The common result of this method in
criticism
is that the
critic is at his best when he is in sympathy with the writer.
critic is at his best when he is in sympathy with the writer.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v10
He brought out an abridgment of his
Dictionary (January 1756), but he probably had assistance in
this mechanical labour. Having abandoned the idea of a critical
periodical of his own, he contributed to the early numbers of Kit
Smart's Universal Visiter (1756), and then undertook the control
of The Literary Magazine (May 1756—7). Here, he made his
famous defence of tea; and, here, he exposed the shallow optimism
of Soame Jenyns's Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of
Evil, in an essay which, written with the convincing ease that
had come from the experience of much painful thought, is an
unsurpassed example of his method and power in argument.
Another piece of journalistic work, at this time, was the intro-
ductory column of Dodsley's evening paper, The London
Chronicle (1 January 1757), which was to be distinguished from
all other journals, probably on his advice, by its 'account of the
labours and productions of the learned. ' He also helped his
friends with their books. He wrote a life of Sir Thomas Browne,
with a criticism of Browne's style, for his own edition of Christian
Morals (1756). With it may be grouped the later life of Ascham
in the edition of Ascham's works nominally prepared by James
Bennet (1761). The variety of his writings for some years after
the completion of his Dictionary helps to explain how he found his
memory unequal to producing a perfect catalogue of his works? .
1 Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Johnson (1785), p. 38.
E. L. X.
CH. VIII.
12
## p. 178 (#204) ############################################
178
Johnson and Boswell
His assistance was, once again, sought to give weight and
dignity to a new periodical, and the starting of The Universal
Chronicle, or Weekly Gazette was the occasion of his second series
of essays, The Idler. They began 15 April 1758, and appeared
every Saturday till 5 April 1760. The fact that The Idler was
not an independent publication, but merely a section of a journal,
will account for most of the differences between it and the
Rambler. The papers are much shorter and do not show the
same sense of sole responsibility. In one respect, however, they
have a clear superiority. Their lighter touch is better suited to
portraiture. Dick Minim the critic, Johnson's only character
that may still be said to live, is a perfect example of his art at
its best ; nor can there be any difference of opinion about the
shorter sketches of Jack Whirler and Tom Restless, or of Mr Sober,
in which the author represented himself. That the characters
should no longer bear Latin names indicates a wider change.
The critical papers also show the growth of ease and confidence.
There is an obvious interest in those on ‘Hard Words,' 'Easy
Writing' and 'The Sufficiency of the English Language. '
While The Idler was in progress, Johnson's mother died, and
her death was the occasion both of his paper on the loss of a
friend' and of his solemn novel on the choice of life, Rasselas,
Prince of Abyssinia (April 1759)? No work of his has been more
frequently translated or is better known by name; but none has
met with more contradictory judgments, or is a stricter test of the
reader's capacity to appreciate the peculiar qualities of Johnson's
thought and manner. There is little or no story, no crisis, no
conclusion; there is little more than a succession of discussions
and disquisitions on the limitations of life. Rasselas may be called
the prose Vanity of Human Wishes ; and it is the fullest, gravest
and most intimate statement of his common theme.
It has been said that Addison would have written a novel, could
he have cast the Coverly papers in a different form. Johnson pro-
posed to write a novel, and produced an expanded essay. There
are five oriental tales' in The Rambler, and three were yet to
appear in The Idler. They suited his purpose in their vagueness
of background and their free scope for didactic fancies. Rasselas
is another of these tales, elaborated to enforce his lesson by a greater
6
1 No. 41.
2 In all the editions published during Johnson's lifetime the title was simply The
Prince of Abissinia, a Tale. He had thought of calling it The Choice of Life (see his
letter of 20 January 1759).
## p. 179 (#205) ############################################
Rasselas
179
range of observation. The first requirement of the story was a
happy valley. Older writers would have placed it in Arcadia;
Johnson takes us to the same undiscovered country, but calls it
Abyssinia. He had not forgotten his early translation. The name
'Rasselas' was suggested by it, and other instances of recollection
are equally certain. There were 'impassable forests and inaccessible
cliffs' in the real Abyssinia', and why not a happy valley behind
them? But one of the attractions of Lobo's narrative had been
that the reader found in it no regions blessed with spontaneous
fecundity or unceasing sunshine. Johnson knew, quite as well as
the critics who stumble at local and ethnographical discrepancies,
that there is no happy valley; but he asked its existence to be
granted as a setting for a tale which would show that 'human life
is every where a state in which much is to be endured, and little
to be enjoyed. ' The gloom is heavy, but, to those who can appre-
ciate Johnson, it is never depressing. He had cleared his mind of
cant, and he wrote to give his readers the strength that comes
from the honesty of looking straight at things as they are. He
pursues his way relentlessly through the different conditions that
seem to offer happiness openhanded, and works to a climax in
the story of the astronomer; 'Few can attain this man's knowledge,
and few practise his virtues, but all may suffer his calamity. Of
the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarm-
ing is the uncertain continuance of reason. This is one of the
many passages which emphasise his perfect sincerity. The book
ends in resignation to the futility of searching for happiness, and
in resolution to pursue life as it is found. Stated in these words,
the lesson may appear a commonplace. But so are the real things
of human experience. And never was the lesson stated with more
sympathetic knowledge, and enlivened with a greater wealth of
aphoristic wisdom.
Meanwhile, the edition of Shakespeare was at a stand. Some
of the plays-evidently, those in the first volume—had been
printed by March 1758 ; but, during the next four years, there
was no sign of progress. In addition to The Idler and Rasselas
Johnson had been writing dedications, prefaces, introductions and
reviews, engaging in unsuccessful controversy on the structure of
the new bridge at Blackfriars, and helping to lay the Cock lane
ghost. The discontent of his subscribers, roughly expressed in
Churchill's Ghost (1762), at last roused him to complete his work;
Voyage to Abyssinia (1735), p. 105. For other recollections in the first chapter of
Rasselas cf. ibid. pp. 97, 102, 204 and 259.
1
12-2
## p. 180 (#206) ############################################
180
Johnson and Boswell
and the financial ease that had come with his pension of £300
(1762) gave him what time he needed. The edition was published,
in eight volumes, in October 17651.
There was nothing new in Johnson's methods as an editor. He
aimed only at doing better what had been done already, and
produced an edition of the old fashion at a time when the science
of Shakespearean editing was about to make a distinct advance?
But he had qualifications sometimes wanting in editors with more
painful habits or more ostentatious equipment—a good knowledge
of Elizabethan English, and imperturbable common sense. Like
almost every text of Shakespeare that had yet appeared, or was
to appear till our own day, it was based on the text of the most
recent edition. What he sent to the printer was Warburton's text
revised. But he worked on the settled principle that the reading
of the ancient books is probably true,' and learned to distrust
conjecture. His collation was never methodical; his weak eyesight
was a serious hindrance to an exacting task. But he restored
many of the readings of the first folio, and, carrying on the system
of combination that had been started by Pope, was the first to de-
tect and admit many of the readings of the quartos. He produced
a text which, with all its shortcomings, was nearer the originals
than any that had yet appeared. Some of his emendations, which
are always modest and occasionally minute, find an unsuspected
place in our modern editions. Though his text has long been
superseded, the advance of scholarship will never impair the
value of his notes. It was a proud boast that not a single
passage in the whole work had appeared to him corrupt which he
had not endeavoured to restore, or obscure which he had not en-
deavoured to illustrate; and it did not go beyond the truth. No
edition, within its limits, is a safer guide to Shakespeare's meaning.
The student who searches the commentators for help in difficulties,
soon learns to go straight to Johnson's note as the firm land of
common sense in a sea of ingenious fancies. The same robust
honesty gives the preface a place by itself among critical pro-
nouncements on Shakespeare. He did not hesitate to state what
he believed to be Shakespeare's faults. Yet Shakespeare remained
to him the greatest of English authors, and the only author worthy
to be ranked with Homer. He, also, vindicated the liberties of the
· New facts about Johnson's receipts for his edition of Shakespeare are given in the
Bi-Centenary Festival Reports, pp. 29–32. From the original agreement with Tonson,
it would appear that Johnson received a much larger sum than was stated by Nichols,
Literary Anecdotes, vol. v, p. 597.
3 Cf. ante, vol. v, pp. 273 ff.
a
2
## p. 181 (#207) ############################################
Later Years.
Political Pamphlets
181
6
English stage. After conforming to the 'unities' in his own Irene,
and then suggesting his doubts of them in The Rambler, he now
proved that they are 'not essential to a just drama. ' The guiding
rule in his criticism was that there is always an appeal open from
criticism to nature. ' A generation later, the French 'romantics'
found their case stated in his preface, and they did not better
what they borrowed".
Hereafter, Johnson did not, on his own initiative, undertake
any other large work. 'Composition is, for the most part,' he said,
' an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the
mind is dragged by necessity or resolution. ' His pension had
removed the necessity, and, for the next twelve years, his best
work lay in talk. In 1763, he met Boswell; in 1764, he founded
with Reynolds ‘The Club’-not known till long after as “The
Literary Club'; in 1765, he gained the friendship of the Thrales.
