still lies (we have been told) in black-on-white, for inspection
and purchase by the curious, at a Bookshop in Chancery
Lane.
and purchase by the curious, at a Bookshop in Chancery
Lane.
Thomas Carlyle
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
. first Authors, the very first of any significance, who lived by
the day's wages of his craft, and composedly faced the world
on that basis, was Samuel Johnson.
At the time of Johnson's appearance there were still two
ways, on which an Author might attempt proceeding: there
were the Maecenases proper in the West End of London;
and the Maecenases virtual of St. John's Gate and Paternoster
Row. To a considerate man it might seem uncertain which
? ? 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
? 36 Carlyle's Essays
method were preferable: neither had very high attractions;
the Patron's aid was now wellnigh necessarily polluted by
sycophancy, before it could come to hand; the Bookseller's
was deformed with greedy stupidity, not to say entire wooden-
headedness and disgust (so that an Osborne even required
to be knocked down, by an author of spirit), and could barely
keep the thread of life together. The one was the wages
of suffering and poverty; the other, unless you gave strict
heed to it, the wages of sin. In time, Johnson had oppor-
tunity of looking into both methods, and ascertaining what
they were; but found, at first trial, that the former would
in nowise do for him. Listen, once again, to that far-famed
Blast of Doom, proclaiming into the ear of Lord Chesterfield,
and, through him, of the listening world, that patronage
should be no more!
"Seven years, my Lord, have now past, since I waited in your
outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which
time I have been pushing on my Work 1 through difficulties, of
which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the
verge of publication, without one act of assistance,1 one word of
encouragement, or one smile of favour.
"The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love,
and found him a native of the rocks.
"Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a
man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached
ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have
been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been
kind: but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot
enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known
and do not want it. I hope, it is no very cynical asperity, not to
confess obligations where no benefit has been received; or to be
unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a
patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself.
"Having carried on my Work thus far with so little obligation
to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I
should conclude it, if less be possible, with less: for I have long
been awakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted
myself with so much exultation.
"My Lord, your Lordship's most humble, most obedient
servant, Sam. Johnson. "
1 The English Dictionary.
* Were time and printer's space of no value, it were easy to wash
away certain foolish soot-stains dropped here as " Notes;" especially
two: the one on this word, and on Boswell's Note to it; the other on
the paragraph which follows. Let " Ed. " look a second time; he will
find that Johnson's sacred regard for Truth is the only thing to be
"noted " in the former case; also, in the latter, that this of " Love's
being a native of the rocks" actually has a" meaning. "
? ? 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 37
And thus must the rebellious " Sam. Johnson " turn him
to the Bookselling guild, and the wondrous chaos of " Author
by trade;" and, though ushered into it only by that dull oily
'Printer, " with loose horseman's coat and such a great bushy
wig as he constantly wore," and only as subaltern to some
commanding-officer "Browne, sitting amid tobacco-smoke
at the head of a long table in the alehouse at Clerkenwell,"--
gird himself together for the warfare; having no alternative!
Little less contradictory was that other branch of the two-
fold Problem now set before Johnson: the speaking forth of
Truth. Nay taken by itself, it had in those days become so
complex as to puzzle strongest heads, with nothing else
imposed on them for solution; and even to turn high heads
of that sort into mere hollow vizards, speaking neither truth
nor falsehood, nor anything but what the Prompter and
Player (woKptT^s) put into them. Alas! for poor Johnson
Contradiction abounded; in spirituals and in temporals,
within and without. Born with the strongest unconquerable
love of just Insight, he must begin to live and learn in
a scene where Prejudice flourishes with rank luxuriance.
England was all confused enough, sightless and yet restless,
take it where you would; but figure the best intellect in
England nursed up to manhood in the idol-cavern of a poor
Tradesman's house, in the cathedral city of Lichfield! What
is Truth? said jesting Pilate. What is Truth? might earnest
Johnson much more emphatically say. Truth, no longer,
like the Phcenix, in rainbow plumage, poured, from her
{littering beak, such tones of sweetest melody as took captive
:very ear: the Phcenix (waxing old) had wellnigh ceased her
singing, and empty wearisome Cuckoos, and doleful monoton-
ous Owls, innumerable Jays also, and twittering Sparrows
m the housetop, pretended they were repeating her.
