No More Learning

It is not speaking with exaggeration, but with strict
measured sobriety, to say that this Book of Boswell's will give
us more real insight into the History of England during those
days than twenty other Books, falsely entitled " Histories,"
which take to themselves that special aim. What good is it
to me though innumerable Smolletts and Belshams keep
dinning in my ears that a man named George the Third was
born and bred up, and a man named George the Second died;
that Walpole, and the Pelhams, and Chatham, and Rocking-
ham, and Shelburne, and North, with their Coalition or then-
Separation Ministries, all ousted one another; and vehemently
scrambled for " the thing they called the Rudder of Govern-
ment, but which was in reality the Spigot of Taxation "?
That debates were held, and infinite jarring and jargoning
took place; and road-bills and enclosure-bills, and game-
bills and India-bills, and Laws which no man can number,
which happily few men needed to trouble their heads with
beyond the passing moment, were enacted, and printed by
the King's Stationer? That he who sat in Chancery, and
rayed-out speculation from the Woolsack, was now a man
that squinted, now a man that did not squint? To the
hungry and thirsty mind all this avails next to nothing.
These men and these things, we indeed know, did swim, by
strength or by specific levity, as apples or as horse-dung, on
the top of the current: but is it by painfully noting the
courses, eddyings and bobbings hither and thither of such
drift-articles, that you will unfold to me the nature of the
current itself; of that mighty-rolling, loud-roaring Life-
current, bottomless as the foundations of the Universe,
mysterious as its Author? The thing I want to see is not
Redbook Lists, and Court Calendars, and Parliamentary
Registers, but the Life of Man in England: what men did,
thought, suffered, enjoyed; the form, especially the spirit,
of their terrestrial existence, its outward environment, its
inward principle; how and what it was; whence it proceeded,
whither it was tending.
Mournful, in truth, is it to behold what the business called
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 18 Carlyle's Essays
"History," in these so enlightened and illuminated timt
still continues to be. Can you gather from it, read till yoi
eyes go out, any dimmest shadow of an answer to that gre
question: How men lived and had their being; were it bi
economically, as, what wages they got, and what they boug]
with these? Unhappily you cannot. History will throw i
light on any such matter. At the point where living memoi
fails, it is all darkness; Mr. Senior and Mr. Sadler must st
debate this simplest of all elements in the condition of tl
Past: Whether men were better off, in their mere larders an
pantries, or were worse off than now! History, as it stani
all bound up in gilt volumes, is but a shade more instructs
than the wooden volumes of a Backgammon-board. ~Ho
my Prime Minister was appointed is of less moment to n
than How my House Servant was hired. In these days, te
ordinary Histories of Kings and Courtiers were well exchange
against the tenth part of one good History of Booksellers.
For example, I would fain know the History of Scotlanc
who can tell it me? "Robertson," say innumerable voice
"Robertson against the world. " I open Robertson; an
find there, through long ages too confused for narrative, an
fit only to be presented in the way of epitome and distille
essence, a cunning answer and hypothesis, not to thisquestior
By whom, and by what means, when and how, was this fa
broad Scotland, with its Arts and Manufactures, Temple:
Schools, Institutions, Poetry, Spirit, National Characte
created, and made arable, verdant, peculiar, great, here as
can see some fair section of it lying, kind and strong (lik
some Bacchus-tamed Lion), from the Castle-hill of Edinburgh
--but to this other question: How did the King keep hin
self alive in those old days; and restrain so many Butchei
Barons and ravenous Henchmen from utterly extirpating on
another, so that killing went on in some sort of moderation
In the one little Letter of ^Eneas Sylvius, from old Scotlanc
there is more of History than in all this. --At length, howeve
we come to a luminous age, interesting enough; to the age c
the Reformation. All Scotland is awakened to a second hight
life: the Spirit of the Highest stirs in every bosom, agitate
every bosom; Scotland is convulsed, fermenting, struggling t
body itself forth anew. To the herdsman, among his cattle i
remote woods; to the craftsman, in his rude, heath-thatche
workshop, among his rude guild-brethren; to the great and t
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Boswell's Life of Johnson 19
he little, a new light has arisen: in town and hamlet groups
ire gathered, with eloquent looks, and governed or ungovern-
tble tongues; the great and the little go forth together to do
attle for the Lord against the mighty. We ask, with breath-
ess eagerness: How was it; how went it on? Letusunder-
tand it, let us see it, and know it! --In reply, is handed us a
eally graceful and most dainty little Scandalous Chronicle
as for some Journal of Fashion) of two persons: Mary Stuart,
1 Beauty, but over lightheaded; and Henry Darnley, a
3ooby who had fine legs. How these first courted, billed and
ooed, according to nature; then pouted, fretted, grew utterly
nraged, and blew one another up with gunpowder: this, and
tot the History of Scotland, is what we good-naturedly read,
fay, by other hands, something like a horse-load of other
3ooks have been written to prove that it was the Beauty who
Jew up the Booby, and that it was not she. Who or what
t was, the thing once for all being so effectually done, concerns
is little. To know Scotland, at that great epoch, were a
uable increase of knowledge: to know poor Darnley, and
him with burning candle, from centre to skin, were no
ncrease of knowledge at all. --Thus is History written.