Companionship and elegant comforts provided the relief that was
still needed to his recurring depressions. He wrote little, but
he engaged in personal kindnesses, and talked his best, and
exerted an influence which spread far beyond the circle of his
conversation. He was still, as at all times, ready to contribute
to the publications of his friends, and even dictated the argu-
ments in some of Boswell's law cases; but he did not undertake
any writing that required resolution or has added to his fame.
His four political tracts—The False Alarm (1770), Falkland's
Islands (1771), The Patriot (1774) and Taxation no Tyranny
(1775)-are known, so far as they are known, because he was
their author. Since his early work on the debates in The
Gentleman's Magazine, he had always taken a keen interest in
politics. Most of his essays in The Literary Magazine had been
on political topics. Towards the end of 1765, he had undertaken
to supply "single-speech' Hamilton with his views on questions
that were being discussed in parliament and had written for him,
in November 1766, Considerations on the Corn Laus? But now,
he wrote as a pamphleteer. The most judicious of the four tracts
is Falklands Islands, which makes a just defence of the policy
6
i Johnson's examination of the unities' is translated word for word in Beyle,
Henri, Racine et Shakespeare (1822). See Johnson on Shakespeare by Raleigh, Sir
Walter (1908), and Stendhal et l'Angleterre, by Gunnell, Doris (1909).
* This was first published by Malone as an appendix to his edition of Hamilton's
Parliamentary Logick (1808). Malone points out Boswell's error in deducing from the
prayer entitled • Engaging in Politicks with H-n' that Johnson was seized with a
temporary fit of ambition' and thought of becoming a politician. See, also, Boswell,
ed. Hill, G. B. vol. 1, pp. 518—20.
7
## p. 182 (#208) ############################################
182
Johnson and Boswell
>
3
towards Spain and is notable for its picture of the horrors of war
and for its reference to Junius. The best thing in The False
Alarm, his thoughts on the present discontents, is the satirical
picture of the progress of a petition. In Taxation no Tyranny,
his answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American
Congress,' he asks “how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for
liberty among the drivers of negroes? '
The prejudice in A Journey to the Western Islands of
Scotland is of a different kind, and never displeasing. It is only
the natural prejudice of John Bull as a tourist. He makes many
acute observations which even the most perfervid Scot must have
recognised to be just; but his impartiality is occasionally impeded
by a want of knowledge which he himself was the first to admit.
He had been conducted round Scotland by Boswell from August
to November 1773, and the book—which was published in January
1775—is not so much a record of the ninety-four days of vigorous
exertion' as a series of thoughts on a different civilisation. It had
a different purpose from that of Pennant's Tour in Scotland (1771),
which Johnson praised highly. He had taken the opportunity of en-
quiring into the authenticity of the poems of Ossian, and convinced
himself that 'they never existed in any other form than that which
we have seen. This is the best known section of his book; but
the reader may find more interest in the remarks on the super-
stitions of the Highlands, on American emigration and on the
Scottish universities. In July and August 1774, he made a tour
in north Wales with his friends the Thrales, and kept a diary
which might have served as the groundwork of a companion volume
to his Scottish Journey; but he did not make any use of it, and it
remained in MS till 1816. The beauty of the Welsh scenery had
greatly impressed him, and this diary must not be neglected in
any estimate of his feeling for wild landscape. The fragmentary
records of his tour in France with the Thrales in 1775 were left to
be printed by Boswell. Johnson was content to pass the rest of
his days in leisure, working only as the mood prompted, when, on
Easter Eve 1777, a deputation of booksellers asked him to under-
take, at the age of sixty-seven, what was to prove his masterpiece.
The Lives of the Poets arose out of a business venture. The
London booksellers were anxious to drive out of the market an
Edinburgh reprint of the English poets and to protect their own
copyright; and, besides producing an edition superior in accuracy
and elegance, they determined to add biographical prefaces by some
writer of authority. The scheme took some time to mature, and
## p. 183 (#209) ############################################
The Lives of the Poets 183
Percival Stockdale had hopes of the editorship. But Johnson was
given the first offer and at once accepted. Writing to Boswell, on
3 May 1777, he says he is engaged 'to write little Lives and little
Prefaces, to a little edition of the English Poets. The work
proved so congenial that he wrote at greater length than he had
intended; and, when the edition was completed, the prefaces were
issued without the texts under the title The Lives of the Poets
(1781). Their independent publication, and the title by which they
are now known, were alike afterthoughts; in origin, The Lives
of the Poets is only editorial matter. It is even more important
to remember that this great body of critical opinion—perhaps
the greatest in the English language--was written on invitation
and in conformity with conditions controlled by others. When
he found the complete series labelled 'Johnson's Poets,' he was
moved to write on a scrap of paper which has happily been
preserved : 'It is great impudence to put Johnson's Poets on the
back of books which Johnson neither recommended nor revised. '
Of the fifty-two poets, five, at most, were included on his suggestion.
In the life of Watts, he says that the readers of the collection are
to impute to him whatever pleasure or weariness they may find in
the perusal of Blackmore, Watts, Pomfret and Yalden; but it
would also appear from the letter to Boswell cited above that he
' persuaded the booksellers to insert something of Thomson. ' There
is no evidence that he advised any omission. For only one of the
fifty-two lives was he indebted to another hand—the life of Young
by Sir Herbert Croft. He included his early life of Savage, with
insignificant changes, and worked up his article on Roscommon
in The Gentleman's Magazine for May 1748. The other lives he
now wrote specially for the booksellers, availing himself here and
there of what he had written already, such as the 'Dissertation on
Pope's Epitaphs' in The Universal Visiter (1756), and the character
of Collins in Fawkes and Woty's Poetical Calendar (1763).
The original plan had evidently been to include ‘all the English
poets of reputation from Chaucer to the present day. It is no
matter for regret that this scheme was curtailed. The poets of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, besides affording him
ample scope for expounding his views on poetry, possessed for
him the personal interest which was always a stimulus to his
criticism. But, even could be be shown to have recommended
Cowley as the starting point, it would be an error to infer that
this was the limit to his knowledge and appreciation. Such an
1 Memoirs (1809), vol. 11, pp. 193—7.
## p. 184 (#210) ############################################
184 Johnson and Boswell
In an
inference would neglect his preface to Shakespeare, his work on
the Elizabethans for the Dictionary and his statement in The
Idlerl that we consider the whole succession from Spenser to
Pope as superior to any names which the Continent can boast. '
Of the earlier writers, he had not the knowledge possessed by
Thomas Warton and other of his friends. But he wrote on Ascham,
and corresponded on the manuscripts of Sir Thomas More, and
devoted to him a considerable section of the introductory matter
of his Dictionary; and he was always alert to any investigation,
whether in modern English, or Old English, or northern antiquities.
His comprehensive knowledge of English literature may be de-
scribed as beginning with the reign of Henry VIII.
interview with George III, he was enjoined to add Spenser to The
Lives of the Poets; and he would readily have complied, could he
have obtained new material? .
In the earlier interview which Boswell has recorded, many years
before The Lives of the Poets was thought of, George III proposed
that Johnson should undertake the literary biography of his country.
It was a happy courtesy, for, though there had been good lives of
individual poets since Sprat’s Life of Cowley, the collections that
had yet appeared had shown that much remained to be accomplished,
and Johnson was specially fitted to write the lives of authors.
Even had he not said so, we should have suspected that the
biographical part of literature was what he loved most. The best
of these collections had been The Lives of the Poets of Great
Britain and Ireland (1753), nominally by ‘Mr Cibber' (Theophilus),
but really by Robert Shielss, The Royal and Noble Authors (1758),
of Horace Walpole, which is a 'catalogue,' and the literary articles
in the very unequal Biographia Britannica". It was left to
Johnson to impart a sustained excellence to this kind of writing,
and, by engaging in what had not yet occupied an author of his
authority, to raise it to a new level as an English literary form.
The most obvious features of The Lives of the Poets is the
equipoise of biography and criticism. Johnson states the facts
simply, but connects them with his impression of the writer, and,
6
1 No. 91.
? This interview appears to have been unknown to Boswell. The authority for it is
a sentence in the Memoirs of Hannah More (1834, vol. 1, p. 174), and an obvious allusion
in the conversation with John Nichols given towards the end of Boswell's Life.
3 The evidence on the authorship is given in Sir Walter Raleigh's Six Essays on
Johnson (1910), pp. 120–5, note.
* Johnson was asked to undertake the second edition of this work and regretted his
refusal. See Boswell, ed. Hill, G. B, vol. III, p. 174.
## p. 185 (#211) ############################################
The Lives of the Poets
185
when he passes to the examination of poems, he is still thinking of
their relation to the writer's personality. He finds the man behind
the work. The truth is that he was much more interested in the
man than in that part of him which is the author. Of 'mere poets,'
he thought little; and, though he championed the dignity of author-
ship, he claimed for it no exclusive privileges, nor held that the
poet was a man apart to be measured by standards inapplicable
to other men. If the enduring freshness of The Lives of the Poets
is due to any one quality more than to another, it is to Johnson's
inexhaustible interest in the varieties of human nature. As detailed
biographies, they have been superseded, though they remain our
only authority for many facts and anecdotes, and include much
that had been inaccessible. He made researches; but they were
limited to his immediate needs. It is often easy to trace the
sources of his information. He criticised Congreve's plays with-
out having read them for many years, and he refused for a time
to hear Lord Marchmont's recollections of Pope. Though, in
general, he welcomed new details, his aim was to know enough to
describe the man and to bring out his individuality in the estimate
of his work.
