others, which used to swell their bosoms
with exultation. They visit the seats of felicity, and endeavor
.
to continue the habit of being delighted. But pleasure is only
received when we believe that we give it in return. Neglect and
petulance inform them that their power and their value are
past; and what then remains but a tedious and comfortless uni-
formity of time, without any motion of the heart or exercise of
the reason ?
Yet however age may discourage us by its appearance from
considering it in prospect, we shall all by degrees certainly be
old; and therefore we ought to inquire what provision can be
made against that time of distress? what happiness can be stored
up against the winter of life? and how we may pass our latter
years with serenity and cheerfulness?
It has been found by the experience of mankind that not
even the best seasons of life are able to supply sufficient gratifi-
cations, without anticipating uncertain felicities; it cannot surely
be supposed that old age, worn with labors, harassed with anxie-
ties, and tortured with diseases, should have any gladness of its
own, or feel any satisfaction from the contemplation of the pres-
ent. All the comfort that can now be expected must be recalled
from the past, or borrowed from the future: the past is very
soon exhausted, all the events or actions of which the memory
can afford pleasure are quickly recollected; and the future lies
beyond the grave, where it can be reached only by virtue and
devotion.
Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man.
He that grows old without religious hopes, as he declines into
imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding
upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every
reflection must plunge him deeper, and where he finds only new
gradations of anguish and precipices of horror.


## p. 8308 (#512) ###########################################

8308
SAMUEL JOHNSON
A STUDY OF MILTON'S PARADISE LOST)
From Milton,' in the Lives of the Poets )
M" ety; a greater work calls for greater care.
ilton's little pieces may be dispatched without much anxi-
I am now to
examine Paradise Lost'; a poem which considered with
respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to
performance the second, among the productions of the human
mind.
By the general consent of critics the first praise of genius is
due to the writer of an epic poem, as it requires an assemblage
of all the powers which are singly sufficient for other composi-
tions. Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by call-
ing imagination to the help of reason. Epic poetry undertakes to
teach the most important truths by the most pleasing precepts,
and therefore relates some great event in the most affecting
manner. History must supply the writer with the rudiments of
narration, which he must improve and exalt by a nobler art,
must animate by dramatic energy, and diversify by retrospection
and anticipation; morality must teach him the exact bounds and
different shades of vice and virtue; from policy and the practice
of life he has to learn the discriminations of character and the
tendency of the passions, either single or combined; and physi-
ology must supply him with illustrations and images. To put these
materials to poetical use, is required an imagination capable of
painting nature and realizing fiction. Nor is he yet a poet till he
has attained the whole extension of his language, distinguished
all the delicacies of phrase and all the colors of words, and
learned to adjust their different sounds to all the varieties of
metrical modulation.
Bossu is of opinion that the poet's first work is to find a
moral, which his fable is afterwards to illustrate and establish.
This seems to have been the process only of Milton: the moral
of other poems is incidental and consequent; in Milton's only
it is essential and intrinsic. His purpose was the most useful
and the most arduous: “to vindicate the ways of God to man;"
to show the reasonableness of religion, and the necessity of obe-
dience to the Divine Law.
To convey this moral there must be a fable; a narration art-
fully constructed, so as to excite curiosity and surprise expecta-
tion. In this part of his work Milton must be confessed to have


## p. 8309 (#513) ###########################################

SAMUEL JOHNSON
8309
equaled every other poet. He has involved in his account of
the Fall of Man the events which preceded and those that were
to follow it; he has interwoven the whole system of theology
with such propriety that every part appears to be necessary; and
scarcely any recital is wished shorter for the sake of quickening
the progress of the main action.
The subject of an epic poem is naturally an event of great
importance. That of Milton is not the destruction of a city, the
conduct of a colony, or the foundation of an empire. His sub-
ject is the fate of worlds, the revolutions of heaven and of earth;
rebellion against the Supreme King, raised by the highest order
of created beings; the overthrow of their host, and the punish-
ment of their crime; the creation of a new race of reasonable
creatures; their original happiness and innocence, their forfeiture
of immortality, and their restoration to hope and peace.
Of the probable and the marvelous, two parts of a vulgar epic
poem which immerge the critic in deep consideration, the Para-
dise Lost' requires little to be said. It contains the history of
a miracle,- of creation and redemption; it displays the power
and the mercy of the Supreme Being: the probable therefore is
marvelous, and the marvelous is probable. The substance of
the narrative is truth; and as truth allows no choice, it is, like
necessity, superior to rule. To the accidental or adventitious
parts, as to everything human, some slight exceptions may be
made; but the main fabric is immovably supported.
To the completeness or integrity of the design nothing can be
objected: it has distinctly and clearly what Aristotle requires-a
beginning, a middle, and an end. There is perhaps no poem of
the same length from which so little can be taken without ap-
parent mutilation. Here are no funeral games, nor is there any
long description of a shield. The short digressions at the begin-
ning of the third, seventh, and ninth books might doubtless be
spared; but superfluities so beautiful who would take away? or
who does not wish that the author of the Iliad had gratified
succeeding ages with a little knowledge of himself? Perhaps
no passages are more attentively read than those extrinsic para-
graphs; and since the end of poetry is pleasure, that cannot be
unpoetical with which all are pleased.
The questions whether the action of the poem be strictly
one, whether the poem can be properly termed heroic, and who
is the hero, are raised by such readers as draw their principles