It was wholly a divided age, that of Johnson; Unity
sdsted nowhere, in its Heaven, or in its Earth. Society,
through every fibre, was rent asunder: all things, it was then
becoming visible, but could not then be understood, were
moving onwards, with an impulse received ages before, yet
low first with a decisive rapidity, towards that great chaotic
5ulf, where, whether in the shape of French Revolutions,
Reform Bills, or what shape soever, bloody or bloodless, the
iescent and engulfment assume, we now see them weltering
tod boiling. Already Cant, as once before hinted, had begun
? ? 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
? 38 Carlylc's Essays
to play its wonderful part, for the hour was come: twc
ghastly Apparitions, unreal simulacra both, Hypocrisy anc
Atheism are already, in silence, parting the world. Opinior
and Action, which should live together as wedded pair
"one flesh," more properly as Soul and Body, have com-
menced their open quarrel, and are suing for a separate
maintenance,--as if they could exist separately. To thf
earnest mind, in any position, firm footing and a life of Truth
was becoming daily more difficult: in Johnson's positior
it was more difficult than in almost any other.
If, as for a devout nature was inevitable and indispensable
he looked up to Religion, as to the polestar of his voyage,
already there was no fixed polestar any longer visible; but
two stars, a whole constellation of stars, each proclaiming
itself as the true. There was the red portentous comet-stai
of Infidelity; the dim fixed-star, burning ever dimmer,
uncertain now whether not an atmospheric meteor, of Ortho-
doxy: which of these to choose? The keener intellects of
Europe had, almost without exception, ranged themselves
under the former: for some half century, it had been the
general effort of European speculation to proclaim that
Destruction of Falsehood was the only Truth; daily had
Denial waxed stronger and stronger, Belief sunk more and
more into decay. From our Bolingbrokes and Tolands
the sceptical fever had passed into France, into Scotland;
and already it smouldered, far and wide, secretly eating out
the heart of England. Bayle had played his part; Voltaire
on a wider theatre, was playing his,--Johnson's senior by
some fifteen years: Hume and Johnson were children almost
of the same year. 1 To this keener order of intellects did
Johnson's indisputably belong: was he to join them; was
he to oppose them? A complicated question: for, alas, the
Church itself is no longer, even to him, wholly of true adamant,
but of adamant and baked mud conjoined: the zealously
Devout has to find his Church tottering; and pause amazed
to see, instead of inspired Priest, many a swine-feeding
Trulliber ministering at her altar. It is not the least curious
of the incoherences which Johnson had to reconcile, that,
though by nature contemptuous and incredulous, he was,
at that time of day, to find his safety and glory in defending,
with his whole might, the traditions of the elders.
1 Johnson, September 1709; Hume, April 1711.
? ? 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 39
Not less perplexingly intricate, and on both sides hollow
or questionable, was the aspect of Politics. Whigs struggling
blindly forward, Tories holding blindly back; each with
some forecast of a half truth; neither with any forecast of the
whole! Admire here this other Contradiction in the life
of Johnson; that, though the most ungovernable, and in
practice the most independent of men, he must be a Jacobite,
and worshipper of the Divine Right. In Politics also there
are Irreconcilables enough for him. As, indeed, how could
it be otherwise? For when Religion is torn asunder, and
the very heart of man's existence set against itself, then in
all subordinate departments there must needs be hollowness,
incoherence. The English Nation had rebelled against a
Tyrant; and, by the hands of religious tyrannicides, exacted
stem vengeance of him: Democracy had risen iron-sinewed,
and, "like an infant Hercules, strangled serpents in its
cradle. " But as yet none knew the meaning or extent of
the phenomenon: Europe was not ripe for it; not to be
ripened for it but by the culture and various experience of
mother century and a half. And now, when the King-killers
were all swept away, and a milder second picture was painted
5ver the canvas of theirs*, and betitled " Glorious Revolu-
tion," who doubted but the catastrophe was over, the whole
business finished, and Democracy gone to its long sleep?
Vet was it like a business finished and not finished; a linger-
ing uneasiness dwelt in all minds: the deep-lying, resistless
Tendency, which had still to be obeyed, could no longer be
'ecognised; thus was there halfness, insincerity, uncertainty
n men's ways; instead of heroic Puritans and heroic Cavaliers,
>>me now a dawdling set of argumentative Whigs, and a
iawdling set of deaf-eared Tories; each half-foolish, each
lalf-false. The Whigs were false and without basis; inas-
nuch as their whole object was Resistance, Criticism,
demolition,--they knew not why, or towards what issue,
[n Whiggism, ever since a Charles and his Jeffries had ceased
0 meddle with it, and to have any Russel or Sydney to
neddle with, there could be no divineness of character; not
? ill, in these latter days, it took the figure of a thorough-
ping, all-defying Radicalism, was there any solid footing
or it to stand on. Of the like uncertain, half-hollow nature
lad Toryism become, in Johnson's time; preaching forth
indeed an everlasting truth, the duty of Loyalty; yet now,
? ? 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
? 40 Carlyle's Essays
ever since the final expulsion of the Stuarts, having no
Person, but only an Office to be loyal to; no living Sod
to worship, but only a dead velvet - cushioned Chair. Its
attitude, therefore, was stiff-necked refusal to move; as
that of Whiggism was clamorous command to move,--let
rhyme and reason, on both hands, say to it what they might.