The common result of this method in criticism is that the
critic is at his best when he is in sympathy with the writer.
Johnson meant to be scrupulously judicial; but he showed per-
sonal feelings. He disliked the acrimonious politics of Milton, the
querulous sensitiveness of Swift and the timid foppery of Gray.
This personal antipathy underlies his criticisms, though it is
qualified, at times, even generously. Had Gray written often as
in the Elegy, he says "it had been vain to blame and useless to
praise him’; and Paradise Lost “is not the greatest of heroic
poems only because it is not the first. ' Of Dryden and Pope he
wrote in friendship, and there exists no finer criticism of them.
But no critic has been severer on Dryden's negligences, or spoken
more ruthlessly of the Essay on Man.
The passage on Lycidas is generally regarded as an error of
judgment which marks Johnson's limitations as a critic. With
his usual courage, he stated a deliberate opinion. He gave
his reasons—the artificiality of the pastoral convention, the con-
fusion of the allegory with actual fact and sacred truth, and the
absence of the feeling of real sorrow. But there is the further
explanation that he was opposed to some recent tendencies in
English poetry. That he had more than Lycidas in his mind
is shown by the emphasis of his statement. The same ideas
## p. 186 (#212) ############################################
186
Johnson and Boswell
reappear in his criticism of Collins and Gray. He objected to the
habit of inverting the common order of words, and, on one occasion,
cited Thomas Warton's "evening gray’; he might also have cited
'mantle blue. ' It was Warton who occasioned his extempore
verses beginning-
Wherevo'er I turn my view,
All is strange, yet nothing new;
and Warton imitated, as well as edited, the early poems of Milton.
Warton was one of many in whom he found faults which he traced
to Milton as their original. In criticising Lycidas, he had in mind
his own contemporaries. When the new tendencies had prevailed,
he was said to have judged by a rigorous code of criticism. This
code would have been difficult to reconcile with the preface to
his edition of Shakespeare; with the praise given by him to
Homer's heroes, that they are not described but develop them-
selves? ; with his statement that 'real criticism' shows the beauty
of thought as formed on the workings of the human heart? ; and
with his condemnation of the cant of those who judge by prin-
ciples rather than perception. '
His views on the matter of poetry are shown in his criticism
of Gray's Bard : ‘To select a singular event, and swell it to a
giant's bulk by fabulous appendages of spectres and predictions,
has little difficulty, for he that forsakes the probable may always
find the marvellous. ' The common growth of mother earth sufficed
for him as for Wordsworth. The distinction which he draws between
the Elegy and The Bard was that which ultimately divided
Wordsworth and Coleridge. There was enough for him in life as
he knew it. And there was a personal reason why, more than the
other great writers of his century, he should tend to limit nature
to human experience. The tumult in his mind was allowed no
direct expression in his writings; but it made him look upon the
world as the battle ground of thought, and passion, and will.
With the revision of The Lives of the Poets, Johnson's career
as an author closed. In the three years of failing health which
were left to him, he lived his accustomed life, honoured for the
authority of his opinion, generous in his help to younger writers,
and active in domestic benevolence. He revised Crabbe's Village,
and dictated much to Boswell. Death removed some who had
played a great part in his later life Thrale, whose house at
Streatham had been a second home, and two of the pensioners in
1 Boswell, ed. Hill, G. B. vol. v, p. 79.
! Ibid. vol. 11, p. 88.
3 Life of Pope.
## p. 187 (#213) ############################################
>
2
Johnson's Death. His Literary Career 187
his own house at Bolt-court, Levett and Mrs Williams. The tribute
to Levett, noble in its restrained emotion, is the most tender of
his poems. The sadness of loss was embittered by Mrs Thrale's
marriage to Piozzi and the irreparable break in the long and
happy friendship. He had so far recovered from a paralytic seizure
as to be able, at the close of 1783, to found the Essex-Head club.
By its ease of access, the old man sought to supply the need of
new company. He dined at The Club, for the last time, in June
1784. Next month, he set out for his native city, and returned
by Birmingham and Oxford, the cities of his youth. His health had
not found any relief, and, when he reached London in November,
was rapidly declining. He died 13 December, and, on the 20th, was
buried in Westminster abbey. Shortly before his death, he had
destroyed his papers.
His long career had been uniform in its aim and methods, and
the distinctions between his earlier and later writings are those
which come from experience and confidence. The author of the
preface to A Voyage to Abyssinia is unmistakably the author
of The Rambler and The Lives of the Poets, with the same tastes
and habits of thought, but younger, with a shorter reach and less
precision in his skill. There had been no discipleship, and no
time of searching where his strength lay; and no new influences
had modified his purpose. The changes to be found in his work
of forty-five years are those of a natural and undisturbed de-
velopment, so steady that its stages cannot be minutely marked
by us, and were probably imperceptible to himself. As he
grew
older, he related all art more and more to life. Though careful
to give his thoughts their best expression, and severe on impro-
prieties in others, he became impatient of mere proficiency in
technique; and, though a scholar, he recognised the insufficiency
of scholarship and the barrenness of academic pursuits. He had
the purposes of life' ever and increasingly before him, and his
criticisms of the English poets are the richest of his works in
worldly wisdom.
At the same time, his style became more easy. The Latin
element is at its greatest in The Rambler. He was then engaged
on his Dictionary. But he always tended to use long words
most when he wrote in haste; and his revision was towards sim-
plicity? He used them in conversation, where alone he allowed
himself the liberty of a daring coinage. They were in no sense an
1 See, in addition to the alterations in The Rambler, the corrections in The Lives of
the Poets as given in Boswell's lists.
## p. 188 (#214) ############################################
188 Johnson and Boswell
6
embroidery, but part of the very texture of his thought. 'Difference
of thoughts,' he said, 'will produce difference of language. He that
thinks with more extent than another will want words of larger
meaning; he that thinks with subtlety will seek for terms of more
nice discrimination? . ' As we read him and accustom our minds to
move with his, we cease to notice the diction. The strength of his
thought carries the weight of his words. His meaning is never
mistaken, though it may not be fully grasped at a glance; for he
puts much in small compass, and the precision of his language
requires careful reading for its just appreciation. 'Familiar but
not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious'; 'vanity produced
a grotto where necessity enforced a passage'-could the thought
be put more pointedly, or adequately, or shortly? When Latin
diction cannot be changed without loss, or without affecting
the tenor of the thought, it has made good its right. His humour
and irony found an aid in the dignified phraseology. But he also
used simple words. Wit is that which he that never found it
wonders how he missed'; 'what he does best he soon ceases to
do'; 'a rage for saying something when there is nothing to be
said'—these, also, are typical of his style. The letter to Chester-
field reaches its climax in the homeliest of English: 'till I am
known, and do not want it. '
His parodists have been peculiarly unsuccessful. We lose their
meaning in a jumble of pedantries ; and we do not lose Johnson's.
They inflate their phraseology; but Johnson is not tumid. And
they forget that his balance is a balance of thought. His own
explanation still holds good: 'the imitators of my style have not
hit it. Miss Aikin has done it the best ; for she has imitated the
sentiment as well as the diction. This was said in 1777. But
better than Miss Aikin's essay ‘On Romances in the style of The
Rambler, and the best of all the parodies, is A Criticism on the
Elegy written in a Country Church-yard (1783), composed by
John Young, the versatile professor of Greek at Glasgow, and
designed as a continuation of The Life of Gray. The long list
of his serious imitators begins with Hawkesworth and extends to
Jeffrey', who started by training himself in the school of the
periodical essayists. Others, who did not take him as a model,
profited by the example of a style in which nothing is negligent
and nothing superfluous. He was the dominating influence in
1 Idler, no. 70.
? Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose, by J. Aikin and A. L. Aikin (Mrs Barbauld), 1773.
3 See Cockburn, Life of Jeffrey, vol. 1, pp. 31 etc.
## p. 189 (#215) ############################################
Earlier Biographical Accounts of Johnson 189
English prose throughout the second half of the eighteenth
century. The lesson of discipline required to be taught, and it
was learned from him by many whose best work shows no traces
of his manner.
His death, says Murphy, ‘kept the public mind in agitation
beyond all former example. No literary character ever excited
so much attention. ' Collections of stories about him had begun
to appear in his lifetime, and now his friends competed in serious
biography. When Mrs Piozzi wrote her account, she had heard of
nine others already written or in preparation. Her Anecdotes of
the late Samuel Johnson (1786) has a place by itself. It preserves
much that would have been lost; but its importance lies chiefly in
its picture of Johnson's character, and in its illustration of the quali-
ties by which he was attracted. She writes with amiable pride in
the ties that bound him to the hospitality of Streatham, and with
an honest effort to rise above their quarrel. If her detractors can
find evidence of artfulness, no one can deny the clearness of her
vision; and, if, at times, her little vanities prevented her from seeing
the true bearing of Johnson's remarks, she must, at least, be admitted
to have been happy in the selection of what she has recorded.
There is no work of the same size as her Anecdotes that gives a
better portrait of Johnson. In strong contrast is the Life (1787)
by Sir John Hawkins. It is the solid book of an 'unclubbable'
magistrate and antiquary, who has much knowledge and little
intuition. He had known Johnson for over forty years and, on
many points, is our chief authority. Much of the value of his
book lies in the lengthy digressions on contemporary literature.
