No More Learning

'
His deep humour is present throughout, and is occasionally given
scope, as in the essay on the advantages of living in a garret ; but
it is always controlled by the serious purpose.
In concluding The Rambler, he stated that he had laboured
'to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from
colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combina-
tions. ' At this time he was in the midst of a similar and greater
task in his Dictionary of the English Language. Most of the
earlier English dictionaries, to the beginning of the eighteenth
century, had been dictionaries of 'hard words. ' Then, Nathan
Bailey, in his Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721),
had aimed at a record of all English words, irrespective of their
vogue or repute. Johnson purposely omitted 'many terms appro-
priated to particular occupations,' and thought not so much of the
reader as of the writer and the purity of the language. His
Plan clearly states his objects, and it is cleverly supplemented in
Chesterfield's two papers in The World'. He set out to perform,
singlehanded, for the English language what the French Academy,
a century before, had undertaken for French? It was to be 'a
dictionary by which the pronunciation of our language may be
fixed, and its attainment facilitated; by which its purity may be
preserved, its use ascertained, and its duration lengthened. ' So
Johnson hoped ; and Chesterfield was ready to acknowledge him
as a dictator who would free the language from its anarchy. But,
i Nos. 100, 101.
? Cf. the verses in The Gentleman's Magazine for April 1755, ending
And Johnson, well arm’d, like a hero of yore,
Has beat forty French, and will beat forty more.
Cf. , also, the review in Maty's Journal Britannique, 1755, XVII, p. 219 : Mr Johnson
peut se glorifier. . . d'étre en quelque sorte une Académie pour son isle. Adam Smith
reviewed the Dictionary in the first number of The Edinburgh Review of 1755—6.
.


## p. 174 (#200) ############################################

174
Johnson and Boswell
6
when he came to write the preface, he had found that 'no dic-
tionary of a living tongue can ever be perfect, since, while it is
hastening to publication, some words are budding, and some
falling away. ' None the less, the mistaken hope gave the Dic-
tionary its peculiar value. By aiming at fixing the language,
he succeeded in giving the standard of reputable use.
Though there are many words in Bailey's dictionary which
Johnson omitted, a hasty comparison will show that he added
a large number. He held that the golden age of our language
began with the reign of Elizabeth, and that the writers in the
century before the restoration were ‘the pure sources of genuine
diction. As his earliest authorities, he chose Sidney and Spenser.
When he avowedly included obsolete words, they were to be
found in wellknown authors, or appeared to deserve revival.
'Cant words,' as he called them, were occasionally admitted, be-
cause of their vogue; others were described as 'low. ' But the most
interesting departure from the rigid exclusiveness of an academic
dictionary is his treatment of dialect. There is a much larger in-
fusion of provincialisms than might have been expected. The great
majority of these are Scottish, no doubt because five of his six
amanuenses, as Boswell has proudly recorded, were 'natives of
North Britain'; but he was also affectionately disposed to words
;
with which he had been familiar in his native county. With all
his care for current reputable use, he had too great respect for
the native stock to ignore its humbler members, and his selection
and description of these have a clear historical value. His main
fear for the language was that it would be corrupted by French.
It seemed to him to have been, since the restoration, 'deviating
towards a Gallick structure and phraseology,' and to be threatening
to reduce us to babble a dialect of France. ' So he set himself to
denounce the folly of naturalising useless foreigners to the injury
of the natives. ' It was no vain boast that the book was devoted
to the honour of his country.
We have long preserved our
constitution, let us make some struggles for our language. '
It appears from Spence's Anecdotes that Pope had discussed
the plan of a dictionary, and had drawn up a list of authors,
beginning with Hooker and Spenser, from whom words should
be collected. The list is referred to in Johnson's Plan; and in
terms which suggest a closer relationship than is now known to have
existed. But there is nothing to show that Pope had favoured the in-
clusion of quotations. This was Johnson's most notable innovation
in English lexicography. He had hoped that every quotation
a
6