## p. 8310 (#514) ###########################################

8310
SAMUEL JOHNSON
>>
of judgment rather from books than from reason. Milton, though
he entitled Paradise Lost' only a poem,” yet calls it himself
"heroic song. " Dryden petulantiy and indecently denies the
heroism of Adam, because he was overcome; but there is no
reason why the hero should not be unfortunate, except established
practice, since success and virtue do not go necessarily together.
Cato is the hero of Lucan; but Lucan's authority will not be
suffered by Quintilian to decide. However, if success be neces-
sary, Adam's deceiver was at last crushed; Adam was restored
to his Maker's favor, and therefore may securely resume his
human rank.
After the scheme and fabric of the poem, must be considered
its component parts, the sentiments and the diction.
The sentiments, as expressive of manners or appropriated to
characters, are for the greater part unexceptionably just. Splen-
did passages containing lessons of morality or precepts of pru-
dence occur seldom. Such is the original formation of this
poem, that as it admits no human manners till the Fall, it can
give little assistance to human conduct. Its end is to raise the
thoughts above sublunary cares or pleasures. Yet the praise of
that fortitude with which Abdiel maintained his singularity of
virtue against the scorn of multitudes may be accommodated
to all times; and Raphael's reproof of Adam's curiosity after
the planetary motions, with the answer returned by Adam, may
be confidently opposed to any rule of life which any poet has
delivered.
The thoughts which are occasionally called forth in the pro-
gress are such as could only be produced by an imagination in
the highest degree fervid and active, to which materials were
supplied by incessant study and unlimited curiosity. The heat of
Milton's mind may be said to sublimate his learning, to throw off
into his work the spirit of science, unmingled with its grosser
parts.
He had considered creation in its whole extent, and his de-
scriptions are therefore learned. He had accustomed his imagi-
nation to unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions therefore
were extensive. The characteristic quality of his poem is sublim-
ity. He sometimes descends to the elegant, but his element is
the great.
He can occasionally invest himself with grace; but
his natural port is gigantic loftiness. He can please when pleas-
ure is required; but it is his peculiar power to astonish.


## p. 8311 (#515) ###########################################

SAMUEL JOHNSON
8311
He seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius,
and to know what it was that nature had bestowed upon him
more bountifully than upon others,— the power of displaying the
vast, illuminating the splendid, enforcing the awful, darkening the
gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful: he therefore chose a sub-
ject on which too much could not be said, on which he might
tire his fancy without the censure of extravagance.
The appearances of nature, and the occurrences of life, did not
satiate his appetite of greatness. To paint things as they are,
requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than
the fancy. Milton's delight was to sport in the wide regions of
possibility; reality was a scene too narrow for his mind. He sent
his faculties out upon discovery, into worlds where only imagina-
tion can travel, and delighted to form new modes of existence,
and furnish sentiment and action to superior beings; to trace the
counsels of hell, or accompany the choirs of heaven.
But he could not be always in other worlds; he must some-
times revisit earth, and tell of things visible and known. When
he cannot raise wonder by the sublimity of his mind, he gives
delight by its fertility.
The ancient epic poets, wanting the light of Revelation, were
very unskillful teachers of virtue; their principal characters may
be great, but they are not amiable. The reader may rise from
their works with a greater degree of active or passive fortitude,
and sometimes of prudence; but he will be able to carry away
few precepts of justice, and none of mercy. From the Italian
writers it appears that the advantages of even Christian knowl-
edge may be possessed in vain. Ariosto's pravity is generally
known; and though the “Deliverance of Jerusalem' may be
considered as a sacred subject, the poet has been very sparing
of moral instruction. In Milton every line breathes sanctity of
thought and purity of manners, except when the train of the
narration requires the introduction of the rebellious spirits; and
even they are compelled to acknowledge their subjection to God,
in such a manner as excites reverence and confirms piety.
Of human beings there are but two; but those two are the
parents of mankind, venerable before their fall for dignity and
innocence, and amiable after it for repentance and submission.
In the first state their affection is tender without weakness, and
their piety sublime without presumption. When they have sinned,
they show how discord begins in mutual frailty, and how it