His lack of sympathy made him unsuited for biography; but
we are under a debt to him for the facts which he threw to-
gether.
The merits of Mrs Piozzi and Hawkins were united and aug-
mented by Boswell. He had been collecting material since his
first interview in 1763. He had told Johnson his purpose by 1772,
and he had spoken definitely of his Life in a letter of 1775. After
Johnson's death, he set to work in earnest and spared himself no
trouble.
a
You cannot imagine,' he wrote in 1789, what labour, what perplexity, what
vexation I have endured in arranging a prodigious multiplicity of materials,
in supplying omissions, in searching for papers buried in different masses,
and all this besides the exertion of composing and polishing: many a time
have I thought of giving it up. '
## p. 190 (#216) ############################################
190
Johnson and Boswell
But he was confident in the result. It was to be not merely the
best biography of Johnson, but the best biography ever written.
'I am absolutely certain,' he said, 'that my mode of biography, which gives
not only a History of Johnson's visible progress through the world, and of his
publications, but a view of his mind in his letters and conversations, is the
most perfect that can be conceived, and will be more of a Life than any work
that has ever yet appeared. '
When the book at last came out, in May 1791, the same confidence
was expressed in the opening paragraphs. There, he admits that
the idea of interspersing letters had been taken from Mason’s life of
Gray. He had made a careful study of the art of biography; and
the Anecdotes of Mrs Piozzi, which had shown the necessity of a
careful handling of intimate material, and the facts of Hawkins,
which had proved the inadequacy of simple narrative, had reassured
him that he was engaged on the real life of his friend.
Johnson owes much to Boswell; but it was Johnson who gave us
Boswell. His life is the story of failure turned to success by an
irresistible devotion. He had always been attracted by whatever
won the public attention, partly from scientific curiosity, as when he
visited Mrs Rudd, and partly with a view to his own advancement.
In the first of his letters, he says that Hume ‘is a very proper
person for a young man to cultivate an acquaintance with. ' He
comes to know Wilkes, but doubts if it would be proper to keep
a correspondence with a gentleman in his present capacity. ' The
chief pleasure that he foresaw in his continental tour was his
meeting with Voltaire and Rousseau. Then, he proceeded to
Corsica and became the friend and enthusiastic champion of Paoli.
Having received a communication on Corsican affairs from the
earl of Chatham, he asks: ‘Could your lordship find time to honour
me now and then with a letter? ' Again, he is found thinking of
a life of lord Kames and satisfying himself that he has eminence
enough to merit this. There was cause for the sturdy laird of
Auchinleck to complain, according to Sir Walter Scott's anecdote,
that his irresponsible son was always pinning himself to the tail of
somebody or other. But, of all his heroes, Johnson alone brought
out the best qualities in his volatile character, and steadied him to
the worthy use of his rare gifts. When Johnson is absent, his
writings possess no remarkable merit, though they have always the
interest of being the pellucid expression of his singular personality.
The Life is the devoted and flawless recognition of an influence
which he knew that his nature had required.
Born at Edinburgh in 1740, the son of a Scottish advocate who
## p. 191 (#217) ############################################
Boswell's Earlier Life
191
a
6
took his title as a judge from his ancient estate of Auchinleck in
Ayrshire, Boswell reluctantly adopted the family profession of law,
and, after studying at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Utrecht, was called
to the Scottish bar in 1766. His heart was never in a legal career,
and, to the last, he had a fond belief in sudden and splendid suc-
cess in literature or politics. His earliest work appeared in The
Scots Magazine, but has not been identified. He wrote much verse
and published An Elegy on the death of an amiable young lady
(1761), An Ode to Tragedy, dedicated to himself (1761), and The
Cub at Newmarket, a humorous description of his experiences
as the guest of the Jockey club (1762). Several of his earliest
pieces are printed in A Collection of Original Poems, by the
Rev. Mr Blacklock and other Scotch Gentlemen (1760—2), the
second volume of which he edited'. He frequented the literary
society of Edinburgh, founded the jovial “Soaping Club' and
engaged in regular correspondence with his friends. The Letters
between the Hon. Andrew Erskine and James Boswell Esq. , in
which, also, there is much verse, he published in 1763. "They have
made ourselves laugh,' says the advertisement; 'we hope they will
have the same effect upon other people. They were hardly worth
publishing, though we should be sorry now not to have them. In
the description of a long series of daydreams, given with the
characteristic vanity which is always saved by its frankness, he
says:
I am thinking of the perfect knowledge which I shall acquire of men and
manners, of the intimacies which I shall have the honour to form with the
learned and ingenious in every science, and of the many amusing literary
anecdotes which I shall pick up.
This was published, from Flexney's shop in Holborn, in the very
month that he met Johnson in Davies's parlour. Shortly before
this, he had brought out, with Erskine and George Dempster, his
two associates in much of his early work, the rare Critical Stric-
tures on Mallet's Elvira. He returned to Edinburgh from his
continental travels in 1766, and, being admitted to the bar in the
midst of the excitement about the Douglas cause, found in it
material for Dorando (June 1767), which recounts the points at
issue under a Spanish disguise, and appeared immediately before
the thirteen Scottish judges, by a majority of one, arrived at a
decision contrary to his wishes. The little story went into three
1 The manuscripts of many of Boswell's poems written between 1760 and 1768, several
of them unprinted, are in the Bodleian library--MS Douce 193. The collection includes
a 'Plan of a Volume of Poems to be published for me by Becket and Dehorde. '
## p. 192 (#218) ############################################
192 Johnson and Boswell
editions within a fortnight, but it now disappoints the hopes
excited by its rarity. As the case was sent up to the House of
Lords, where the decision was ultimately reversed, Boswell con-
tinued to write about it and brought out the more serious Essence
of the Douglas Cause (November 1767). He took an energetic
part in the riotous controversy concerning the Edinburgh stage
and supplied the prologue for the opening of the first licensed
theatre in Scotland! At the same time, he was engaged on his
Corsican experiences. An Account of Corsica had been read by
Lord Hailes in manuscript in June 1767, and was issued in March
1768. It is Boswell's first considerable book, and, indeed, his only
book, apart from those concerned with Johnson, that had a chance
of being remembered on its merits. It won what he calls 'amazing
celebrity'; he could boast that he was 'really the great man now. '
His head was full of Corsica and was not to be emptied of it, even
on Johnson's advice. He made a collection of twenty letters by
himself and others, and published them under the title British
Essays in favour of the Brave Corsicans (January 1769); and,
in the following September, he appeared at the Shakespeare
festival at Stratford in the dress of an armed Corsican chief and
recited a poem that 'preserved the true Corsican character. ' A
description of the proceedings, an account of himself, and the poem
were immediately contributed by him to The London Magazine.
Two months later, he married, and then tried to settle to his
legal practice. From this time, the influence of Johnson, already
evident in An Account of Corsica, grew steadily stronger. He
was not satisfied with Edinburgh after the splendour of London.
'The unpleasing tone, the rude familiarity, the barren conver-
sation,' he complains, `really hurt my feelings. But he had
to content himself with lengthy visits to London in vacation,
which were the more indispensable when Johnson had procured
his election to The Club, and he had become a proprietor of
The London Magazine. He contributed to it, monthly, a series
of seventy periodical essays called The Hypochondriack (1777–
83), for which he found much material in himself. There is also
much in them that was inspired by the dominating friendship.
They take The Rambler as their model, and are the most John-
sonian of his writings. After the death of his father and his own
1 The prologue was printed in The Scots Magazine for November 1767; see, also, The
European Magazine for May 1791 and Dibdin, J. C. , Annals of the Edinburgh Stage
(1888), pp. 143—8, and 493. The Songs in the Justiciary Opera, privately printed for
Alexander Boswell in 1816, belong to this time.
## p. 193 (#219) ############################################
His Later Life
193
succession to Auchinleck, in 1782, he turned to politics, and carried
out his ambition of becoming a member of the English bar, but to
no purpose. He stood for parliament, and published two letters
'to the people of Scotland'; one, On the Present State of the
Nation (1783), and the other, On the Alarming Attempt to
infringe the Articles of the Union (1785). All he obtained was the
recordership of Carlisle, which he soon resigned. In his last years,
which were saddened by the loss of his wife and troubled with
financial difficulties, he is still found hoping that practice may
come at any time and expecting “a capital prize. ' He confesses
that he no longer lives with a view to have surprising incidents,
though he is still desirous that his life 'should tell. ' But he begins
to waken from the long delusion and, in a melancholy moment,
admits: 'I certainly am constitutionally unfit for any employment
He was then on the point of achievement. His life was to tell
better than he knew, and in another way than he had hoped. His
friendship for Johnson was helping him in these years to do what
he was unable to do for himself. Without Johnson, he relapses to
the level of his early verse in No Abolition of Slavery; or the
Universal Empire of Love (April 1791)? . And, when the effort
of producing the great work is over, there remains only the
record of steady decline, varied by new schemes of matrimony,
and cheered by large sales and the preparation of new editions.
He died in London, 19 May 1795. From 1758 to within a few weeks
of his death, he had corresponded regularly with William Johnson
Temple, a fellow student in the Greek class at Edinburgh who
became vicar of St Gluvias in Cornwall; and these letters, which
had been sold by a hawker at Boulogne and were rescued to be
published in 1857, give us his real autobiography?