The consequence was: Immeasurable floods of contentious
jargon, tending nowhither; false conviction; false resistance
to conviction; decay (ultimately to become decease) of
whatsoever was once understood by the words, Principle, or
Honesty of heart; the louder and louder triumph of Halfiiess
and Plausibility over Wholeness and Truth;--at last, this
all-overshadowing efflorescence of Quackery, which we now
see, with all its deadening and killing fruits, in all its in-
numerable branches, down to the lowest. How, between
these jarring extremes, wherein the rotten lay so inextricably
intermingled with the sound, and as yet no eye could see
through the ulterior meaning of the matter, was a faithful
and true man to adjust himself?
That Johnson, in spite of all drawbacks, adopted the Con-,
servative side; stationed himself as the unyielding opponent1
of Innovation, resolute to hold fast the form of sound words. ,
could not but increase, in no small measure, the difficulties he
had to strive with. We mean, the moral difficulties; for in
economical respects, it might be pretty equally balanced; the
Tory servant of the Public had perhaps about the same
chance of promotion as the Whig: and all the promotion
Johnson aimed at was the privilege to live. But, for what,
though unavowed, was no less indispensable, for his peace of
conscience, and the clear ascertainment and feeling of his
Duty as an inhabitant of God's world, the case was hereby
rendered much more complex. To resist Innovation is easy-
enough on one condition: that you resist Inquiry. This is, and
was, the common expedient of your common Conservatives;
butit would not do for Johnson: he was azealous recommendet
and practiser of Inquiry; once for all, could not and woukf
not believe, much less speak and act, a Falsehood: the form
of sound words, which he held fast, must have a meaning
in it. Here lay the difficulty: to behold a portentous mix-
ture of True and False, and feel that he must dwell and fight
there; yet to love and defend only the True. How worship,
when you cannot and will not be an idolater; yet cannot help
? ? 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 41
discerning that the Symbol of your Divinity has half become
idolatrous? This was the question, which Johnson, the
man both of clear eye and devout believing heart, must
answer,--at peril of his life. The Whig or Sceptic, on the
other hand, had a much simpler part to play. To him only
the idolatrous side of things, nowise the divine one, lay visible:
not worship, therefore, nay in the strict sense not heart-
honesty, only at most lip- and hand-honesty, is required of
him. What spiritual force is his, he can conscientiously
employ in the work of cavilling, of pulling-down what is
False. For the rest, that there is or can be any Truth of a
higher than sensual nature, has not occurred to him. The
utmost, therefore, that he as man has to aim at, is Re-
spectability, the suffrages of his fellow-men. Such suffrages
he may weigh as well as count: or count only: according as
he is a Burke or a Wilkes. But beyond these there lies
nothing divine for him; these attained, all is attained. Thus
is his whole world distinct and rounded-in; a clear goal
is set before him; a firm path, rougher or smoother; at
worst a firm region wherein to seek a path: let him gird-up
his loins, and travel on without misgivings! For the honest
Conservative, again, nothing is distinct, nothing rounded-in:
Respectability can nowise be his highest Godhead; not
one aim, but two conflicting aims to be continually reconciled
by him, has he to strive after. A difficult position, as we said;
which accordingly the most did, even in those days, but half
defend: by the surrender, namely, of their own too cumber-
some honesty or even understanding; after which the com-
pletest defence was worth little. Into this difficult position
Johnson, nevertheless, threw himself: found it indeed full
of difficulties; yet held it out manfully, as an honest-hearted,
open-sighted man, while life was in him.
Such was that same " twofold Problem " set before Samuel
Johnson. Consider all these moral difficulties; and add to
. them the fearful aggravation, which lay in that other circum-
stance, that he needed a continual appeal to the Public, must
continually produce a certain impression and conviction on
the Public; that if he did not, he ceased to have " provision
for the day that was passing over him," he could not any
longer live! How a vulgar character, once launched into this
wild element; driven onwards by Fear and Famine; without
other aim than to clutch what Provender (of Enjoyment in
II 7? 4 D
? ? 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
? 42 Carlyle's Essays
any kind) he could get, always if possible keeping quite clear
of the Gallows and Pillory, that is to say, minding needfully
both " person " and " character,"--would have floated hither
and thither in it; and contrived to eat some three repasts
daily, and wear some three suits yearly, and then to depart
and disappear, having consumed his last ration: all this
might be worth knowing, but were in itself a trivial knowledge.