Hence, indeed, comes it that History, which should be
'the essence of innumerable Biographies," will tell us, ques-
ion it as we like, less than one genuine Biography may do,
)leasantly and of its own accord! The time is approaching
vhen History will be attempted on quite other principles;
vhen the Court, the Senate and the Battlefield, receding more
ind more into the background, the Temple, the Workshop
Lnd Social Hearth will advance more and more into the fore-
;round; and History will not content itself with shaping
ome answer to that question: How were men taxed and kept
wet then? but will seek to answer this other infinitely wider
ind higher question: How and what were men then? Not
iut Government only, or the "House wherein our life was
ed," but the Life itself we led there, will be inquired into.
)f which latter it may be found that Government, in any
nodern sense of the word, is after all but a secondary con-
dition: in the mere sense of Taxation and Keeping quiet, a
small, almost a pitiful one. --Meanwhile let us welcome such
Boswells, each in his degree, as bring us any genuine contribu-
tion, were it never so inadequate, so inconsiderable.
An exception was early taken against this Life of Johnson,
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 20 Carlyle's Essays
and all similar enterprises, which we here recommend; ant
has been transmitted from critic to critic, and repeated in
their several dialects, uninterruptedly, ever since: That sud
jottings-down of careless conversation are an infringement o:
social privacy; a crime against our highest Freedom, thi
Freedom of man's intercourse with man. To this accusa
tion, which we have read and heard oftener than enough
might it not be well for once to offer the flattest contradictior
and plea of Not at all guilty? Not that conversation is notec
down, but that conversation should not deserve noting down
is the evil. Doubtless, if conversation be falsely recorded
then is it simply a Lie; and worthy of being swept, with al
despatch, to the Father of Lies. But if, on the other hand
conversation can be authentically recorded, and any one i;
ready for the task, let him by all means proceed with it; lei
conversation be kept in remembrance to the latest datf
possible. Nay, should the consciousness that a man may b<
among us " taking notes " tend, in any measure, to restrict
those floods of idle insincere speech, with which the though
of mankind is wellnigh drowned,--were it other than th<
most indubitable benefit? He who speaks honestly cares
not, needs not care, though his words be preserved to re-
motest time: for him who speaks iwhonestly, the fittest ol
all punishments seems to be this same, which the nature ol
the case provides. The dishonest speaker, not he only who
purposely utters falsehoods, but he who does not purposely,
and with sincere heart, utter Truth, and Truth alone; who
babbles he knows not what, and has clapped no bridle on his
tongue, but lets it run racket, ejecting chatter and futility,
--is among the most indisputable malefactors omitted, 01
inserted, in the Criminal Calendar. To him that will well
consider it, idle speaking is precisely the beginning of all Hol-
lowness, Halfness, Infidelity (want of Faithfulness); the genial
atmosphere in which rank weeds of every kind attain tln
mastery over noble fruits in man's life, and utterly choke them
out: one of the most crying maladies of these days, and to be
testified against, and in all ways to the uttermost withstood.
Wise, of a wisdom far beyond our shallow depth, was that oM
precept: Watch thy tongue; out of it are the issues of Life!
"Man is properly an incarnated word:" the word that he
speaks is the man himself. Were eyes put into our head,
that we might see; or only that we might fancy, and plausibly
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Boswell's Life of Johnson 21
)retend, we had seen? Was the tongue suspended there,
hat it might tell truly what we had seen, and make man the
oul's-brother of man; or only that it might utter vain
ounds, jargon, soul-confusing, and so divide man, as by en-
hanted walls of Darkness, from union with man? Thou
? ho wearest that cunning, heaven-made organ, a Tongue,
hink well of this. Speak not, I passionately entreat thee,
ill thy thought hath silently matured itself, till thou have
ther than mad and mad-making noises to emit: hold thy
mgue (thou hast it a-holding) till some meaning lie behind,
3 set it wagging. Consider the significance of Silence: it
1 boundless, never by meditating to be exhausted; un-
peakably profitable to thee! Cease that chaotic hubbub,
therein thy own soul runs to waste, to confused suicidal
islocation and stupor: out of Silence comes thy strength.
Speech is silvern, Silence is golden; Speech is human,
ilence is divine. " Fool! thinkest thou that because no
loswell is there with ass-skin and blacklead to note thy
irgon, it therefore dies and is harmless? Nothing dies,
othing can die. No idlest word thou speakest but is a seed
>>st into Time, and grows through all Eternity! The Re-
ading Angel, consider it well, is no fable, but the truest of
ruths: the paper tablets thou canst burn; of the "iron
af" there is no burning. --Truly, if we can permit God
dmighty to note down our conversation, thinking it good
nough for Him,--any poor Boswell need not scruple to
ork his will of it.