## p. 8312 (#516) ###########################################

8312
SAMUEL JOHNSON
ought to cease in mutual forbearance; how confidence of the
Divine favor is forfeited by sin, and how hope of pardon may
be obtained by penitence and prayer. A state of innocence we
can only conceive, if indeed in our present misery it be possible
to conceive it; but the sentiments and worship proper to a fallen
and offending being we have all to learn, as we have all to
practice.
The poet, whatever be done, is always great. Our progeni-
tors in their first state conversed with angels; even when folly
and sin had degraded them, they had not in their humiliation
«the port of mean suitors”; and they rise again to reverential
regard when we find that their prayers were heard.
As human passions did not enter the world before the Fall,
there is in the Paradise Lost' little opportunity for the pathetic;
but what little there is, has not been lost. That passion which
is peculiar to rational nature, the anguish arising from the con-
sciousness of transgression, and the horrors attending the sense
of the Divine displeasure, are very justly described and forcibly
impressed. But the passions are moved only on one occasion:
sublimity is the general and prevailing quality in this poem;
sublimity variously modified, — sometimes descriptive, sometimes
argumentative.
The defects and faults of Paradise Lost'— for faults and
defects every work of man must have — it is the business of
impartial criticism to discover. As in displaying the excellence
of Milton I have not made long quotations, because of selecting
beauties there had been no end, I shall in the same general
manner mention that which seems to deserve censure; for what
Englishman can take delight in transcribing passages which, if
they lessen the reputation of Milton, diminish in some degree the
honor of our country ?
The generality of my scheme does not admit the frequent
notice of verbal inaccuracies: which Bentley, perhaps better
skilled in grammar than poetry, has often found, - though he
sometimes made them,- and which he imputed to the obtrus-
ions of a reviser whom the author's blindness obliged him to
employ; a supposition rash and groundless if he thought it true,
and vile and pernicious if — as is said — he in private allowed
–
it to be false.
The plan of Paradise Lost' has this inconvenience, that it
comprises neither human actions nor human manners. The man


## p. 8313 (#517) ###########################################

SAMUEL JOHNSON
8313
or
and woman who act and suffer are in a state which no other man
woman can ever know. The reader finds no transaction in
which he can be engaged, beholds no condition in which he
can by any effort of imagination place himself; he has therefore
little natural curiosity or sympathy.
We all indeed feel the effects of Adam's disobedience; we
all sin like Adam, and like him must all bewail our offenses; we
have restless and insidious enemies in the fallen angels, and in
the blessed spirits we have guardians and friends; in the redemp-
tion of mankind we hope to be included; in the description of
heaven and hell we are surely interested, as we are all to reside
hereafter either in the regions of horror or bliss.
But these truths are too important to be new: they have
been taught to our infancy; they have mingled with our solitary
thoughts and familiar conversations, and are habitually interwoven
with the whole texture of life. Being therefore not new, they
raise no unaccustomed emotion in the mind; what we knew
before, we cannot learn; what is not unexpected, cannot surprise.
Of the ideas suggested by these awful scenes, from some we
recede with reverence, except when stated hours require their
association; and from others we shrink with horror, or admit
them only as salutary inflictions, as counterpoises to our interests
and passions. Such images rather obstruct the career of fancy
than incite it.
Pleasure and terror are indeed the genuine sources of poetry;
but poetical pleasure must be such as human imagination can at
least conceive, and poetical terrors such as human strength and
fortitude may combat. The good and evil of eternity are too
ponderous for the wings of wit; the mind sinks under them in
passive helplessness, content with calm belief and humble adora-
tion.
Known truths, however, may take a different appearance, and
be conveyed to the mind by a new train of intermediate images.
This Milton has undertaken and performed with pregnancy and
vigor of mind peculiar to himself. Whoever considers the few
radical positions which the Scriptures afforded him, will wonder
by what energetic operation he expanded them to such extent,
and ramified them to so much variety, restrained as he was by
religious reverence from licentiousness of fiction.
Here is a full display of the united force of study and gen-
ius,- of a great accumulation of materials, with judgment to
-


## p. 8314 (#518) ###########################################

8314
SAMUEL JOHNSON
(
digest and fancy to combine them: Milton was able to select
from nature or from story, from an ancient fable or from modern
science, whatever could illustrate or adorn his thoughts. An accu- .
mulation of knowledge impregnated his mind, fermented by study
and exalted by imagination.
It has been therefore said, without an indecent hyperbole, by
one of his encomiasts, that in reading Paradise Lost' we read a
book of universal knowledge.
But original deficiency cannot be supplied. The want of
human interest is always felt. Paradise Lost' is one of the
books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to
take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its
perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for
.
instruction, retire harassed and overburdened, and look elsewhere
for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions.
Another inconvenience of Milton's design is, that it requires
the description of what cannot be described, the agency of spirits.
He saw that immateriality supplied no images, and that he could
not show angels acting but by instruments of action; he there-
fore invested them with form and matter. This being necessary,
was therefore defensible; and he should have secured the con-
sistency of his system by keeping immateriality out of sight, and
enticing his reader to drop it from his thoughts. But he has
unhappily perplexed his poetry with his philosophy. His infernal
and celestial powers are sometimes pure spirit, and sometimes
animated body. When Satan walks with his lance upon the
“burning marl,” he has a body; when, in his passage between
hell and the new world, he is in danger of sinking in the vacu-
ity, and is supported by a gust of rising vapors, he has a body;
when he animates the toad, he seems to be mere spirit, that can
penetrate matter at pleasure; when he starts up in his own
shape,” he has at least a determined form; and when he is
brought before Gabriel, he has a spear and a shield,” which he
had the power of hiding in the toad, though the arms of the
contending angels are evidently material.
The vulgar inhabitants of Pandæmonium, being incorporeal
spirits,” are "at large, though without number,” in a limited
space; yet in the battle when they were overwhelmed by mount-
ains, their armor hurt them, "crushed in upon their substance,
now grown gross by sinning. ” This likewise happened to the
uncorrupted angels, who were overthrown the sooner for their
((