How a noble man, resolute for the Truth, to whom Shams
and Lies were once for all an abomination, was to act in it:
here lay the mystery. By what methods, by what gifts of
eye and hand, does a heroic Samuel Johnson, now when
cast forth into that waste Chaos of Authorship, maddest
of things, a mingled Phlegethon and Fleet-ditch, with its
floating lumber, and sea-krakens, and mud-spectres,--shape
himself a voyage; of the transient driftwood, and the enduring
iron, build him a sea-worthy Life-boat, and sail therein,
undrowned, unpolluted, through the roaring "mother of
dead dogs," onwards to an eternal Landmark, and City that
hath foundations? This high question is even the one
answered in Boswell's Book; which Book we therefore, not
so falsely, have named a Heroic Poem ; for in it there lies the
whole argument of such. Glory to our brave Samuel! He
accomplished this wonderful Problem; and now through long
generations we point to him, and say: Here also was a Man;
let the world once more have assurance of a Man!
Had there been in Johnson, now when afloat on that con-
fusion worse confounded of grandeur and squalor, no light
but an earthly outward one, he too must have made ship-
wreck. With his diseased body and vehement voracious
heart, how easy for him to become a carpe-diem Philosopher,
like the rest, and live and die as miserably as any Boyce
of that Brotherhood! But happily there was a higher light
for him; shining as a lamp to his path; which, in all paths,
would teach him to act and walk not as a fool, but as wise,
and in those evil days too "redeeming the time. " Under
dimmer or clearer manifestations, a Truth had been revealed
to him: I also am a Man; even in this unutterable element
of Authorship, I may live as beseems a man! That Wrong
is not only different from Right, but that it is in strict
scientific terms infinitely different; even as the gaming of
the whole world set against the losing of one's own soul, or
(as Johnson had it) a Heaven set against a Hell; that in all
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 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
43
situations out of the Pit of Tophet, wherein a living Man
has stood or can stand, there is actually a Prize of quite
infinite value placed within his reach, namely a Duty for him
to do: this highest Gospel, which forms the basis and worth
of all other Gospels whatsoever, had been revealed to Samuel
Johnson; and the man had believed it, and laid it faithfully
to heart. Such knowledge of the transcendental, immeasurable
character of Duty we call the basis of all Gospels, the essence
of all Religion: he who with his whole soul knows not this,
as yet knows nothing, as yet is properly nothing.
This, happily for him, Johnson was one of those that
knew: under a certain authentic Symbol it stood forever
present to his eyes: a Symbol, indeed, waxing old as doth
a garment; yet which had guided forward, as their Banner
and celestial Pillar of Fire, innumerable saints and witnesses,
the fathers of our modern world; and for him also had still
a sacred significance. It does not appear that at any time
Johnson was what we call irreligious: but in his sorrows
and isolation, when hope died away, and only a long vista
of suffering and toil lay before him to the end, then first did
Religion shine forth in its meek, everlasting clearness; even
as the stars do in black night, which in the daytime and dusk
were hidden by inferior lights. How a true man, in the
midst of errors and uncertainties, shall work out for himself
a sure Life-truth; and adjusting the transient to the eternal,
amid the fragments of ruined Temples build up, with toil and
pain, a little Altar for himself, and worship there; how
Samuel Johnson, in the era of Voltaire, can purify and fortify
his soul, and hold real communion with the Highest, "in
the Church of St. Clement Danes: " this too stands all un-
folded in his Biography, and is among the most touching
and memorable things there; a thing to be looked at with
pity, admiration, awe. Johnson's Religion was as the light of
life to him; without it his heart was all sick, dark and had
no guidance left.
He is now enlisted, or impressed, into that unspeakable
shoeblack-seraph Army of Authors; but can feel hereby that
he fights under a celestial flag, and will quit him like a man.
The first grand requisite, an assured heart, he therefore has:
what his outward equipments and accoutrements are, is the
next question; an important, though inferior one. His intel-
lectual stock, intrinsically viewed, is perhaps inconsiderable:
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 44 Carlyle's Essays
the furnishings of an English School and English University;
good knowledge of the Latin tongue, a more uncertain one of
Greek: this is a rather slender stock of Education wherewith
to front the world. But then it is to be remembered that his
world was England; that such was the culture England
commonly supplied and expected. Besides, Johnson has
been a voracious reader, though a desultory one, and oftenest
in strange scholastic, too obsolete Libraries; he has also
rubbed shoulders with the press of Actual Life for some
thirty years now: views or hallucinations of innumerable
things are weltering to and fro in him. Above all, be his
weapons what they may, he has an arm that can wield them.
Nature has given him her choicest gift,--an open eye and
heart. He will look on the world, wheresoever he can catch
a glimpse of it, with eager curiosity: to the last, we find
this a striking characteristic of him; for all human interests
he has a sense; the meanest handicraftsman could interest
him, even in extreme age, by speaking of his craft: the ways
of men are all interesting to him; any human thing, that he
did not know, he wished to know. Reflection, moreover,
Meditation, was what he practised incessantly, with or with-
out his will: for the mind of the man was earnest, deep as I
well as humane. Thus would the world, such fragments of
it as he could survey, form itself, or continually tend to form
itself, into a coherent Whole; on any and on all phases of
which, his vote and voice must be well worth listening to.