## p. 175 (#201) ############################################

Its New Features and Distinctive Merits
175
would serve a further purpose than that of illustrating the use of
a word; but he found, as he proceeded, that he had to abandon
the idea of combining a dictionary with an anthology. The quota-
tions were frequently from memory and are seldom accompanied
with exact references; but, considering the slightness of the assist-
ance which he received, they supply a remarkable proof of the
range of his knowledge, and they have a different kind of interest
from those in other dictionaries, which, based on more scientific
principles, record the use of a word with no attention to the
quality of the writer. But the chief worth of the Dictionary lies
where it should. Johnson had a supreme talent for definition.
When it is remembered that the definitions are his own, that he
was the first to attempt a thorough distinction of the different
meanings (such words as come and go being each subdivided
into more than fifty sections), and that the highest praises he has
received have been paid by his successors, the extent of his
services to the survey of the language will readily be estimated.
The few explanations in which he gave play to his prejudice
or indulged his humour were only a remission of the continued
exercise of his keen and muscular intellect. Occasionally, he
obscured a simple meaning; and no better statement is to be
found than in his preface, of the difficulties of defining the
obvious. He had, like everyone in his century, little etymological
knowledge to help him. But his common sense often kept him
right in giving the original meaning of a word and distinguishing
its later uses, where his successors, previously to the much later
advance in philological science, by aiming at refinement introduced
confusion and error!
The publication of the Dictionary in eight years was a
remarkable achievement of industry, and the more remarkable in
that he had been doing much other work. Apart from his duties
to his own Rambler, he held himself ready to assist his friends.
He contributed a paper about once a fortnight, from March 1753,
to Hawkesworth's Adventurer. He helped Lauder, unsuspect-
ingly, with a preface and postscript to his Miltonic hoax, and
dictated his confession (1750-1); and he wrote the dedication
for Mrs Lennox's Female Quixote (1752) and Shakespear
Illustrated (1753). He contributed the life of Cheynel to The
Student (1751), and the life of Cave to The Gentleman's Magazine
1 There were four editions of the Dictionary in folio during Johnson's lifetime.
The last of them, 'revised by the author,' appeared in 1773. But Bailey's continued to
hold the market. It was the popular English dictionary of the eighteenth century.


## p. 176 (#202) ############################################

176 Johnson and Boswell
(1754). He composed Zachariah Williams's Account of an
Attempt to ascertain the Longitude at Sea (1755). And he
furnished the Dictionary with a 'History of the English Language'
and a 'Grammar of the English Tongue, including a section
on prosody, as well as with its noble preface. And all this had
been accomplished 'amidst inconvenience and distraction, in
sickness and in sorrow. He had so great a capacity for work,
and when he had once started moved with so much ease, that he
did not recognise his rapidity to be uncommon. The extreme
concentration compelled periods of relaxation which he allowed
to weigh on his conscience. He, too, was subject to the common
delusion that his best was his normal. As he was, in all matters,
a man of the most sensitive morality, it became a habit with him
to be distressed at his idleness; and it has become a habit with
us to speak of his constitutional indolence. He certainly had to
make an effort to begin. But to the activity of the eight years
from his thirty-eighth to his forty-sixth, it is not easy to find a
parallel
The Dictionary has the accidental interest of having occasioned
the letter to the earl of Chesterfield, which is sometimes said
to have given the death-blow to literary patronage. Though
always an object of curiosity, the letter was first made public by
Boswell in 1790. In refusing to dedicate the Dictionary, Johnson
adhered to his regular practice, from which only motives of busi-
ness had suggested a departure. The Plan was a letter 'addressed'
to Chesterfield. Only once had he dedicated a work of his own-
The Voyage to Abyssinia, and that was dedicated in the person
of the Birmingham bookseller. But, though he made a rule for
bimself, he did not condemn the custom. He accepted dedications,
and he continued to supply other writers with theirs. He told
Boswell that he 'believed he had dedicated to all the Royal family
round. ' He excelled in dedications.
His next scheme was a journal that should record the progress
of European studies, and he planned it while the zest that came
from completing the Dictionary concealed how far he had drawn
on his energies. Such periodicals as The Present State of the
Republic of Letters (1728—36) and The History of the Works of
the Learned (1737—43) had now long ceased, after having shown,
at most, the possibility of success; and, since 1749, their place had
been taken by The Monthly Review, of which, in its early years,
1 The second volume, L-2, was begun on 3 April 1753, and the printing was finished
by March 1755. The introductory matter to vol. 1 also belongs to these two years.


## p. 177 (#203) ############################################

Further Projects and Labours
177
Johnson had no reason to think highly. He now intended an
English periodical that would rival those of Le Clerc and Bayle.
But this scheme for the Annals of Literature, foreign as well as
domestic,' was to yield to an older project. In June 1756, he
issued new Proposals for an edition of Shakespeare, and he hoped
to have the work completed by the end of the following year. The
long strain, however, had begun to tell. He had difficulty in facing
any continuous work, and he suffered gravely from the mental
depression to which he was always liable. He has described his
unhappy condition in his Latin verses entitled Tvôli ceavTÒV
post Lexicon Anglicanum auctum et emendatum, which give a
more intimate account of his feelings than he ever allowed himself
in the publicity of English ; and stronger evidence is to be found
in his prayers, and in the reports of his friends. It was now that
he confirmed himself in the habit of seeking relief in company,
and, by encouraging the calls of anyone who wished for his help,
established his personal authority in literature. Only the need
of money made him write, and none of his work at this time
required long effort. 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.