Dictionary (January 1756), but he probably had assistance in
this mechanical labour. Having abandoned the idea of a critical
periodical of his own, he contributed to the early numbers of Kit
Smart's Universal Visiter (1756), and then undertook the control
of The Literary Magazine (May 1756—7). Here, he made his
famous defence of tea; and, here, he exposed the shallow optimism
of Soame Jenyns's Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of
Evil, in an essay which, written with the convincing ease that
had come from the experience of much painful thought, is an
unsurpassed example of his method and power in argument.
Another piece of journalistic work, at this time, was the intro-
ductory column of Dodsley's evening paper, The London
Chronicle (1 January 1757), which was to be distinguished from
all other journals, probably on his advice, by its 'account of the
labours and productions of the learned. ' He also helped his
friends with their books. He wrote a life of Sir Thomas Browne,
with a criticism of Browne's style, for his own edition of Christian
Morals (1756). With it may be grouped the later life of Ascham
in the edition of Ascham's works nominally prepared by James
Bennet (1761). The variety of his writings for some years after
the completion of his Dictionary helps to explain how he found his
memory unequal to producing a perfect catalogue of his works? .
1 Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Johnson (1785), p. 38.
E. L. X.
CH. VIII.
12
## p. 178 (#204) ############################################
178
Johnson and Boswell
His assistance was, once again, sought to give weight and
dignity to a new periodical, and the starting of The Universal
Chronicle, or Weekly Gazette was the occasion of his second series
of essays, The Idler. They began 15 April 1758, and appeared
every Saturday till 5 April 1760. The fact that The Idler was
not an independent publication, but merely a section of a journal,
will account for most of the differences between it and the
Rambler. The papers are much shorter and do not show the
same sense of sole responsibility. In one respect, however, they
have a clear superiority. Their lighter touch is better suited to
portraiture. Dick Minim the critic, Johnson's only character
that may still be said to live, is a perfect example of his art at
its best ; nor can there be any difference of opinion about the
shorter sketches of Jack Whirler and Tom Restless, or of Mr Sober,
in which the author represented himself. That the characters
should no longer bear Latin names indicates a wider change.
The critical papers also show the growth of ease and confidence.
There is an obvious interest in those on ‘Hard Words,' 'Easy
Writing' and 'The Sufficiency of the English Language. '
While The Idler was in progress, Johnson's mother died, and
her death was the occasion both of his paper on the loss of a
friend' and of his solemn novel on the choice of life, Rasselas,
Prince of Abyssinia (April 1759)? No work of his has been more
frequently translated or is better known by name; but none has
met with more contradictory judgments, or is a stricter test of the
reader's capacity to appreciate the peculiar qualities of Johnson's
thought and manner. There is little or no story, no crisis, no
conclusion; there is little more than a succession of discussions
and disquisitions on the limitations of life. Rasselas may be called
the prose Vanity of Human Wishes ; and it is the fullest, gravest
and most intimate statement of his common theme.
It has been said that Addison would have written a novel, could
he have cast the Coverly papers in a different form. Johnson pro-
posed to write a novel, and produced an expanded essay. There
are five oriental tales' in The Rambler, and three were yet to
appear in The Idler. They suited his purpose in their vagueness
of background and their free scope for didactic fancies. Rasselas
is another of these tales, elaborated to enforce his lesson by a greater
6
1 No. 41.
2 In all the editions published during Johnson's lifetime the title was simply The
Prince of Abissinia, a Tale. He had thought of calling it The Choice of Life (see his
letter of 20 January 1759).
## p. 179 (#205) ############################################
Rasselas
179
range of observation. The first requirement of the story was a
happy valley. Older writers would have placed it in Arcadia;
Johnson takes us to the same undiscovered country, but calls it
Abyssinia. He had not forgotten his early translation. The name
'Rasselas' was suggested by it, and other instances of recollection
are equally certain. There were 'impassable forests and inaccessible
cliffs' in the real Abyssinia', and why not a happy valley behind
them? But one of the attractions of Lobo's narrative had been
that the reader found in it no regions blessed with spontaneous
fecundity or unceasing sunshine. Johnson knew, quite as well as
the critics who stumble at local and ethnographical discrepancies,
that there is no happy valley; but he asked its existence to be
granted as a setting for a tale which would show that 'human life
is every where a state in which much is to be endured, and little
to be enjoyed. ' The gloom is heavy, but, to those who can appre-
ciate Johnson, it is never depressing. He had cleared his mind of
cant, and he wrote to give his readers the strength that comes
from the honesty of looking straight at things as they are. He
pursues his way relentlessly through the different conditions that
seem to offer happiness openhanded, and works to a climax in
the story of the astronomer; 'Few can attain this man's knowledge,
and few practise his virtues, but all may suffer his calamity. Of
the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarm-
ing is the uncertain continuance of reason. This is one of the
many passages which emphasise his perfect sincerity. The book
ends in resignation to the futility of searching for happiness, and
in resolution to pursue life as it is found. Stated in these words,
the lesson may appear a commonplace. But so are the real things
of human experience. And never was the lesson stated with more
sympathetic knowledge, and enlivened with a greater wealth of
aphoristic wisdom.
Meanwhile, the edition of Shakespeare was at a stand. Some
of the plays-evidently, those in the first volume—had been
printed by March 1758 ; but, during the next four years, there
was no sign of progress. In addition to The Idler and Rasselas
Johnson had been writing dedications, prefaces, introductions and
reviews, engaging in unsuccessful controversy on the structure of
the new bridge at Blackfriars, and helping to lay the Cock lane
ghost. The discontent of his subscribers, roughly expressed in
Churchill's Ghost (1762), at last roused him to complete his work;
Voyage to Abyssinia (1735), p. 105. For other recollections in the first chapter of
Rasselas cf. ibid. pp. 97, 102, 204 and 259.
1
12-2
## p. 180 (#206) ############################################
180
Johnson and Boswell
and the financial ease that had come with his pension of £300
(1762) gave him what time he needed. The edition was published,
in eight volumes, in October 17651.
There was nothing new in Johnson's methods as an editor. He
aimed only at doing better what had been done already, and
produced an edition of the old fashion at a time when the science
of Shakespearean editing was about to make a distinct advance?
But he had qualifications sometimes wanting in editors with more
painful habits or more ostentatious equipment—a good knowledge
of Elizabethan English, and imperturbable common sense. Like
almost every text of Shakespeare that had yet appeared, or was
to appear till our own day, it was based on the text of the most
recent edition. What he sent to the printer was Warburton's text
revised. But he worked on the settled principle that the reading
of the ancient books is probably true,' and learned to distrust
conjecture. His collation was never methodical; his weak eyesight
was a serious hindrance to an exacting task. But he restored
many of the readings of the first folio, and, carrying on the system
of combination that had been started by Pope, was the first to de-
tect and admit many of the readings of the quartos. He produced
a text which, with all its shortcomings, was nearer the originals
than any that had yet appeared. Some of his emendations, which
are always modest and occasionally minute, find an unsuspected
place in our modern editions. Though his text has long been
superseded, the advance of scholarship will never impair the
value of his notes. It was a proud boast that not a single
passage in the whole work had appeared to him corrupt which he
had not endeavoured to restore, or obscure which he had not en-
deavoured to illustrate; and it did not go beyond the truth. No
edition, within its limits, is a safer guide to Shakespeare's meaning.
The student who searches the commentators for help in difficulties,
soon learns to go straight to Johnson's note as the firm land of
common sense in a sea of ingenious fancies. The same robust
honesty gives the preface a place by itself among critical pro-
nouncements on Shakespeare. He did not hesitate to state what
he believed to be Shakespeare's faults. Yet Shakespeare remained
to him the greatest of English authors, and the only author worthy
to be ranked with Homer. He, also, vindicated the liberties of the
· New facts about Johnson's receipts for his edition of Shakespeare are given in the
Bi-Centenary Festival Reports, pp. 29–32. From the original agreement with Tonson,
it would appear that Johnson received a much larger sum than was stated by Nichols,
Literary Anecdotes, vol. v, p. 597.
3 Cf. ante, vol. v, pp. 273 ff.
a
2
## p. 181 (#207) ############################################
Later Years.
Political Pamphlets
181
6
English stage. After conforming to the 'unities' in his own Irene,
and then suggesting his doubts of them in The Rambler, he now
proved that they are 'not essential to a just drama. ' The guiding
rule in his criticism was that there is always an appeal open from
criticism to nature. ' A generation later, the French 'romantics'
found their case stated in his preface, and they did not better
what they borrowed".
Hereafter, Johnson did not, on his own initiative, undertake
any other large work. 'Composition is, for the most part,' he said,
' an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the
mind is dragged by necessity or resolution. ' His pension had
removed the necessity, and, for the next twelve years, his best
work lay in talk. In 1763, he met Boswell; in 1764, he founded
with Reynolds ‘The Club’-not known till long after as “The
Literary Club'; in 1765, he gained the friendship of the Thrales.
Companionship and elegant comforts provided the relief that was
still needed to his recurring depressions. He wrote little, but
he engaged in personal kindnesses, and talked his best, and
exerted an influence which spread far beyond the circle of his
conversation. He was still, as at all times, ready to contribute
to the publications of his friends, and even dictated the argu-
ments in some of Boswell's law cases; but he did not undertake
any writing that required resolution or has added to his fame.