As a Speaker of the Word, he will speak real words; no idle
jargon or hollow triviality will issue from him. His aim too
is clear, attainable; that of working for his wages: let him do
this honestly, and all else will follow of its own accord.
With such omens, into such a warfare, did Johnson go
forth. A rugged hungry Kerne or Gallowglass, as we called
him: yet indomitable; in whom lay the true spirit of a
Soldier. With giant's force he toils, since such is his appoint-
ment, were it but at hewing of wood and drawing of water
for old sedentary bushy-wigged Cave; distinguishes himself
by mere quantity, if there is to be no other distinction. He
can write all things; frosty Latin verses, if these are the
saleable commodity; Book - prefaces, Political Philippics,
Review Articles, Parliamentary Debates: all things he does
rapidly; still more surprising, all things he does thoroughly
and well. How he sits there, in his rough-hewn amorphous
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust.
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
. first Authors, the very first of any significance, who lived by
the day's wages of his craft, and composedly faced the world
on that basis, was Samuel Johnson.
At the time of Johnson's appearance there were still two
ways, on which an Author might attempt proceeding: there
were the Maecenases proper in the West End of London;
and the Maecenases virtual of St. John's Gate and Paternoster
Row. To a considerate man it might seem uncertain which
? ? 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
? 36 Carlyle's Essays
method were preferable: neither had very high attractions;
the Patron's aid was now wellnigh necessarily polluted by
sycophancy, before it could come to hand; the Bookseller's
was deformed with greedy stupidity, not to say entire wooden-
headedness and disgust (so that an Osborne even required
to be knocked down, by an author of spirit), and could barely
keep the thread of life together. The one was the wages
of suffering and poverty; the other, unless you gave strict
heed to it, the wages of sin. In time, Johnson had oppor-
tunity of looking into both methods, and ascertaining what
they were; but found, at first trial, that the former would
in nowise do for him. Listen, once again, to that far-famed
Blast of Doom, proclaiming into the ear of Lord Chesterfield,
and, through him, of the listening world, that patronage
should be no more!
"Seven years, my Lord, have now past, since I waited in your
outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which
time I have been pushing on my Work 1 through difficulties, of
which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the
verge of publication, without one act of assistance,1 one word of
encouragement, or one smile of favour.
"The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love,
and found him a native of the rocks.
"Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a
man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached
ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have
been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been
kind: but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot
enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known
and do not want it. I hope, it is no very cynical asperity, not to
confess obligations where no benefit has been received; or to be
unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a
patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself.
"Having carried on my Work thus far with so little obligation
to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I
should conclude it, if less be possible, with less: for I have long
been awakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted
myself with so much exultation.
"My Lord, your Lordship's most humble, most obedient
servant, Sam. Johnson. "
1 The English Dictionary.
* Were time and printer's space of no value, it were easy to wash
away certain foolish soot-stains dropped here as " Notes;" especially
two: the one on this word, and on Boswell's Note to it; the other on
the paragraph which follows. Let " Ed. " look a second time; he will
find that Johnson's sacred regard for Truth is the only thing to be
"noted " in the former case; also, in the latter, that this of " Love's
being a native of the rocks" actually has a" meaning. "
? ? 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 37
And thus must the rebellious " Sam. Johnson " turn him
to the Bookselling guild, and the wondrous chaos of " Author
by trade;" and, though ushered into it only by that dull oily
'Printer, " with loose horseman's coat and such a great bushy
wig as he constantly wore," and only as subaltern to some
commanding-officer "Browne, sitting amid tobacco-smoke
at the head of a long table in the alehouse at Clerkenwell,"--
gird himself together for the warfare; having no alternative!
Little less contradictory was that other branch of the two-
fold Problem now set before Johnson: the speaking forth of
Truth. Nay taken by itself, it had in those days become so
complex as to puzzle strongest heads, with nothing else
imposed on them for solution; and even to turn high heads
of that sort into mere hollow vizards, speaking neither truth
nor falsehood, nor anything but what the Prompter and
Player (woKptT^s) put into them. Alas! for poor Johnson
Contradiction abounded; in spirituals and in temporals,
within and without. Born with the strongest unconquerable
love of just Insight, he must begin to live and learn in
a scene where Prejudice flourishes with rank luxuriance.