Leaving now this our English Odyssey, with its Singer and
choliast, let us come to the Ulysses; that great Samuel
ohnson himself, the far-experienced," much-enduring man,"
hose labours and pilgrimage are here sung. A full-length
nage of his Existence has been preserved for us: and he,
erhaps of all living Englishmen, was the one who best
eserved that honour. For if it is true, and now almost
roverbial, that " the Life of the lowest mortal, if faithfully
ecorded, would be interesting to the highest;" how much
lore when the mortal in question was already distinguished
a fortune and natural quality, so that his thinkings and
oings were not significant of himself only, but of large
lasses of mankind! " There is not a man whom I meet on
he streets," says one, " but I could like, were it otherwise
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 22 Carlyle's Essays
convenient, to know his Biography: " nevertheless, could a
enlightened curiosity be so far gratified, it must be owned tl
Biography of most ought to be, in an extreme degree, sun
mary. In this world, there is so wonderfully little self-sul
sistence among men; next to no originality (though nevi
absolutely none): one Life is too servilely the copy of anothei
and so in whole thousands of them you find little that
properly new; nothing but the old song sung by a new voio
with better or worse execution, here and there an ornament;
quaver, and false notes enough: but the fundamental tun
is ever the same; and for the words, these, all that the
meant stands written generally on the Churchyard-stone
Natus sum; esuriebam, qucerebam; nunc repletus requiesu
Mankind sail their Life-voyage in huge fleets, following som
single whale-fishing or herring-fishing Commodore: the log
book of each differs not, in essential purport, from that c
any other: nay the most have no legible log-book (reflectior
observation not being among their talents); keep no reckon
ing, only keep in sight of the flagship,--and fish. Read th
Commodore's Papers (know his Life); and even your love
of that street Biography will have learned the most of wha
he sought after.
Or, the servile imitancy, and yet also a nobler relationship
and mysterious union to one another which lies in such irai
tancy, of Mankind might be illustrated under the differen
figure, itself nowise original, of a Flock of Sheep. Sheep g
in flocks for three reasons: First, because they are of a gre
garious temper, and love to be together: Secondly, becaus
of their cowardice; they are afraid to be left alone: Thirdly
because the common run of them are dull of sight, to a pro
verb, and can have no choice in roads; sheep can in fact st
nothing; in a celestial Luminary, and a scoured pewtei
Tankard, would discern only that both dazzled them, anc
were of unspeakable glory. How like their fellow-creature
of the human species! Men too, as was from the first maill
tained here, are gregarious; then surely faint - hearten
enough, trembling to be left by themselves; above all, dull'
sighted, down to the verge of utter blindness. Thus are n
seen ever running in torrents, and mobs, if we run at all; anC
after what foolish scoured Tankards, mistaking them for
Suns! Foolish Tumip-lanterns likewise, to all appearance
supernatural, keep whole nations quaking, their hair on end.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Boswell's Life of Johnson 23
either know we, except by blind habit, where the good
istures lie: solely when the sweet grass is between our
eth, we know it, and chew it; also when grass is bitter and
ant, we know it,--and bleat and butt: these last two facts
e know of a truth and in very deed. Thus do Men and
ieep play their parts on this Nether Earth; wandering
istlessly in large masses, they know not whither; for most
irt, each following his neighbour, and his own nose.
Nevertheless, not always; look better, you shall find cer-
lin that do, in some small degree, know whither. Sheep
ive their Bell-wether; some ram of the folds, endued with
iore valour, with clearer vision than other sheep; he leads
lem through the wolds, by height and hollow, to the woods
id water-courses, for covert or for pleasant provender;
mrageously marching, and if need be leaping, and with
Dof and horn doing battle, in the van: him they courage-
jsly and with assured heart follow. Touching it is, as every
srdsman will inform you, with what chivalrous devotedness
lese woolly Hosts adhere to their Wether; and rush after
im, through good report and through bad report, were it
ito safe shelters and green thymy nooks, or into asphaltic
. kes and the jaws of devouring lions. Ever also must we
scall that fact which we owe Jean Paul's quick eye: "If
ou hold a stick before the Wether, so that he, by necessity,
aps in passing you, and then withdraw your stick, the
lock will nevertheless all leap as he did; and the thousandth
leep shall be found impetuously vaulting over air, as the
rst did over an otherwise impassable barrier. " Reader,
ouldst thou understand Society, ponder well those ovine
roceedings; thou wilt find them all curiously significant.
Now if sheep always, how much more must men always,
ave their Chief, their Guide! Man too is by nature quite
nioroughly gregarious: nay ever he struggles to be something
lore, to be social; not even when Society has become impos-
Ible, does that deep-seated tendency and effort forsake him.
[an, as if by miraculous magic, imparts his Thoughts, his
lood of mind to man; an unspeakable communion binds all
? ast, present and future men into one indissoluble whole,
lmost into one living individual. Of which high, mysterious
'ruth, this disposition to imitate, to lead and be led, this
mpossibility not to imitate, is the most constant, and one
if the simplest manifestations. To imitate! which of us all
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 24 Carlylc's Essays
can measure the significance that lies in that one word? By
virtue of which the infant Man, born at Woolsthorpe, grows
up not to be a hairy Savage, and chewer of Acorns, but an
Isaac Newton and Discoverer of Solar Systems! --Thus both
in a celestial and terrestrial sense are we a Flock, such as there
is no other: nay looking away from the base and ludicrous
to the sublime and sacred side of the matter (since in every
matter there are two sides), have not we also a Shepherd,
"if we will but hear his voice "? Of those stupid multitudes
there is no one but has an immortal Soul within him; a reflea
and living image of God's whole Universe: strangely, frorr
its dim environment, the light of the Highest looks through
him;--for which reason, indeed, it is that we claim a brother-
hood with him, and so love to know his History, and come
into clearer and clearer union with all that he feels, and says,
and does.