## p. 8315 (#519) ###########################################

SAMUEL JOHNSON
8315
(
.
arms, for unarmed they might easily as spirits have evaded by
contraction or remove. ” Even as spirits they are hardly spiritual:
for “contraction” and “remove ” are images of matter; but if
they could have escaped without their armor, they might have
escaped from it and left only the empty cover to be battered.
Uriel when he rides on a sunbeam is material; Satan is material
when he is afraid of the prowess of Adam.
The confusion of spirit and matter which pervades the whole
narration of the war of heaven fills it with incongruity; and the
book in which it is related is, I believe, the favorite of children,
and gradually neglected as knowledge is increased.
After the operation of immaterial agents which cannot be
explained, may be considered that of allegorical persons which
have no real existence. To exalt causes into agents, to invest
abstract ideas with form, and animate them with activity, has
always been the right of poetry.
Milton's allegory of Sin and Death is undoubtedly faulty. Sin
is indeed the mother of Death, and may be allowed to be the
portress of hell; but when they stop the journey of Satan, a
journey described as real, and when Death offers him battle, the
allegory is broken. That Sin and Death should have shown the
way to hell, might have been allowed; but they cannot facilitate
the passage by building a bridge, because the difficulty of Satan's
passage is described as real and sensible, and the bridge ought
to be only figurative. The hell assigned to the rebellious spirits
is described as not less local than the residence of man. It is
placed in some distant part of space, separated from the regions
of harmony and order by a chaotic waste and an unoccupied
vacuity; but Sin and Death worked up a “mole of aggravated
soil” cemented with asphaltus, a work too bulky for ideal archi-
tects.
This unskillful allegory appears to me one of the greatest
faults of the poem; and to this there was no temptation but the
author's opinion of its beauty.
To the conduct of the narrative some objections may be
made. Satan is with great expectation brought before Gabriel
in Paradise, and is suffered to go away unmolested. The crea-
tion of man is represented as the consequence of the vacuity
left in heaven by the expulsion of the rebels; yet Satan men-
tions it as a report “rife in Heaven” before his departure. To
find sentiments for the state of innocence was very difficult; and


## p. 8316 (#520) ###########################################

8316
SAMUEL JOHNSON
something of anticipation perhaps is now and then discovered.
Adam's discourse of dreams seems not to be the speculation of a
new-created being. I know not whether his answer to the angel's
reproof for curiosity does not want something of propriety: it is
the speech of a man acquainted with many other men. Some
philosophical notions, especially when the philosophy is false,
might have been better omitted. The angel, in a comparison,
speaks of timorous deer,” before deer were yet timorous, and
before Adam could understand the comparison.
Whatever be the faults of his diction, he cannot want the
praise of copiousness and variety. He was master of his lan-
guage in its full extent; and has selected the melodious words
with such diligence, that from his book alone the Art of English
Poetry might be learned
The highest praise of genius is original invention. Milton
cannot be said to have contrived the structure of an epic poem;
and therefore owes reverence to that vigor and amplitude of
mind to which all generations must be indebted for the art
of poetical narration, for the texture of the fable, the variation of
incidents, the interposition of dialogue, and all the stratagems
that surprise and enchain attention. But of all the borrowers
from Homer, Milton is perhaps the least indebted. He was nat-
urally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, and
disdainful of help or hindrance: he did not refuse admission to
the thoughts or images of his predecessors, but he did not seek
them. From his contemporaries he neither courted nor received
support; there is in his writings nothing by which the pride of
other authors might be gratified, or favor gained; no exchange
of praise nor solicitation of support. His great works were per-
formed under discountenance and in blindness; but difficulties
vanished at his touch: he was born for whatever is arduous; and
his work is not the greatest of heroic poems, only because it is
not the first.


## p. 8317 (#521) ###########################################

8317
RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON
(1822-)
-
NE of the most distinctive and pleasant features of American
literature in its development since 1870 has been the work
of Southern writers. They have portrayed in sketch, poem,
and story,— notably in the latter form,—the scenes, types, and nat-
ural beauties of a picturesque and romantic part of the United States,
rich in colors and flavors of its own, and a most hopeful field for
literary cultivation. Different authors, men and women, have drawn
with sympathetic insight the characters peculiar to their own sections
or States, and a product of originality and
value has been the result. To mention but
a few names: Mr. Page and Mrs. Stuart
have done this for Virginia and Alabama,
Miss Murfree for Tennessee, «Octave Tha-
net” for the Southwest, Mr. James Lane
Allen for Kentucky, and Messrs. Harris and
Johnston for Georgia. The last mentioned,
R. M. Johnston, holds an honorable place
amid the elder authors of the South because
of his lively, humorously unctuous, and
truthfully limned studies of Georgia folk.
Richard Malcolm Johnston was born in
1822 in Hancock County, Georgia, and was RICHARD M. JOHNSTON
graduated from Mercer University in that
State in 1841. He was admitted to the bar, and practiced his pro-
fession at Sparta, Georgia; but like the legion before him who have
felt themselves called to scholarship and literature, he turned from
the law, declining such a substantial bait as a judgeship, and in 1857
became professor of belles-lettres in the University of Georgia, holding
the position until the breaking out of the war in 1861. Afterwards
he opened a select classical school at Rockby, in his native county,
and it became a noted institution in the South. In 1867 the school
was moved to the suburbs of Baltimore; and since its abandonment
Colonel Johnston has resided in that city.
The stories which gave him reputation, The Dukesborough Tales,'
first appeared in the old Southern Magazine, and were published later
in book form (1871). Some time before, he had printed his "Georgia
Sketches: By an Old Man' (1864). In 1884 came Old Mark Langston:

(


## p. 8318 (#522) ###########################################

8318
RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON
(
A Tale of Duke's Creek'; in 1885 (Two Grey Tourists'; Mr. Absa-
lom Billingslea and Other Georgia Folk dates from 1888; Ogeechee
Cross-Firings from 1889; and still later books of fiction are Widow
Guthrie (1890); (The Primes and their Neighbors,' Mr. Fortner's
Marital Claims) (1892); (Mr. Billy Downs and his Likes) (1892); and
Little Ike Templin and Other Stories (1894). Colonel Johnston has
also written a biography of Alexander H. Stephens, a sketch of Eng-
lish literature (in collaboration with Professor William Hand Browne),
and several volumes of essays.
Colonel Johnston's representative work is found in the Dukes-
borough Tales. All his later fiction bears a family resemblance to
this inimitable series, in which is reproduced the old-time Georgian
country life among white folks from a supposed contemporary's coign
of vantage, and in a way to give the reader a vivid sense of local
custom, tradition, and trait. The sly fun of these genial stories is
delicious; the revelations of human nature are keen, while the tem-
per is kindly and tolerant. Johnston does for the white people of a
certain period and section what Page and Harris do for the negroes;
and he does it once and for all.
THE EARLY MAJORITY OF MR. THOMAS WATTS
Copyright 1883, by Harper & Brothers. Reprinted by permission of the
author
« () 'tis a parlous boy. ”
- (RICHARD III. )
L
ITTLE Tom Watts, as he used to be called before the unex-
pected developments which I propose briefly to narrate, was
the second in a family of eight children, his sister Susan
being the eldest. His parents dwelt in a small house situate
on the edge of Dukesborough. Mr. Simon Watts, though of
extremely limited means, had some ambition. He held the office
of constable in that militia district, and in seasons favorable to
law business made about fifty dollars a year. The outside world
seemed to think it was a pity that the head of a family so large
and continually increasing should so persistently prefer mere
fame to the competency which would have followed upon his
staying at home and working his little field of very good ground.
But he used to contend that a man could not be expected to
live always, and therefore he ought to try to live in such a way
as to leave his family, if nothing else, a name that they wouldn't
be ashamed to hear mentioned after he was gone.


## p. 8319 (#523) ###########################################

RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON
8319
Yet Mr. Watts was not a cheerful man. Proud as he might
justly feel in his official position, it went hard with him to be
compelled to live in a way more and more pinched as his family
continued to multiply with astonishing rapidity. His spirits, nat-
urally saturnine, grew worse and worse with every fresh arrival
in the person of a baby, until the eighth. Being yet a young
man, comparatively speaking, and being used to make calcula-
tions, the figures seemed too large as he looked to the future. I
would not go so far as to say that this prospect actually killed
him; but at any rate he took a sickness which the doctor could
not manage, and then Mr. Watts gave up his office and every-
thing else that he had in this world.
But Mrs. Watts, his widow, had as good a resolution as any
other woman in her circumstances ever had. She had no notion
of giving up in that way. She gave up her husband, it is true,
but that could not be helped; and without making much ado
about even that, she kept going at all sorts of work, and some-
how she got along at least as well after as before the death of
Mr. Simon.
A person not well acquainted with the brood of little Wattses
often found difficulty in discriminating among them. I used
to observe them with considerable interest as I went into Dukes-
borough occasionally, with one or the other
or the other or both of my
parents. They all had white hair, and red chubby faces. It
was long a matter of doubt what was their sex. Such was the
rapidity of their succession, and so graduated the declivity from
Susan downwards, that the mother used to cut all their garments
after a fashion that was very general, in order that they might
descend during the process of decay to as many of them as
possible. Now, although I saw them right often, I had believed
for several months, for instance, that little Jack was a girl, from
a yellow frock that had belonged to his sister Mary Jane, but
which little Jack wore until his legs became subjected to such
exposure that it had to descend to Polly Ann, his next younger
sister. Then I made a similar mistake about Polly Ann, who
during this time had worn little Jack's breeches, out of which he
had gone into Mary Jane's frock; and I thought on my soul that
Polly Ann was a boy.
In regard to Tommy, not only I, but the whole public, had
been in a state of uncertainty in this behalf for a great length of
time. Having no older brother, and Susan's outgrown dresses