His four political tracts—The False Alarm (1770), Falkland's
Islands (1771), The Patriot (1774) and Taxation no Tyranny
(1775)-are known, so far as they are known, because he was
their author. Since his early work on the debates in The
Gentleman's Magazine, he had always taken a keen interest in
politics. Most of his essays in The Literary Magazine had been
on political topics. Towards the end of 1765, he had undertaken
to supply "single-speech' Hamilton with his views on questions
that were being discussed in parliament and had written for him,
in November 1766, Considerations on the Corn Laus? But now,
he wrote as a pamphleteer. The most judicious of the four tracts
is Falklands Islands, which makes a just defence of the policy
6
i Johnson's examination of the unities' is translated word for word in Beyle,
Henri, Racine et Shakespeare (1822). See Johnson on Shakespeare by Raleigh, Sir
Walter (1908), and Stendhal et l'Angleterre, by Gunnell, Doris (1909).
* This was first published by Malone as an appendix to his edition of Hamilton's
Parliamentary Logick (1808). Malone points out Boswell's error in deducing from the
prayer entitled • Engaging in Politicks with H-n' that Johnson was seized with a
temporary fit of ambition' and thought of becoming a politician. See, also, Boswell,
ed. Hill, G. B. vol. 1, pp. 518—20.
7
## p. 182 (#208) ############################################
182
Johnson and Boswell
>
3
towards Spain and is notable for its picture of the horrors of war
and for its reference to Junius. The best thing in The False
Alarm, his thoughts on the present discontents, is the satirical
picture of the progress of a petition. In Taxation no Tyranny,
his answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American
Congress,' he asks “how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for
liberty among the drivers of negroes? '
The prejudice in A Journey to the Western Islands of
Scotland is of a different kind, and never displeasing. It is only
the natural prejudice of John Bull as a tourist. He makes many
acute observations which even the most perfervid Scot must have
recognised to be just; but his impartiality is occasionally impeded
by a want of knowledge which he himself was the first to admit.
He had been conducted round Scotland by Boswell from August
to November 1773, and the book—which was published in January
1775—is not so much a record of the ninety-four days of vigorous
exertion' as a series of thoughts on a different civilisation. It had
a different purpose from that of Pennant's Tour in Scotland (1771),
which Johnson praised highly. He had taken the opportunity of en-
quiring into the authenticity of the poems of Ossian, and convinced
himself that 'they never existed in any other form than that which
we have seen. This is the best known section of his book; but
the reader may find more interest in the remarks on the super-
stitions of the Highlands, on American emigration and on the
Scottish universities. In July and August 1774, he made a tour
in north Wales with his friends the Thrales, and kept a diary
which might have served as the groundwork of a companion volume
to his Scottish Journey; but he did not make any use of it, and it
remained in MS till 1816. The beauty of the Welsh scenery had
greatly impressed him, and this diary must not be neglected in
any estimate of his feeling for wild landscape. The fragmentary
records of his tour in France with the Thrales in 1775 were left to
be printed by Boswell. Johnson was content to pass the rest of
his days in leisure, working only as the mood prompted, when, on
Easter Eve 1777, a deputation of booksellers asked him to under-
take, at the age of sixty-seven, what was to prove his masterpiece.
The Lives of the Poets arose out of a business venture. The
London booksellers were anxious to drive out of the market an
Edinburgh reprint of the English poets and to protect their own
copyright; and, besides producing an edition superior in accuracy
and elegance, they determined to add biographical prefaces by some
writer of authority. The scheme took some time to mature, and
## p. 183 (#209) ############################################
The Lives of the Poets 183
Percival Stockdale had hopes of the editorship. But Johnson was
given the first offer and at once accepted. Writing to Boswell, on
3 May 1777, he says he is engaged 'to write little Lives and little
Prefaces, to a little edition of the English Poets. The work
proved so congenial that he wrote at greater length than he had
intended; and, when the edition was completed, the prefaces were
issued without the texts under the title The Lives of the Poets
(1781). Their independent publication, and the title by which they
are now known, were alike afterthoughts; in origin, The Lives
of the Poets is only editorial matter. It is even more important
to remember that this great body of critical opinion—perhaps
the greatest in the English language--was written on invitation
and in conformity with conditions controlled by others. When
he found the complete series labelled 'Johnson's Poets,' he was
moved to write on a scrap of paper which has happily been
preserved : 'It is great impudence to put Johnson's Poets on the
back of books which Johnson neither recommended nor revised. '
Of the fifty-two poets, five, at most, were included on his suggestion.
In the life of Watts, he says that the readers of the collection are
to impute to him whatever pleasure or weariness they may find in
the perusal of Blackmore, Watts, Pomfret and Yalden; but it
would also appear from the letter to Boswell cited above that he
' persuaded the booksellers to insert something of Thomson. ' There
is no evidence that he advised any omission. For only one of the
fifty-two lives was he indebted to another hand—the life of Young
by Sir Herbert Croft. He included his early life of Savage, with
insignificant changes, and worked up his article on Roscommon
in The Gentleman's Magazine for May 1748. The other lives he
now wrote specially for the booksellers, availing himself here and
there of what he had written already, such as the 'Dissertation on
Pope's Epitaphs' in The Universal Visiter (1756), and the character
of Collins in Fawkes and Woty's Poetical Calendar (1763).
The original plan had evidently been to include ‘all the English
poets of reputation from Chaucer to the present day. It is no
matter for regret that this scheme was curtailed. The poets of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, besides affording him
ample scope for expounding his views on poetry, possessed for
him the personal interest which was always a stimulus to his
criticism. But, even could be be shown to have recommended
Cowley as the starting point, it would be an error to infer that
this was the limit to his knowledge and appreciation. Such an
1 Memoirs (1809), vol. 11, pp. 193—7.
## p. 184 (#210) ############################################
184 Johnson and Boswell
In an
inference would neglect his preface to Shakespeare, his work on
the Elizabethans for the Dictionary and his statement in The
Idlerl that we consider the whole succession from Spenser to
Pope as superior to any names which the Continent can boast. '
Of the earlier writers, he had not the knowledge possessed by
Thomas Warton and other of his friends. But he wrote on Ascham,
and corresponded on the manuscripts of Sir Thomas More, and
devoted to him a considerable section of the introductory matter
of his Dictionary; and he was always alert to any investigation,
whether in modern English, or Old English, or northern antiquities.
His comprehensive knowledge of English literature may be de-
scribed as beginning with the reign of Henry VIII.
interview with George III, he was enjoined to add Spenser to The
Lives of the Poets; and he would readily have complied, could he
have obtained new material? .
In the earlier interview which Boswell has recorded, many years
before The Lives of the Poets was thought of, George III proposed
that Johnson should undertake the literary biography of his country.
It was a happy courtesy, for, though there had been good lives of
individual poets since Sprat’s Life of Cowley, the collections that
had yet appeared had shown that much remained to be accomplished,
and Johnson was specially fitted to write the lives of authors.
Even had he not said so, we should have suspected that the
biographical part of literature was what he loved most. The best
of these collections had been The Lives of the Poets of Great
Britain and Ireland (1753), nominally by ‘Mr Cibber' (Theophilus),
but really by Robert Shielss, The Royal and Noble Authors (1758),
of Horace Walpole, which is a 'catalogue,' and the literary articles
in the very unequal Biographia Britannica". It was left to
Johnson to impart a sustained excellence to this kind of writing,
and, by engaging in what had not yet occupied an author of his
authority, to raise it to a new level as an English literary form.
The most obvious features of The Lives of the Poets is the
equipoise of biography and criticism. Johnson states the facts
simply, but connects them with his impression of the writer, and,
6
1 No. 91.
? This interview appears to have been unknown to Boswell. The authority for it is
a sentence in the Memoirs of Hannah More (1834, vol. 1, p. 174), and an obvious allusion
in the conversation with John Nichols given towards the end of Boswell's Life.
3 The evidence on the authorship is given in Sir Walter Raleigh's Six Essays on
Johnson (1910), pp. 120–5, note.
* Johnson was asked to undertake the second edition of this work and regretted his
refusal. See Boswell, ed. Hill, G. B, vol. III, p. 174.
## p. 185 (#211) ############################################
The Lives of the Poets
185
when he passes to the examination of poems, he is still thinking of
their relation to the writer's personality. He finds the man behind
the work. The truth is that he was much more interested in the
man than in that part of him which is the author. Of 'mere poets,'
he thought little; and, though he championed the dignity of author-
ship, he claimed for it no exclusive privileges, nor held that the
poet was a man apart to be measured by standards inapplicable
to other men. If the enduring freshness of The Lives of the Poets
is due to any one quality more than to another, it is to Johnson's
inexhaustible interest in the varieties of human nature. As detailed
biographies, they have been superseded, though they remain our
only authority for many facts and anecdotes, and include much
that had been inaccessible. He made researches; but they were
limited to his immediate needs. It is often easy to trace the
sources of his information. He criticised Congreve's plays with-
out having read them for many years, and he refused for a time
to hear Lord Marchmont's recollections of Pope. Though, in
general, he welcomed new details, his aim was to know enough to
describe the man and to bring out his individuality in the estimate
of his work.