However, the chief thing to be noted was this: Amid those
dull millions, who, as a dull flock, roll hither and thither,
whithersoever they are led; and seem all sightless and slavish,
accomplishing, attempting little save what the animal instinct
in its somewhat higher kind might teach, To keep themselva
and their young ones alive,--are scattered here and ther<<
superior natures, whose eye is not destitute of free vision, nor1
their heart of free volition. These latter, therefore, examine
and determine, not what others do, but what it is right to do;
towards which, and which only, will they, with such force as
is given them, resolutely endeavour: for if the Machine, living
or inanimate, is merely fed, or desires to be fed, and so works
the Person can will, and so do. These are properly our Men,
our Great Men; the guides of the dull host,--which follows
them as by an irrevocable decree. They are the chosen of the
world: they had this rare faculty not only of " supposing"
and " inclining to think," but of knowing and believing; the
nature of their being was, that they lived not by Hearsay,
but by clear Vision; while others hovered and swam along,
in the grand Vanity-fair of the World, blinded by the mere
Shows of things, these saw into the Things themselves, and
could walk as men having an eternal loadstar, and with their
feet on sure paths. Thus was there a Reality in their exist-
ence; something of a perennial character; in virtue of which
indeed it is that the memory of them is perennial. Whoso
belongs only to his own age, and reverences only its gilt Popin-
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Bos well's Life of Johnson 25
jays or soot-smeared Mumbojumbos, must needs die with it:
though he have been crowned seven times in the capitol,
jr seventy-and-seven times, and Rumour have blown his
araises to all the four winds, deafening every ear therewith,--
it avails not; there was nothing universal, nothing eternal
in him j he must fade away, even as the Popinjay-gildings
wd Scarecrow-apparel, which he could not see through. The
great man does, in good truth, belong to his own age; nay
more so than any other man; being properly the synopsis
and epitome of such age with its interests and influences:
but belongs likewise to all ages, otherwise he is not great.
What was transitory in him passes away; and an immortal
part remains, the significance of which is in strict speech
inexhaustible,--as that of every real object is. Aloft,
conspicuous, on his enduring basis, he stands there, serene,
imaltering; silently addresses to every new generation a new
lesson and monition. Well is his Life worth writing, worth
interpreting; and ever, in the new dialect of new times, of
re-writing and re-interpreting.
Of such chosen men was Samuel Johnson: not ranking
among the highest, or even the high, yet distinctly admitted
into that sacred band; whose existence was no idle Dream,
but a Reality which he transacted awake; nowise a Clothes-
horse and Patent Digester, but a genuine Man. By nature he
was gifted for the noblest of earthly tasks, that of Priesthood,
and Guidance of mankind; by destiny, moreover, he was
appointed to this task, and did actually, according to strength,
fulfil the same: so that always the question, How; in what
spirit; under what shape? remains for us to be asked and
answered concerning him. For as the highest Gospel was a
Biography, so is the Life of every good man still an indubit-
able Gospel, and preaches to the eye and heart and whole man,
so that Devils even must believe and tremble, these gladdest
tidings: "Man is heaven-born; not the thrall of Circum-
stances, of Necessity, but the victorious subduer thereof:
behold how he can become the 'Announcer of himself and
of his Freedom;' and is ever what the Thinker has named
him, 'the Messias of Nature. ' "--Yes, Reader, all this that
thou hast so often heard about "force of circumstances,"
"the creature of the time," "balancing of motives," and
who knows what melancholy stuff to the like purport, wherein
thou, as in a nightmare Dream, sittest paralysed, and hast
n 7? 4 c
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 26 Carlyle's Essays
no force left,--was in very truth, if Johnson and waking men
are to be credited, little other than a hag-ridden vision of
death-sleep; some half-i&ct, more fatal at times than a whole
falsehood. Shake it off; awake; up and be doing, even as
it is given thee!
The Contradiction which yawns wide enough in every Life,
which it is the meaning and task of Life to reconcile, was in
Johnson's wider than in most. Seldom, for any man, has the
contrast between the ethereal heavenward side of things, and
the dark sordid earthward, been more glaring: whether we
look at Nature's work with him or Fortune's, from first to
last, heterogeneity, as of sunbeams and miry clay, is on all
hands manifest. Whereby indeed, only this was declared.
That much Life had been given him; many things to triumph
over, a great work to do. Happily also he did it; better than
the most.