## p. 8320 (#524) ###########################################

8320
RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON
being alone available, his male wardrobe was inevitably only
half as extensive and various as by good rights, generally speak-
ing, it ought to have been. Therefore Tommy had to make his
appearance alternately in frock and breeches, according to the
varying conditions of these garments, for a period that annoyed
him the more the longer it extended, and finally began to dis-
gust. Tom eagerly wished that he could outgrow Susan, and
thus get into breeches out and out. But Susan in this respect,
as indeed in almost all others, kept her distance in the lead.
There was a difference, easily noticeable, in Tom's deportment
in these seasons. While in frocks it was subdued, retiring, and
if not melancholy, at least fretful. Curiosity perhaps, or some
other motive equally powerful, might and indeed sometimes did
lead him outside of the gate; but never to linger there for any
great length of time. If he had to go upon an errand during
that season (a necessity which that resolute woman his mother
enforced without the slightest hesitation), he went and returned
with speed. Yet before starting out on such occasions, he was
wont to be careful to give his hair such a turn that his manly
head might refute the lie which Susan's frock had told. For it
is probable that there have been few, if indeed any, boys who
were more unwilling either to be or to be considered of the
opposite sex, than that same Tom Watts. I do not remember
ever to have seen a boy whose hair had so high and peculiar a
roach as his exhibited, especially when he wore his sister Susan's
frocks. Instead of being parted in the middle, it was divided
into three parts. It was combed perfectly straight down on the
sides of his head, and perfectly straight up from the top. An
immense distance was thus established between the extremities
of any two hairs which receded contiguously to each other on the
border-lines.
All this was an artful attempt to divert public attention from
the frock which intimated the female, to the head which asserted
and which was supposed to establish the male. He once said to
Susan:
“When they sees your old frock, they makes out like that they
'spicions me a gal; but when they looks at my har all roached
up, then they knows who I am. ”
« Yes indeed,” answered Susan, and a sight you air. Good-
ness knows, I'd rather be a girl, and rather look like one if I
weren't, than to look like you do in that fix. ”
((


## p. 8321 (#525) ###########################################

RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON
8321
But it was during the other season, that which he called
his breeches week, that Tommy Watts was most himself. In this
period he was cheerful, bold, notorious. He was as often upon
the street as he could find opportunities to steal away from home;
and while there, he was as evidently a boy as was to be found
in Dukesborough or any other place of its size. In this happy
.
season he seemed to be disposed to make up as far as possible for
the confinements and the gloominesses of the other. So much
so, indeed, that he had to be whipped time and time again for
his unlicensed wanderings; and for many other pranks which
are indeed common to persons of his age and sex, but which he
seemed to have the greater temptation to do, and which he did
with more zest and temerity than other boys, because he had
only half their time in which to do them. Tom Watts maintained
that if a boy was a boy, then he ought to be a boy; and as for
himself, if he had to be a girl a part of the time, he meant to
double on them for the balance. By them he meant his mammy,
as he was wont to call his surviving parent. But she understood
the method of doubling as well as he; for while she whipped him
with that amount of good-will which in her judgment was proper,
she not unfrequently cut short his gay career by reducing him to
Susan's frock, or (if it was not ready for the occasion) to his own
single shirt. On such occasions he would relapse at once into
the old melancholy ways. If Thomas Watts had been familiar
with classical history, I have not a doubt that in these periods
of his humiliation he would have compared his case with that
the great Achilles, whose mother had kept him in inglorious
seclusion amid the daughters of Lycomedes. Yet, like that hero
further in being extremely imprudent, no sooner would he recover
his male attire than he would seem to think that no laws had
ever been made for him, and he would rush headlong into diffi-
culties and meet their consequences. Tom, as his mother used
to say, was a boy of a “tremenjuous sperrit. ” But it had come
from her, and enough had been left in her for all domestic pur-
poses. In every hand-to-hand encounter between the two, Thomas
was forced to yield and make terms; but he resolved over and
over, and communicated that resolution to many persons, that if
he ever did obtain his liberty, the world should hear from him.
His late father having been to a degree connected, as we remem-
ber, with the legal profession, Tom had learned one item (and
that was probably the only one that he did learn sufficiently well
XIV-521
(


## p. 8322 (#526) ###########################################

8322
RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON
new
to remember) of the law: that was, that young men of fourteen
who had lost their fathers might go into court and choose their
own guardians, and do other things besides. How he did long
for that fourteenth birthday! The more he longed for it, the
longer it seemed in coming. He had gotten to believe that if
it ever should come, he would have lived long enough and had
experience enough for all, even the most difficult and responsible
purposes of human life.
But events that must come will come, if we will only wait
for them. In the process of time, which to the hasty nature of
Tom seemed unreasonably and cruelly long in passing, he seemed
to emerge from the frock for good and all. The latest induce-
ment to a preparation for this liberty was a promise that it
a
should come the sooner, provided he would improve in the care
that he was wont to take of his clothes; for he had been a sad
fellow in that item of personal economy. When this inducement
was placed before him, he entered upon a career. He
abjured wrestlings with other boys, and all other sports and
exercises, however manly, which involved either the tearing of
his attire or contact with the ground. He even began to be
spruce and dandyish; and the public was astonished to find that
in the matter of personal neatness, Tom Watts was likely to
become a pattern to all the youth of Dukesborough and its envi-
rons. His roach grew both in height and in sleekness; and when
his hat was off his head, Tom Watts was the tallest-looking boy
of his inches that I ever saw.
Resolute as was the Widow Watts, she had respect for her
word, and was not deficient in love for her offspring. Besides,
it was getting to be high time for Tom to go to school, if he
ever was to go. Now in a school, I maintain, if nowhere else,
it is undeniably to be desired that everybody's sex should be put
beyond doubt. Even a real girl in a schcol of boys, or a real
boy in a school of girls, it is probable, would both feel and im-
part considerable embarrassment. This would doubtless be much
increased in case where such a matter was in doubt. There is
no telling what a difference an uncertainty in this behalf would
make, not only in the hours of study, but even, and to a per-
haps greater extent, in those of play. I have lived in the world
long enough to feel justified in saying that suspicions and doubts
are more efficacious than facts in producing embarrassments and
alienations. Oh, it is no use to say anything more upon the