The common result of this method in criticism is that the
critic is at his best when he is in sympathy with the writer.
Johnson meant to be scrupulously judicial; but he showed per-
sonal feelings. He disliked the acrimonious politics of Milton, the
querulous sensitiveness of Swift and the timid foppery of Gray.
This personal antipathy underlies his criticisms, though it is
qualified, at times, even generously. Had Gray written often as
in the Elegy, he says "it had been vain to blame and useless to
praise him’; and Paradise Lost “is not the greatest of heroic
poems only because it is not the first. ' Of Dryden and Pope he
wrote in friendship, and there exists no finer criticism of them.
But no critic has been severer on Dryden's negligences, or spoken
more ruthlessly of the Essay on Man.
The passage on Lycidas is generally regarded as an error of
judgment which marks Johnson's limitations as a critic. With
his usual courage, he stated a deliberate opinion. He gave
his reasons—the artificiality of the pastoral convention, the con-
fusion of the allegory with actual fact and sacred truth, and the
absence of the feeling of real sorrow. But there is the further
explanation that he was opposed to some recent tendencies in
English poetry. That he had more than Lycidas in his mind
is shown by the emphasis of his statement. The same ideas
## p. 186 (#212) ############################################
186
Johnson and Boswell
reappear in his criticism of Collins and Gray. He objected to the
habit of inverting the common order of words, and, on one occasion,
cited Thomas Warton's "evening gray’; he might also have cited
'mantle blue. ' It was Warton who occasioned his extempore
verses beginning-
Wherevo'er I turn my view,
All is strange, yet nothing new;
and Warton imitated, as well as edited, the early poems of Milton.
Warton was one of many in whom he found faults which he traced
to Milton as their original. In criticising Lycidas, he had in mind
his own contemporaries. When the new tendencies had prevailed,
he was said to have judged by a rigorous code of criticism. This
code would have been difficult to reconcile with the preface to
his edition of Shakespeare; with the praise given by him to
Homer's heroes, that they are not described but develop them-
selves? ; with his statement that 'real criticism' shows the beauty
of thought as formed on the workings of the human heart? ; and
with his condemnation of the cant of those who judge by prin-
ciples rather than perception. '
His views on the matter of poetry are shown in his criticism
of Gray's Bard : ‘To select a singular event, and swell it to a
giant's bulk by fabulous appendages of spectres and predictions,
has little difficulty, for he that forsakes the probable may always
find the marvellous. ' The common growth of mother earth sufficed
for him as for Wordsworth. The distinction which he draws between
the Elegy and The Bard was that which ultimately divided
Wordsworth and Coleridge. There was enough for him in life as
he knew it. And there was a personal reason why, more than the
other great writers of his century, he should tend to limit nature
to human experience. The tumult in his mind was allowed no
direct expression in his writings; but it made him look upon the
world as the battle ground of thought, and passion, and will.
With the revision of The Lives of the Poets, Johnson's career
as an author closed. In the three years of failing health which
were left to him, he lived his accustomed life, honoured for the
authority of his opinion, generous in his help to younger writers,
and active in domestic benevolence. He revised Crabbe's Village,
and dictated much to Boswell. Death removed some who had
played a great part in his later life Thrale, whose house at
Streatham had been a second home, and two of the pensioners in
1 Boswell, ed. Hill, G. B. vol. v, p. 79.
! Ibid. vol. 11, p. 88.
3 Life of Pope.
## p. 187 (#213) ############################################
>
2
Johnson's Death. His Literary Career 187
his own house at Bolt-court, Levett and Mrs Williams. The tribute
to Levett, noble in its restrained emotion, is the most tender of
his poems. The sadness of loss was embittered by Mrs Thrale's
marriage to Piozzi and the irreparable break in the long and
happy friendship. He had so far recovered from a paralytic seizure
as to be able, at the close of 1783, to found the Essex-Head club.
By its ease of access, the old man sought to supply the need of
new company. He dined at The Club, for the last time, in June
1784. Next month, he set out for his native city, and returned
by Birmingham and Oxford, the cities of his youth. His health had
not found any relief, and, when he reached London in November,
was rapidly declining. He died 13 December, and, on the 20th, was
buried in Westminster abbey. Shortly before his death, he had
destroyed his papers.
His long career had been uniform in its aim and methods, and
the distinctions between his earlier and later writings are those
which come from experience and confidence. The author of the
preface to A Voyage to Abyssinia is unmistakably the author
of The Rambler and The Lives of the Poets, with the same tastes
and habits of thought, but younger, with a shorter reach and less
precision in his skill. There had been no discipleship, and no
time of searching where his strength lay; and no new influences
had modified his purpose. The changes to be found in his work
of forty-five years are those of a natural and undisturbed de-
velopment, so steady that its stages cannot be minutely marked
by us, and were probably imperceptible to himself. As he
grew
older, he related all art more and more to life. Though careful
to give his thoughts their best expression, and severe on impro-
prieties in others, he became impatient of mere proficiency in
technique; and, though a scholar, he recognised the insufficiency
of scholarship and the barrenness of academic pursuits. He had
the purposes of life' ever and increasingly before him, and his
criticisms of the English poets are the richest of his works in
worldly wisdom.
At the same time, his style became more easy. The Latin
element is at its greatest in The Rambler. He was then engaged
on his Dictionary. But he always tended to use long words
most when he wrote in haste; and his revision was towards sim-
plicity? He used them in conversation, where alone he allowed
himself the liberty of a daring coinage. They were in no sense an
1 See, in addition to the alterations in The Rambler, the corrections in The Lives of
the Poets as given in Boswell's lists.
## p. 188 (#214) ############################################
188 Johnson and Boswell
6
embroidery, but part of the very texture of his thought. 'Difference
of thoughts,' he said, 'will produce difference of language. He that
thinks with more extent than another will want words of larger
meaning; he that thinks with subtlety will seek for terms of more
nice discrimination? . ' As we read him and accustom our minds to
move with his, we cease to notice the diction. The strength of his
thought carries the weight of his words. His meaning is never
mistaken, though it may not be fully grasped at a glance; for he
puts much in small compass, and the precision of his language
requires careful reading for its just appreciation. 'Familiar but
not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious'; 'vanity produced
a grotto where necessity enforced a passage'-could the thought
be put more pointedly, or adequately, or shortly? When Latin
diction cannot be changed without loss, or without affecting
the tenor of the thought, it has made good its right. His humour
and irony found an aid in the dignified phraseology. But he also
used simple words. Wit is that which he that never found it
wonders how he missed'; 'what he does best he soon ceases to
do'; 'a rage for saying something when there is nothing to be
said'—these, also, are typical of his style. The letter to Chester-
field reaches its climax in the homeliest of English: 'till I am
known, and do not want it. '
His parodists have been peculiarly unsuccessful. We lose their
meaning in a jumble of pedantries ; and we do not lose Johnson's.
They inflate their phraseology; but Johnson is not tumid. And
they forget that his balance is a balance of thought. His own
explanation still holds good: 'the imitators of my style have not
hit it. Miss Aikin has done it the best ; for she has imitated the
sentiment as well as the diction. This was said in 1777. But
better than Miss Aikin's essay ‘On Romances in the style of The
Rambler, and the best of all the parodies, is A Criticism on the
Elegy written in a Country Church-yard (1783), composed by
John Young, the versatile professor of Greek at Glasgow, and
designed as a continuation of The Life of Gray. The long list
of his serious imitators begins with Hawkesworth and extends to
Jeffrey', who started by training himself in the school of the
periodical essayists. Others, who did not take him as a model,
profited by the example of a style in which nothing is negligent
and nothing superfluous. He was the dominating influence in
1 Idler, no. 70.
? Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose, by J. Aikin and A. L. Aikin (Mrs Barbauld), 1773.
3 See Cockburn, Life of Jeffrey, vol. 1, pp. 31 etc.
## p. 189 (#215) ############################################
Earlier Biographical Accounts of Johnson 189
English prose throughout the second half of the eighteenth
century. The lesson of discipline required to be taught, and it
was learned from him by many whose best work shows no traces
of his manner.
His death, says Murphy, ‘kept the public mind in agitation
beyond all former example. No literary character ever excited
so much attention. ' Collections of stories about him had begun
to appear in his lifetime, and now his friends competed in serious
biography. When Mrs Piozzi wrote her account, she had heard of
nine others already written or in preparation. Her Anecdotes of
the late Samuel Johnson (1786) has a place by itself. It preserves
much that would have been lost; but its importance lies chiefly in
its picture of Johnson's character, and in its illustration of the quali-
ties by which he was attracted. She writes with amiable pride in
the ties that bound him to the hospitality of Streatham, and with
an honest effort to rise above their quarrel. If her detractors can
find evidence of artfulness, no one can deny the clearness of her
vision; and, if, at times, her little vanities prevented her from seeing
the true bearing of Johnson's remarks, she must, at least, be admitted
to have been happy in the selection of what she has recorded.
There is no work of the same size as her Anecdotes that gives a
better portrait of Johnson. In strong contrast is the Life (1787)
by Sir John Hawkins. It is the solid book of an 'unclubbable'
magistrate and antiquary, who has much knowledge and little
intuition. He had known Johnson for over forty years and, on
many points, is our chief authority. Much of the value of his
book lies in the lengthy digressions on contemporary literature.