Nature had given him a high, keen-visioned, almost poetic
soul; yet withal imprisoned it in an inert, unsightly body; he
that could never rest had not limbs that would move with him,
but only roll and waddle: the inward eye, all-penetrating, all-
embracing, must look through bodily windows that were dim,
half-blinded; he so loved men, and "never once saw the
human face divine "! Not less did he prize the love of men;
he was eminently social; the approbation of his fellows was
dear to him, " valuable," as he owned, "if from the meanest
of human beings:" yet the first impression he produced on
every man was to be one of aversion, almost of disgust. By
Nature it was farther ordered that the imperious Johnson
should be born poor: the ruler-soul, strong in its native
royalty, generous, uncontrollable, like the lion of the woods,
was to be housed, then, in such a dwelling-place: of Dis-
figurement, Disease, and lastly of a Poverty which itself made
him the servant of servants. Thus was the born king likewise
a born slave: the divine spirit of Music must awake im-
prisoned amid dull-croaking universal Discords; the Ariel
finds himself encased in the coarse hulls of a Caliban. So is
it more or less, we know (and thou, O Reader, knowest and
feelest even now), with all men: yet with the fewest men in
any such degree as with Johnson.
Fortune, moreover, which had so managed his first appear-
ance in the world, lets not her hand lie idle, or turn the other
way, but works unweariedly in the same spirit, while he is
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Boswell's Life of Johnson 27
journeying through the world. What such a mind, stamped
of Nature's noblest metal, though in so ungainly a die, was
specially and best of all fitted for, might still be a question.
To none of the world's few Incorporated Guilds could he have
adjusted himself without difficulty, without distortion; in
none been a Guild-Brother well at ease. Perhaps, if we look
to the strictly practical nature of his faculty, to the strength,
decision, method that manifests itself in him, we may say that
his calling was rather towards Active than Speculative life;
that as Statesman (in the higher, now obsolete sense), Law-
giver, Ruler, in short as Doer of the Work, he had shone even
more than as Speaker of the Word. His honesty of heart,
his courageous temper, the value he set on things outward
and material, might have made him a King among Kings.
Had the golden age of those new French Prophets, when it
shall be a chacun selon sa capacite, a chaque capacite selon ses
xuvres, but arrived! Indeed even in our brazen and Birming-
ham-lacquer age, he himself regretted that he had not become
1 Lawyer, and risen to be Chancellor, which he might well
have done. However, it was otherwise appointed. To no
man does Fortune throw open all the kingdoms of this world,
and say: It is thine; choose where thou wilt dwell! To the
most she opens hardly the smallest cranny or doghutch, and
says, not without asperity: There, that is thine while thou
canst keep it; nestle thyself there, and bless Heaven! Alas,
men must fit themselves into many things: some forty years
ago, for instance, the noblest and ablest Man in all the
British lands might be seen not swaying the royal sceptre,
or the pontiff's censer, on the pinnacle of the World, but
gauging ale-tubs in the little burgh of Dumfries! Johnson
came a little nearer the mark than Burns: but with him too
"Strength was mournfully denied its arena! " he too had
to fight Fortune at strange odds, all his life long.
Johnson's disposition for royalty (had the Fates so ordered
it) is well seen in early boyhood. "His favourites," says
Boswell, " used to receive very liberal assistance from him;
and such was the submission and deference with which he
was treated, that three of the boys, of whom Mr. Hector was
sometimes one, used to come in the morning as his humble
attendants, and carry him to school. One in the middle
stooped, while he sat upon his back, and one on each side
supported him; and thus was he borne triumphant. " The
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 28 Carlyle's Essays
purfly, sand-blind lubber and blubber, with his open mouth,
and face of bruised honeycomb; yet already dominant,
imperial, irresistible! Not in the " King's-chair " (of human
arms), as we see, do his three satellites carry him along:
rather on the Tyrants-saddle, the back of his fellow-creature,
must he ride prosperous! --The child is father of the man. He
who had seen fifty years into coming Time, would have felt
that little spectacle of mischievous schoolboys to be a great
one. For us, who look back on it, and what followed it, now
from afar, there arise questions enough: How looked these
urchins? What jackets and galligaskins had they; felt
headgear, or of dogskin leather? What was old Lichfield
doing then; what thinking? --and so on, through the whole
series of Corporal Trim's " auxiliary verbs. " A picture of it
all fashions itself together;--only unhappily we have no brush
and no fingers.
Boyhood is now past; the ferula of Pedagogue waves
harmless, in the distance: Samuel has struggled up to
uncouth bulk and youthhood, wrestling with Disease, and
Poverty, all the way; which two continue still his com-
panions. At College we see little of him; yet thus much, |
that things went not well. A rugged wildman of the desert, I
awakened to the feeling of himself; proud as the proudest,
poor as the poorest; stoically shut up, silently enduring the
incurable: what a world of blackest gloom, with sun-gleams
and pale tearful moon-gleams, and flickerings of a celestial
and an infernal splendour, was this that now opened for him!
But the weather is wintry; and the toes of the man are look-
ing through his shoes. His muddy features grow of a purple 1
and sea-green colour; a flood of black indignation mantling j
beneath. A truculent, raw-boned figure! Meat he has
probably little; hope he has less: his feet, as we said, have
come into brotherhood with the cold mire.