## p. 8323 (#527) ###########################################

RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON
8323
subject! Mrs. Watts had sense enough to have respect for public
sentiment; and when Tom was ready for school, Susan's frock
had to be laid aside. However, Mary Jane, who was a fast
grower, went into it with the taking of only a little tuck, and
nothing was wasted.
Tom Watts, therefore, avowedly and notoriously, for good and
for all and forever, became a boy. When he stepped out of
Susan's frock for the last time, and stepped into a new pair of
trousers which had been made for the purpose of honoring the
occasion, he felt himself to be older by many years; and if not
as sleek, he was at least as proud, as any snake, when with the
incoming spring he has left his old skin behind him and glided
into the sunlight with a new one.
The neat habits which he had adopted from policy, he con-
tinued to practice, to his mother's great delight. It was really a
fine thing to observe the care he took with his clothes; and the
manly gait he assumed would have led unthinking persons almost
to conclude that the having been confounded so long with the
other sex had begotten a repugnance for the latter which might
never be removed. Such was the rapidity of his strides towards
manhood, that some females of his acquaintance not unfrequently
spoke of him as Mr. Thomas Watts; while others went further,
left off the Thomas altogether, and called him Mr. Watts.
But time, which is ever making revelations that surprise man-
kind, was not slow to reveal that Mr. Watts had not yet been
fully understood. He had been going to school to Mr. Cordy for
several weeks in the winter, and was believed to be making
reasonable progress.
He had now passed his thirteenth year,
and had gone some distance upon his fourteenth. He had long
looked to that day as the commencement of his majority. A
guardian (or, as he was wont to say, a gardseen) was an incum-
brance which he had long determined to dispense with. This
was not so much, however, because there would not be a thing
for an official to manage except the person of Mr. Thomas
himself, as that he had no doubt — not a shadow of a doubt, in
fact — that such management would be more agreeable, more safe,
and in every way better, in his own hands than in those of any
other person of his acquaintance.
Mr. Cordy's school was in a grove of hickory and oak at the
end of the village opposite to the one at which Mrs. Watts's
cabin stood. At the hither end of this grove was another small


## p. 8324 (#528) ###########################################

8324
RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON
school, of girls, kept by Miss Louisa Wilkins. She was from Ver-
mont, and was a young lady of about twenty-eight years, very
fair, somewhat tall, and upon the whole rather good — certainly a
cheerful — looking face. For I should remark that Dukesborough,
which ever held Augusta in view, had in the pride of its ambi-
tion abolished the system of mixed schools; and though the
number of children was rather limited to allow of great division,
still Dukesborough would have, and did have, two institutions of
learning. Miss Wilkins had under her charge about fifteen girls,
ranging from eight years old to fourteen.
Prominent among
them were Miss Adeline Jones, Miss Emily Sharp, Miss Lorinda
Holland, Miss Jane Hutchins, and Mr. Watts's elder sister, Susan.
Mr. Watts's relations to this institution seemed to have been
started by accident. One morning, as with lingering but not un-
manly steps he was passing by on his way to his own school, he
spied Miss Wilkins through the window in the act of kindling a
fire. As her face was turned from him, he had the opportunity,
and he used it, to observe her motion for several moments.
Whether because the kindling-wood was damp, or Miss Wilkins
was not expert, I would not undertake at this late day to say;
but the fire would not make a start: and the lady, apparently
bent upon getting warm in some way, threw down the tongs and
walked rapidly up and down the room. Observing Mr. Watts,
.
and possibly suspecting that he was a person of an accommo-
dating disposition, she requested his assistance.
He yielded
promptly, and it did Miss Wilkins good to see how quickly the
blaze arose and the genial warmth radiated through the room.
The artificial heat at once subsided, and she smiled and thanked
him in a way that could not soon be forgotten. Then she in-
quired his name, and was surprised and gratified to know that so
manly a person as he was should be the brother of one of the
best and most biddable girls in her school.
This accident, trifling in appearance, led to consequences. Mr.
Watts had frequent opportunities of rendering this same service,
and others of an equally obliging nature. These gave him access
to the school in its hours of ease; and the care that he took of
his clothes, and the general manners that he adopted, were reach-
ing to a height that approached perfection. If the roach on the
summit of his head was not quite as high as formerly (a depres-
sion caused by his having now a hat to wear), it was not any
less decided and defiant.