England was all confused enough, sightless and yet restless,
take it where you would; but figure the best intellect in
England nursed up to manhood in the idol-cavern of a poor
Tradesman's house, in the cathedral city of Lichfield! What
is Truth? said jesting Pilate. What is Truth? might earnest
Johnson much more emphatically say. Truth, no longer,
like the Phcenix, in rainbow plumage, poured, from her
{littering beak, such tones of sweetest melody as took captive
:very ear: the Phcenix (waxing old) had wellnigh ceased her
singing, and empty wearisome Cuckoos, and doleful monoton-
ous Owls, innumerable Jays also, and twittering Sparrows
m the housetop, pretended they were repeating her.
It was wholly a divided age, that of Johnson; Unity
sdsted nowhere, in its Heaven, or in its Earth. Society,
through every fibre, was rent asunder: all things, it was then
becoming visible, but could not then be understood, were
moving onwards, with an impulse received ages before, yet
low first with a decisive rapidity, towards that great chaotic
5ulf, where, whether in the shape of French Revolutions,
Reform Bills, or what shape soever, bloody or bloodless, the
iescent and engulfment assume, we now see them weltering
tod boiling. Already Cant, as once before hinted, had begun
? ? 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
? 38 Carlylc's Essays
to play its wonderful part, for the hour was come: twc
ghastly Apparitions, unreal simulacra both, Hypocrisy anc
Atheism are already, in silence, parting the world. Opinior
and Action, which should live together as wedded pair
"one flesh," more properly as Soul and Body, have com-
menced their open quarrel, and are suing for a separate
maintenance,--as if they could exist separately. To thf
earnest mind, in any position, firm footing and a life of Truth
was becoming daily more difficult: in Johnson's positior
it was more difficult than in almost any other.
If, as for a devout nature was inevitable and indispensable
he looked up to Religion, as to the polestar of his voyage,
already there was no fixed polestar any longer visible; but
two stars, a whole constellation of stars, each proclaiming
itself as the true. There was the red portentous comet-stai
of Infidelity; the dim fixed-star, burning ever dimmer,
uncertain now whether not an atmospheric meteor, of Ortho-
doxy: which of these to choose? The keener intellects of
Europe had, almost without exception, ranged themselves
under the former: for some half century, it had been the
general effort of European speculation to proclaim that
Destruction of Falsehood was the only Truth; daily had
Denial waxed stronger and stronger, Belief sunk more and
more into decay. From our Bolingbrokes and Tolands
the sceptical fever had passed into France, into Scotland;
and already it smouldered, far and wide, secretly eating out
the heart of England. Bayle had played his part; Voltaire
on a wider theatre, was playing his,--Johnson's senior by
some fifteen years: Hume and Johnson were children almost
of the same year. 1 To this keener order of intellects did
Johnson's indisputably belong: was he to join them; was
he to oppose them? A complicated question: for, alas, the
Church itself is no longer, even to him, wholly of true adamant,
but of adamant and baked mud conjoined: the zealously
Devout has to find his Church tottering; and pause amazed
to see, instead of inspired Priest, many a swine-feeding
Trulliber ministering at her altar. It is not the least curious
of the incoherences which Johnson had to reconcile, that,
though by nature contemptuous and incredulous, he was,
at that time of day, to find his safety and glory in defending,
with his whole might, the traditions of the elders.
1 Johnson, September 1709; Hume, April 1711.
? ? 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 39
Not less perplexingly intricate, and on both sides hollow
or questionable, was the aspect of Politics. Whigs struggling
blindly forward, Tories holding blindly back; each with
some forecast of a half truth; neither with any forecast of the
whole! Admire here this other Contradiction in the life
of Johnson; that, though the most ungovernable, and in
practice the most independent of men, he must be a Jacobite,
and worshipper of the Divine Right. In Politics also there
are Irreconcilables enough for him. As, indeed, how could
it be otherwise? For when Religion is torn asunder, and
the very heart of man's existence set against itself, then in
all subordinate departments there must needs be hollowness,
incoherence. The English Nation had rebelled against a
Tyrant; and, by the hands of religious tyrannicides, exacted
stem vengeance of him: Democracy had risen iron-sinewed,
and, "like an infant Hercules, strangled serpents in its
cradle. " But as yet none knew the meaning or extent of
the phenomenon: Europe was not ripe for it; not to be
ripened for it but by the culture and various experience of
mother century and a half. And now, when the King-killers
were all swept away, and a milder second picture was painted
5ver the canvas of theirs*, and betitled " Glorious Revolu-
tion," who doubted but the catastrophe was over, the whole
business finished, and Democracy gone to its long sleep?