"Shall I be particular," inquires Sir John Hawkins, "and
relate a circumstance of his distress, that cannot be imputed to
him as an effect of his own extravagance or irregularity, and |
consequently reflects no disgrace on his memory? He had scarce
any change of raiment, and, in a short time after Corbet left him, I
but one pair of shoes, and those so old that his feet were seen
through them: a gentleman of his college, the father of an
eminent clergyman now living, directed a servitor one morning to
place a new pair at the door of Johnson's chamber; who seeing
them upon his first going out, so far forgot himself and the spirit
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Boswell's Life of Johnson 29
which must have actuated his unknown benefactor, that, with all
the indignation of an insulted man, he threw them away. "
How exceedingly surprising! --The Rev. Dr. Hall remarks:
w As far as we can judge from a cursory view of the weekly
account in the buttery-books, Johnson appears to have lived
as well as other commoners and scholars. " Alas! such
"cursory view of the buttery-books," now from the safe
distance of a century, in the safe chair of a College Mastership,
is one thing; the continual view of the empty or locked
buttery itself was quite a different thing. But hear our
? Knight, how he farther discourses. "Johnson," quoth Sir
John, could "not at this early period of his life divest him-
self of an idea that poverty was disgraceful; and was very
severe in his censures of that economy in both our Universi-
ties, which exacted at meals the attendance of poor scholars,
under the several denominations of Servitors in the one, and
Sizers in the other: he thought that the scholar's, like the
Christian life, levelled all distinctions of rank and worldly
preeminence; but in this he was mistaken: civil polity" etc. ,
etc. --Too true! It is man's lot to err.
However, Destiny, in all ways, means to prove the mistaken
Samuel, and see what stuff is in him. He must leave these
butteries of Oxford, Want like an armed man compelling him;
retreat into his father's mean home; and there abandon him-
self for a season to inaction, disappointment, shame and
nervous melancholy nigh run mad: he is probably the
wretchedest man in wide England. In all ways he too must
''become perfect through suffering. "--High thoughts have
visited him; his College Exercises have been praised beyond
the walls of College; Pope himself has seen that Translation,
and approved of it: Samuel had whispered to himself: I too
am " one and somewhat. " False thoughts; that leave only
misery behind! The fever-fire of Ambition is too painfully
extinguished (but not cured) in the frost-bath of Poverty.
Johnson has knocked at the gate, as one having a right; but
there was no opening: the world lies all encircled as with
brass; nowhere can he find or force the smallest entrance.
An ushership at Market Bosworth, and "a disagreement
between him and Sir Wolstan Dixie, the patron of the school,"
yields him bread of affliction and water of affliction; but so
bitter, that unassisted human nature cannot swallow them.
Young Samson will grind no more in the Philistine mill of
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 30 Carlyle's Essays
Bosworth; quits hold of Sir Wolstan, and the "domestic
chaplaincy, so far at least as to say grace at table," and also
to be "treated with what he represented as intolerable
harshness; " and so, after " some months of such complicated
misery," feeling doubtless that there are worse things in the
world than quick death by Famine, " relinquishes a situation
which all his life afterwards he recollected with the strongest
aversion, and even horror. " Men like Johnson are properh
called the Forlorn Hope of the World: judge whether his hope
was forlorn or not, by this Letter to a dull oily Printer whc
called himself Sylvanus Urban:
"Sir,--As you appear no less sensible than your readers of the
defect of your poetical article, you will not be displeased if (ir
order to the improvement of it) I communicate to you the senti
ments of a person who will undertake, on reasonable terms, some
times to fill a column.
"His opinion is, that the public would " etc. , etc.
"If such a correspondence will be agreeable to you, be pleased
to inform me in two posts, what the conditions are on which yoi
shall expect it. Your late offer (for a Prize Poem) gives me nt
reason to distrust your generosity. If you engage in any literan
projects besides this paper, I have other designs to impart. "
Reader, the generous person, to whom this letter goes
addressed, is " Mr. Edmund Cave, at St. John's Gate, Lon-
don;" the addressor of it is Samuel Johnson, in Birmingham
Warwickshire.
Nevertheless, Life rallies in the man; reasserts its right tc
be lived, even to be enjoyed. "Better a small bush," say the
Scotch, " than no shelter: " Johnson learns to be contented
with humble human things; and is there not already an
actual realised human Existence, all stirring and living on
every hand of him? Go thou and do likewise! In Birming-
ham itself, with his own purchased goose-quill, he can earn
"five guineas; " nay, finally, the choicest terrestrial good:
a Friend, who will be Wife to him! Johnson's marriage with
the good Widow Porter has been treated with ridicule by
many mortals, who apparently had no understanding thereof.
That the purblind, seamy-faced Wildman, stalking lonely,
woe-stricken, like some Irish Gallowglass with peeled club,
whose speech no man knew, whose look all men both laughed
at and shuddered at, should find any brave female heart to
acknowledge, at first sight and hearing of him, " This is the
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Boswell's Life of Johnson 31
most sensible man I ever met with; " and then, with generous
courage, to take him to itself, and say, Be thou mine; be
thou wanned here, and thawed to life! --in all this, in the
kind Widow's love and pity for him, in Johnson's love and
gratitude, there is actually no matter for ridicule. Their
wedded life, as is the common lot, was made up of drizzle and
dry weather; but innocence and worth dwelt in it; and when
death had ended it, a certain sacredness: Johnson's deathless
affection for his Tetty was always venerable and noble.