His lack of sympathy made him unsuited for biography; but
we are under a debt to him for the facts which he threw to-
gether.
The merits of Mrs Piozzi and Hawkins were united and aug-
mented by Boswell. He had been collecting material since his
first interview in 1763. He had told Johnson his purpose by 1772,
and he had spoken definitely of his Life in a letter of 1775. After
Johnson's death, he set to work in earnest and spared himself no
trouble.
a
You cannot imagine,' he wrote in 1789, what labour, what perplexity, what
vexation I have endured in arranging a prodigious multiplicity of materials,
in supplying omissions, in searching for papers buried in different masses,
and all this besides the exertion of composing and polishing: many a time
have I thought of giving it up. '
## p. 190 (#216) ############################################
190
Johnson and Boswell
But he was confident in the result. It was to be not merely the
best biography of Johnson, but the best biography ever written.
'I am absolutely certain,' he said, 'that my mode of biography, which gives
not only a History of Johnson's visible progress through the world, and of his
publications, but a view of his mind in his letters and conversations, is the
most perfect that can be conceived, and will be more of a Life than any work
that has ever yet appeared. '
When the book at last came out, in May 1791, the same confidence
was expressed in the opening paragraphs. There, he admits that
the idea of interspersing letters had been taken from Mason’s life of
Gray. He had made a careful study of the art of biography; and
the Anecdotes of Mrs Piozzi, which had shown the necessity of a
careful handling of intimate material, and the facts of Hawkins,
which had proved the inadequacy of simple narrative, had reassured
him that he was engaged on the real life of his friend.
Johnson owes much to Boswell; but it was Johnson who gave us
Boswell. His life is the story of failure turned to success by an
irresistible devotion. He had always been attracted by whatever
won the public attention, partly from scientific curiosity, as when he
visited Mrs Rudd, and partly with a view to his own advancement.
In the first of his letters, he says that Hume ‘is a very proper
person for a young man to cultivate an acquaintance with. ' He
comes to know Wilkes, but doubts if it would be proper to keep
a correspondence with a gentleman in his present capacity. ' The
chief pleasure that he foresaw in his continental tour was his
meeting with Voltaire and Rousseau. Then, he proceeded to
Corsica and became the friend and enthusiastic champion of Paoli.
Having received a communication on Corsican affairs from the
earl of Chatham, he asks: ‘Could your lordship find time to honour
me now and then with a letter? ' Again, he is found thinking of
a life of lord Kames and satisfying himself that he has eminence
enough to merit this. There was cause for the sturdy laird of
Auchinleck to complain, according to Sir Walter Scott's anecdote,
that his irresponsible son was always pinning himself to the tail of
somebody or other. But, of all his heroes, Johnson alone brought
out the best qualities in his volatile character, and steadied him to
the worthy use of his rare gifts. When Johnson is absent, his
writings possess no remarkable merit, though they have always the
interest of being the pellucid expression of his singular personality.
The Life is the devoted and flawless recognition of an influence
which he knew that his nature had required.
Born at Edinburgh in 1740, the son of a Scottish advocate who
## p. 191 (#217) ############################################
Boswell's Earlier Life
191
a
6
took his title as a judge from his ancient estate of Auchinleck in
Ayrshire, Boswell reluctantly adopted the family profession of law,
and, after studying at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Utrecht, was called
to the Scottish bar in 1766. His heart was never in a legal career,
and, to the last, he had a fond belief in sudden and splendid suc-
cess in literature or politics. His earliest work appeared in The
Scots Magazine, but has not been identified. He wrote much verse
and published An Elegy on the death of an amiable young lady
(1761), An Ode to Tragedy, dedicated to himself (1761), and The
Cub at Newmarket, a humorous description of his experiences
as the guest of the Jockey club (1762). Several of his earliest
pieces are printed in A Collection of Original Poems, by the
Rev. Mr Blacklock and other Scotch Gentlemen (1760—2), the
second volume of which he edited'. He frequented the literary
society of Edinburgh, founded the jovial “Soaping Club' and
engaged in regular correspondence with his friends. The Letters
between the Hon. Andrew Erskine and James Boswell Esq. , in
which, also, there is much verse, he published in 1763. "They have
made ourselves laugh,' says the advertisement; 'we hope they will
have the same effect upon other people. They were hardly worth
publishing, though we should be sorry now not to have them. In
the description of a long series of daydreams, given with the
characteristic vanity which is always saved by its frankness, he
says:
I am thinking of the perfect knowledge which I shall acquire of men and
manners, of the intimacies which I shall have the honour to form with the
learned and ingenious in every science, and of the many amusing literary
anecdotes which I shall pick up.
This was published, from Flexney's shop in Holborn, in the very
month that he met Johnson in Davies's parlour. Shortly before
this, he had brought out, with Erskine and George Dempster, his
two associates in much of his early work, the rare Critical Stric-
tures on Mallet's Elvira. He returned to Edinburgh from his
continental travels in 1766, and, being admitted to the bar in the
midst of the excitement about the Douglas cause, found in it
material for Dorando (June 1767), which recounts the points at
issue under a Spanish disguise, and appeared immediately before
the thirteen Scottish judges, by a majority of one, arrived at a
decision contrary to his wishes. The little story went into three
1 The manuscripts of many of Boswell's poems written between 1760 and 1768, several
of them unprinted, are in the Bodleian library--MS Douce 193. The collection includes
a 'Plan of a Volume of Poems to be published for me by Becket and Dehorde. '
## p. 192 (#218) ############################################
192 Johnson and Boswell
editions within a fortnight, but it now disappoints the hopes
excited by its rarity. As the case was sent up to the House of
Lords, where the decision was ultimately reversed, Boswell con-
tinued to write about it and brought out the more serious Essence
of the Douglas Cause (November 1767). He took an energetic
part in the riotous controversy concerning the Edinburgh stage
and supplied the prologue for the opening of the first licensed
theatre in Scotland! At the same time, he was engaged on his
Corsican experiences. An Account of Corsica had been read by
Lord Hailes in manuscript in June 1767, and was issued in March
1768. It is Boswell's first considerable book, and, indeed, his only
book, apart from those concerned with Johnson, that had a chance
of being remembered on its merits. It won what he calls 'amazing
celebrity'; he could boast that he was 'really the great man now. '
His head was full of Corsica and was not to be emptied of it, even
on Johnson's advice. He made a collection of twenty letters by
himself and others, and published them under the title British
Essays in favour of the Brave Corsicans (January 1769); and,
in the following September, he appeared at the Shakespeare
festival at Stratford in the dress of an armed Corsican chief and
recited a poem that 'preserved the true Corsican character. ' A
description of the proceedings, an account of himself, and the poem
were immediately contributed by him to The London Magazine.
Two months later, he married, and then tried to settle to his
legal practice. From this time, the influence of Johnson, already
evident in An Account of Corsica, grew steadily stronger. He
was not satisfied with Edinburgh after the splendour of London.
'The unpleasing tone, the rude familiarity, the barren conver-
sation,' he complains, `really hurt my feelings. But he had
to content himself with lengthy visits to London in vacation,
which were the more indispensable when Johnson had procured
his election to The Club, and he had become a proprietor of
The London Magazine. He contributed to it, monthly, a series
of seventy periodical essays called The Hypochondriack (1777–
83), for which he found much material in himself. There is also
much in them that was inspired by the dominating friendship.
They take The Rambler as their model, and are the most John-
sonian of his writings. After the death of his father and his own
1 The prologue was printed in The Scots Magazine for November 1767; see, also, The
European Magazine for May 1791 and Dibdin, J. C. , Annals of the Edinburgh Stage
(1888), pp. 143—8, and 493. The Songs in the Justiciary Opera, privately printed for
Alexander Boswell in 1816, belong to this time.
## p. 193 (#219) ############################################
His Later Life
193
succession to Auchinleck, in 1782, he turned to politics, and carried
out his ambition of becoming a member of the English bar, but to
no purpose. He stood for parliament, and published two letters
'to the people of Scotland'; one, On the Present State of the
Nation (1783), and the other, On the Alarming Attempt to
infringe the Articles of the Union (1785). All he obtained was the
recordership of Carlisle, which he soon resigned. In his last years,
which were saddened by the loss of his wife and troubled with
financial difficulties, he is still found hoping that practice may
come at any time and expecting “a capital prize. ' He confesses
that he no longer lives with a view to have surprising incidents,
though he is still desirous that his life 'should tell. ' But he begins
to waken from the long delusion and, in a melancholy moment,
admits: 'I certainly am constitutionally unfit for any employment
He was then on the point of achievement. His life was to tell
better than he knew, and in another way than he had hoped. His
friendship for Johnson was helping him in these years to do what
he was unable to do for himself. Without Johnson, he relapses to
the level of his early verse in No Abolition of Slavery; or the
Universal Empire of Love (April 1791)? . And, when the effort
of producing the great work is over, there remains only the
record of steady decline, varied by new schemes of matrimony,
and cheered by large sales and the preparation of new editions.
He died in London, 19 May 1795. From 1758 to within a few weeks
of his death, he had corresponded regularly with William Johnson
Temple, a fellow student in the Greek class at Edinburgh who
became vicar of St Gluvias in Cornwall; and these letters, which
had been sold by a hawker at Boulogne and were rescued to be
published in 1857, give us his real autobiography?