## p. 8325 (#529) ###########################################

RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON
8325
Yet he never seemed disposed to abuse his privileges. Al-
though he was there very often, he usually had little to say to
any of the young ladies, and seemed to try to pay the utmost
respect to all the mistress's rules and regulations in regard to
the intercourse of her pupils with the opposite sex. It must be
admitted that Mr. Watts had not advanced lately in his studies
to the degree that was promised by his opening career. But
Mr. Cordy was a reasonable man, and upon principle was opposed
to pushing boys along too fast. Mrs. Watts, although not a per-
son of education herself, yet suspected from several circumstances
that her son was not well improving the little time which she
could afford to send him to school. But his deportment was
such an example to the younger children that she had not the
heart to complain, except in a very general way.
Of all persons of Mr. Watts's acquaintance, his sister Susan
was the only one who seemed to fail to appreciate his manly
habits. She used to frown dreadfully upon him, even when he
seemed to be at his very best. Sometimes she even broke into
immoderate laughter. While the former conduct had no influ-
ence, the latter used to affect him deeply. He would grow very
angry and abuse her, and then become even more manlike. But
when Susan would think that he was carrying matters into
extremes, she would check him somewhat in this wise:
“Now lookee here, Tom, if you talk to me that way, I shall
tell ma what's the matter with you; and if you don't quit being
such a man, and stop some of your foolishness, I'll tell her any.
how. ”
Threats of this sort for a time would recall Mr. Watts at
least to a more respectful treatment of his sister. Indeed, he
condescended to beg her not to mention her suspicions, although
he assured her that in these she was wholly mistaken. But Susan
did know very well what he was about; and it is probable that
it is high time I should explain all this uncommon conduct. The
truth is, Susan had ascertained that so far from having the
repugnance to ladies that had been feared at first might grow
out of his remembrance of the long confusion of the public mind
touching his own sex, Mr. Thomas Watts had already conceived
a passion that was ardent and pointed and ambitious to a degree
which Susan characterized as “perfectly redickerlous. ”
But who was the young lady who had thus concentrated
upon herself all the first fresh worship of that young manly heart ?


## p. 8326 (#530) ###########################################

8326
RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON
Was it Miss Jones, or Miss Sharp? Was it Miss Holland, or
Miss Hutchins ? Not one of these. Mr. Thomas Watts had, with
one tremendous bound, leaped clear over the heads of these
secondary characters, and cast himself at the very foot of the
throne. To be plain, Mr. Watts fondly, entirely, madly loved
Miss Louisa Wilkins, the mistress and head of the Dukesborough
Female Institution.
Probably this surprising reach might be attributed to the am-
bitious nature of his father, from whom he had inherited this and
some other qualities. Doubtless, however, the recollection of hav-
ing been kept long in frocks had engendered a desire to convince
the world that they had sadly mistaken their man. Whatever
was the motive power, such was the fact. Now, notwithstanding
.
this state of his own feelings, he had never made a declaration
in so many words to Miss Wilkins. But he did not doubt for a
moment that she thoroughly understood his looks, and sighs, and
devoted services. For the habit which all of us have of envelop-
ing beloved objects in our hearts, and making them, so to speak,
understand and reciprocate our feelings, had come to Mr. Watts
even to a greater degree perhaps than if he had been older. He
as little inclined and as little able to doubt Miss Wilkins
as to doubt himself. Facts seemed to bear him out. She had
not only smiled upon him time and time again, and patted him
sweetly on the back of his head, and praised his roach to the very
skies; but once, when he had carried her a great armful of good
fat pine-knots, she was so overcome as to place her hand under
his chin, look him fully in the face, and declare that if he wasn't
a man, there wasn't one in this wide, wide world.
Such was the course of his true love, when its smoothness
suffered that interruption which so strangely obtrudes itself
among the fondest affairs of the heart. Miss Susan had threat-
ened so often without fulfillment to give information to their
mother, that he had begun to presume there was little or no
danger from that quarter. Besides, Mr. Watts had now grown
so old and manlike that he was getting to be without appre-
hension from any quarter. He reflected that within a few weeks
more he would be fourteen years old, when legal rights would
accrue. Determining not to choose any "gardzeen,” it would
follow that he must become his own. Yet he did not intend to
act with unnecessary notoriety. His plans were, to consummate
his union on the very day he should be fourteen; but to do so
was


## p. 8327 (#531) ###########################################

RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON
8327
clandestinely, and then run away, not stopping until he should
get his bride plump to Vermont. For even the bravest find it
necessary sometimes to retreat.
Of the practicability of this plan he had no doubt, because he
knew that Miss Wilkins had five hundred dollars in hard cash
a whole stockingful. This sum seemed to him immensely ade-
quate for their support in becoming style for an indefinitely long
period of time.
As the day of his majority approached, he grew more and
more reserved in his intercourse with his family.
This was
scarcely to be avoided now, when he was already beginning to
consider himself as not one of them. If his conscience ever
upbraided him as he looked upon his toiling mother and his
helpless brothers and sisters, and knew that he alone was to rise
into luxury while they were to be left in their lowly estate, he
reflected that it was a selfish world at best, and that every man
must take care of himself. But one day, after a season of un-
usual reserve, and when he had behaved to Miss Susan in a way
which she considered outrageously supercilious, the latter availed
herself of his going into the village, fulfilled her threat, and
gave her mother full information of the state of his feelings.
That resolute woman was in the act of ironing a new home-
spun frock she had just made for Susan. She laid down her
iron, sat down in a chair, and looked up at Susan.
Susan, don't be foolin' 'long o' me. ”
"Ma, I tell you it's the truth.