However, be all this as it might, Johnson is now minded to
,wed; and will live by the trade of Pedagogy, for by this also
may life be kept in. Let the world therefore take notice:
"At Edial near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young gentlemen are
boarded, and taught the Latin and Greek languages, by--
Samuel Johnson. " Had this Edial enterprise prospered,
how different might the issue have been! Johnson had lived
a life of unnoticed nobleness, or swoln into some amorphous
Dr. Parr, of no avail to us; Bozzy would have dwindled into
official insignificance, or risen by some other elevation; old
Auchinleck had never been afflicted with " ane that keeped
a schule," or obliged to violate hospitality by a " Cromwell
do? God, sir, he gart kings ken that there was a lith in their
neck! "--But the Edial enterprise did not prosper; Destiny
had other work appointed for Samuel Johnson; and young
gentlemen got board where they could elsewhere find it.
This man was to become a Teacher of grown gentlemen, in
the most surprising way; a Man of Letters, and Ruler of the
1British Nation for some time,--not of their bodies merely
but of their minds, not over them but in them.
The career of Literature could not, in Johnson's day, any
more than now, be said to lie along the shores of a Pactolus:
whatever else might be gathered there, gold-dust was nowise
the chief produce. The world, from the times of Socrates,
St. Paul, and far earlier, has always had its Teachers; and
always treated them in a peculiar way. A shrewd Townclerk
(not of Ephesus), once, in founding a Burgh-Seminary, when
the question came, How the Schoolmasters should be main-
tained? delivered this brief counsel: "D--n them, keep
them poor /" Considerable wisdom may lie in this aphorism.
At all events, we see, the world has acted on it long, and
indeed improved on it,--putting many a Schoolmaster of its
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 32 Carlyle's Essays
great Burgh-Seminary to a death which even cost it something.
The world, it is true, had for some time been too busy to go
out of its way, and put any author to death; however, the
old sentence pronounced against them was found to be pretty
sufficient. The first Writers, being Monks, were sworn to
a vow of Poverty; the modern Authors had no need to swear
to it. This was the epoch when an Otway could still die of
hunger; not to speak of your innumerable Scrogginses,
whom "the Muse found stretched beneath a rug," with
"rusty grate unconscious of a fire," stocking-nightcap,
sanded floor, and all the other escutcheons of the craft,
time out of mind the heirlooms of Authorship. Scroggins,
however, seems to have been but an idler; not at all so
diligent as worthy Mr. Boyce, whom we might have
seen sitting up in bed, with his wearing-apparel of Blanket
about him, and a hole slit in the same, that his hand might
be at liberty to work in its vocation. The worst was, that
too frequently a blackguard recklessness of temper ensued,
incapable of turning to account what good the gods even here
had provided: your Boyces acted on some stoico-epicurean
principle of carpe Hem, as men do in bombarded towns, and
seasons of raging pestilence;--and so had lost not only their
life, and presence of mind, but their status as persons of
respectability. The trade of Author was at about one of its
lowest ebbs when Johnson embarked on it.
Accordingly we find no mention of Illuminations in the
city of London, when this same Ruler of the British Nation
arrived in it: no cannon-salvos are fired; no flourish of
drums and trumpets greets his appearance on the scene.
He enters quite quietly, with some copper halfpence in his
pocket; creeps into lodgings in Exeter Street, Strand; and
has a Coronation Pontiff also, of not less peculiar equipment,
whom, with all submissiveness, he must wait upon, in his
Vatican of St. John's Gate. This is the dull oily Printer
alluded to above.
"Cave's temper," says our Knight Hawkins, " was phlegmatic:
though he assumed, as the publisher of the Magazine, the name
of Sylvanus Urban, he had few of those qualities that constitute
urbanity. Judge of his want of them by this question, which b<<
once put to an author: 'Mr. , I hear you have just published
a pamphlet, and am told there is a very good paragraph in it upon
the subj ect of music: did you write that yourself? ' His discern-
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Boswell's Life of Johnson 33
ment was also slow; and as he had already at his command some
writers of prose and verse, who, in the language of Booksellers,
are called good hands, he was the backwarder in making advances,
or courting an intimacy with Johnson. Upon the first approach
of a stranger, his practice was to continue sitting; a posture in
which he was ever to be found, and for a few minutes to continue
silent: if at any time he was inclined to begin the discourse, it
? was generally by putting a leaf of the Magazine, then in the press,
into the hand of his visitor, and asking his opinion of it. . . .