Vet was it like a business finished and not finished; a linger-
ing uneasiness dwelt in all minds: the deep-lying, resistless
Tendency, which had still to be obeyed, could no longer be
'ecognised; thus was there halfness, insincerity, uncertainty
n men's ways; instead of heroic Puritans and heroic Cavaliers,
>>me now a dawdling set of argumentative Whigs, and a
iawdling set of deaf-eared Tories; each half-foolish, each
lalf-false. The Whigs were false and without basis; inas-
nuch as their whole object was Resistance, Criticism,
demolition,--they knew not why, or towards what issue,
[n Whiggism, ever since a Charles and his Jeffries had ceased
0 meddle with it, and to have any Russel or Sydney to
neddle with, there could be no divineness of character; not
? ill, in these latter days, it took the figure of a thorough-
ping, all-defying Radicalism, was there any solid footing
or it to stand on. Of the like uncertain, half-hollow nature
lad Toryism become, in Johnson's time; preaching forth
indeed an everlasting truth, the duty of Loyalty; yet now,
? ? 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
? 40 Carlyle's Essays
ever since the final expulsion of the Stuarts, having no
Person, but only an Office to be loyal to; no living Sod
to worship, but only a dead velvet - cushioned Chair. Its
attitude, therefore, was stiff-necked refusal to move; as
that of Whiggism was clamorous command to move,--let
rhyme and reason, on both hands, say to it what they might.
The consequence was: Immeasurable floods of contentious
jargon, tending nowhither; false conviction; false resistance
to conviction; decay (ultimately to become decease) of
whatsoever was once understood by the words, Principle, or
Honesty of heart; the louder and louder triumph of Halfiiess
and Plausibility over Wholeness and Truth;--at last, this
all-overshadowing efflorescence of Quackery, which we now
see, with all its deadening and killing fruits, in all its in-
numerable branches, down to the lowest. How, between
these jarring extremes, wherein the rotten lay so inextricably
intermingled with the sound, and as yet no eye could see
through the ulterior meaning of the matter, was a faithful
and true man to adjust himself?
That Johnson, in spite of all drawbacks, adopted the Con-,
servative side; stationed himself as the unyielding opponent1
of Innovation, resolute to hold fast the form of sound words. ,
could not but increase, in no small measure, the difficulties he
had to strive with. We mean, the moral difficulties; for in
economical respects, it might be pretty equally balanced; the
Tory servant of the Public had perhaps about the same
chance of promotion as the Whig: and all the promotion
Johnson aimed at was the privilege to live. But, for what,
though unavowed, was no less indispensable, for his peace of
conscience, and the clear ascertainment and feeling of his
Duty as an inhabitant of God's world, the case was hereby
rendered much more complex. To resist Innovation is easy-
enough on one condition: that you resist Inquiry. This is, and
was, the common expedient of your common Conservatives;
butit would not do for Johnson: he was azealous recommendet
and practiser of Inquiry; once for all, could not and woukf
not believe, much less speak and act, a Falsehood: the form
of sound words, which he held fast, must have a meaning
in it. Here lay the difficulty: to behold a portentous mix-
ture of True and False, and feel that he must dwell and fight
there; yet to love and defend only the True. How worship,
when you cannot and will not be an idolater; yet cannot help
? ? 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 41
discerning that the Symbol of your Divinity has half become
idolatrous? This was the question, which Johnson, the
man both of clear eye and devout believing heart, must
answer,--at peril of his life. The Whig or Sceptic, on the
other hand, had a much simpler part to play. To him only
the idolatrous side of things, nowise the divine one, lay visible:
not worship, therefore, nay in the strict sense not heart-
honesty, only at most lip- and hand-honesty, is required of
him. What spiritual force is his, he can conscientiously
employ in the work of cavilling, of pulling-down what is
False. For the rest, that there is or can be any Truth of a
higher than sensual nature, has not occurred to him. The
utmost, therefore, that he as man has to aim at, is Re-
spectability, the suffrages of his fellow-men. Such suffrages
he may weigh as well as count: or count only: according as
he is a Burke or a Wilkes. But beyond these there lies
nothing divine for him; these attained, all is attained. Thus
is his whole world distinct and rounded-in; a clear goal
is set before him; a firm path, rougher or smoother; at
worst a firm region wherein to seek a path: let him gird-up
his loins, and travel on without misgivings! For the honest
Conservative, again, nothing is distinct, nothing rounded-in:
Respectability can nowise be his highest Godhead; not
one aim, but two conflicting aims to be continually reconciled
by him, has he to strive after. A difficult position, as we said;
which accordingly the most did, even in those days, but half
defend: by the surrender, namely, of their own too cumber-
some honesty or even understanding; after which the com-
pletest defence was worth little. Into this difficult position
Johnson, nevertheless, threw himself: found it indeed full
of difficulties; yet held it out manfully, as an honest-hearted,
open-sighted man, while life was in him.