"He was so incompetent a judge of Johnson's abilities, that
meaning at one time to dazzle him with the splendour of some
of those luminaries in Literature, who favoured him with their
correspondence, he told him that if he would, in the evening, be
at a certain alehouse in the neighbourhood of Clerkenwell, he
might have a chance of seeing Mr. Browne and another or two of
those illustrious contributors: Johnson accepted the invitation;
and being introduced by Cave, dressed in a loose horseman's coat,
and such a great bushy wig as he constantly wore, to the sight
of Mr. Browne, whom he found sitting at the upper end of a long
? table, in a cloud of tobacco-smoke, had his curiosity gratified. " 1
In fact, if we look seriously into the condition of Author-
ship at that period, we shall find that Johnson had under-
taken one of the ruggedest of all possible enterprises; that
here as elsewhere Fortune had given him unspeakable
Contradictions to reconcile. For a man of Johnson's stamp,
the Problem was twofold: First, not only as the humble
but indispensable condition of all else, to keep himself, if
so might be, alive; but secondly, to keep himself alive by
speaking forth the Truth that was in him, and speaking it
truly, that is, in the clearest and fittest utterance the Heavens
had enabled him to give it, let the Earth say to this what she
liked. Of which twofold Problem if it be hard to solve either
member separately, how incalculably more so to solve it,
when both are conjoined, and work with endless complication
into one another! He that finds himself already kept alive
can sometimes (unhappily not always) speak a little truth;
he that finds himself able and willing, to all lengths, to speak
lies, may, by watching how the wind sits, scrape together
a livelihood, sometimes of great splendour: he, again, who
finds himself provided with neither endowment, has but a
ticklish game to play, and shall have praises if he win it.
Let us look a little at both faces of the matter; and see what
front they then offered our Adventurer, what front he offered
them.
1 Hawkins, pp. 46-50.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 34 Carlyle's Essays
At the time of Johnson's appearance on the field, Litera-
ture, in many senses, was in a transitional state; chiefly in
this sense, as respects the pecuniary subsistence of its culti-
vators. It was in the very act of passing from the protection
of Patrons into that of the Public; no longer to supply its
necessities by laudatory Dedications to the Great, but by
judicious Bargains with the Booksellers. This happy change
has been much sung and celebrated; many a "lord of the
lion heart and eagle eye" looking back with scorn enough
on the bygone system of Dependency: so that now it were
perhaps well to consider, for a moment, what good might
also be in it, what gratitude we owe it. That a good was in
it, admits not of doubt. Whatsoever has existed has had its
value: without some truth and worth lying in it, the thing
could not have hung together, and been the organ and
sustenance, and method of action, for men that reasoned and
were alive. Translate a Falsehood which is wholly false into
Practice, the result comes out zero; there is no fruit or issue
to be derived from it. That in an age, when a Nobleman
was still noble, still with his wealth the protector of worthy |
and humane things, and still venerated as such, a poor Man 1
of Genius, his brother in nobleness, should, with unfeigned
reverence, address him and say: "I have found Wisdom
here, and would fain proclaim it abroad; wilt thou, of thy
abundance, afford me the means? "--in all this there was no
baseness; it was wholly an honest proposal, which a free
man might make, and a free man listen to. So might a
Tasso, with a Gerusalemme in his hand or in his head, speak
to a Duke of Ferrara; so might a Shakspeare to his South-
ampton; and Continental Artists generally to their rich
Protectors,--in some countries, down almost to these days.
It was only when the reverence became feigned, that baseness
entered into the transaction on both sides; and, indeed,
flourished there with rapid luxuriance, till that became
disgraceful for a Dryden, which a Shakspeare could once
practise without offence.
Neither, it is very true, was the new way of Bookseller
Maecenasship worthless; which opened itself at this juncture,
for the most important of all transport-trades, now when the
old way had become too miry and impassable. Remark,
moreover, how this second sort of Maecenasship, after carry-
ing us through nearly a century of Literary Time, appears
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:21 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Boswell's Life of Johnson 35
now to have wellnigh discharged its function also; and to
be working pretty rapidly towards some third method, the
exact conditions of which are yet nowise visible. Thus all
things have their end; and we should part with them all,
not in anger, but in peace. The Bookseller-System, during
its peculiar century, the whole of the eighteenth, did carry
us handsomely along; and many good Works it has left us,
and many good Men it maintained: if it is now expiring by
Puffery, as the Patronage-System did by Flattery (for
Lying is ever the forerunner of Death, nay is itself Death),
let us not forget its benefits; how it nursed Literature through
boyhood and school-years, as Patronage had wrapped it in
soft swaddling-bands;--till now we see it about to put on
the toga virilis, could it but find any such!
There is tolerable travelling on the beaten road, run how
it may; only on the new road not yet levelled and paved,
and on the old road all broken into ruts and quagmires, is the
travelling bad or impracticable. The difficulty lies always
in the transition from one method to another. In which
state it was that Johnson now found Literature; and out of
which, let us also say, he manfully carried it. What remark-
able mortal first paid copyright in England we have not
ascertained; perhaps, for almost a century before, some
scarce visible or ponderable pittance of wages had occasionally
been yielded by the Seller of Books to the Writer of them:
the original Covenant, stipulating to produce Paradise Lost
on the one hand, and Five Pounds Sterling on the other,
? still lies (we have been told) in black-on-white, for inspection
and purchase by the curious, at a Bookshop in Chancery
Lane. Thus had the matter gone on, in a mixed confused
way, for some threescore years;--as ever, in such things, the
old system overlaps the new, by some generation or two, and
only dies quite out when the new has got a complete organisa-
tion and weather-worthy surface of its own. Among the
.