Such was that same " twofold Problem " set before Samuel
Johnson. Consider all these moral difficulties; and add to
. them the fearful aggravation, which lay in that other circum-
stance, that he needed a continual appeal to the Public, must
continually produce a certain impression and conviction on
the Public; that if he did not, he ceased to have " provision
for the day that was passing over him," he could not any
longer live! How a vulgar character, once launched into this
wild element; driven onwards by Fear and Famine; without
other aim than to clutch what Provender (of Enjoyment in
II 7? 4 D
? ? 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
? 42 Carlyle's Essays
any kind) he could get, always if possible keeping quite clear
of the Gallows and Pillory, that is to say, minding needfully
both " person " and " character,"--would have floated hither
and thither in it; and contrived to eat some three repasts
daily, and wear some three suits yearly, and then to depart
and disappear, having consumed his last ration: all this
might be worth knowing, but were in itself a trivial knowledge.
How a noble man, resolute for the Truth, to whom Shams
and Lies were once for all an abomination, was to act in it:
here lay the mystery. By what methods, by what gifts of
eye and hand, does a heroic Samuel Johnson, now when
cast forth into that waste Chaos of Authorship, maddest
of things, a mingled Phlegethon and Fleet-ditch, with its
floating lumber, and sea-krakens, and mud-spectres,--shape
himself a voyage; of the transient driftwood, and the enduring
iron, build him a sea-worthy Life-boat, and sail therein,
undrowned, unpolluted, through the roaring "mother of
dead dogs," onwards to an eternal Landmark, and City that
hath foundations? This high question is even the one
answered in Boswell's Book; which Book we therefore, not
so falsely, have named a Heroic Poem ; for in it there lies the
whole argument of such. Glory to our brave Samuel! He
accomplished this wonderful Problem; and now through long
generations we point to him, and say: Here also was a Man;
let the world once more have assurance of a Man!
Had there been in Johnson, now when afloat on that con-
fusion worse confounded of grandeur and squalor, no light
but an earthly outward one, he too must have made ship-
wreck. With his diseased body and vehement voracious
heart, how easy for him to become a carpe-diem Philosopher,
like the rest, and live and die as miserably as any Boyce
of that Brotherhood! But happily there was a higher light
for him; shining as a lamp to his path; which, in all paths,
would teach him to act and walk not as a fool, but as wise,
and in those evil days too "redeeming the time. " Under
dimmer or clearer manifestations, a Truth had been revealed
to him: I also am a Man; even in this unutterable element
of Authorship, I may live as beseems a man! That Wrong
is not only different from Right, but that it is in strict
scientific terms infinitely different; even as the gaming of
the whole world set against the losing of one's own soul, or
(as Johnson had it) a Heaven set against a Hell; that in all
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 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
43
situations out of the Pit of Tophet, wherein a living Man
has stood or can stand, there is actually a Prize of quite
infinite value placed within his reach, namely a Duty for him
to do: this highest Gospel, which forms the basis and worth
of all other Gospels whatsoever, had been revealed to Samuel
Johnson; and the man had believed it, and laid it faithfully
to heart. Such knowledge of the transcendental, immeasurable
character of Duty we call the basis of all Gospels, the essence
of all Religion: he who with his whole soul knows not this,
as yet knows nothing, as yet is properly nothing.
This, happily for him, Johnson was one of those that
knew: under a certain authentic Symbol it stood forever
present to his eyes: a Symbol, indeed, waxing old as doth
a garment; yet which had guided forward, as their Banner
and celestial Pillar of Fire, innumerable saints and witnesses,
the fathers of our modern world; and for him also had still
a sacred significance. It does not appear that at any time
Johnson was what we call irreligious: but in his sorrows
and isolation, when hope died away, and only a long vista
of suffering and toil lay before him to the end, then first did
Religion shine forth in its meek, everlasting clearness; even
as the stars do in black night, which in the daytime and dusk
were hidden by inferior lights. How a true man, in the
midst of errors and uncertainties, shall work out for himself
a sure Life-truth; and adjusting the transient to the eternal,
amid the fragments of ruined Temples build up, with toil and
pain, a little Altar for himself, and worship there; how
Samuel Johnson, in the era of Voltaire, can purify and fortify
his soul, and hold real communion with the Highest, "in
the Church of St. Clement Danes: " this too stands all un-
folded in his Biography, and is among the most touching
and memorable things there; a thing to be looked at with
pity, admiration, awe. Johnson's Religion was as the light of
life to him; without it his heart was all sick, dark and had
no guidance left.
He is now enlisted, or impressed, into that unspeakable
shoeblack-seraph Army of Authors; but can feel hereby that
he fights under a celestial flag, and will quit him like a man.
The first grand requisite, an assured heart, he therefore has:
what his outward equipments and accoutrements are, is the
next question; an important, though inferior one. His intel-
lectual stock, intrinsically viewed, is perhaps inconsiderable:
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 44 Carlyle's Essays
the furnishings of an English School and English University;
good knowledge of the Latin tongue, a more uncertain one of
Greek: this is a rather slender stock of Education wherewith
to front the world. But then it is to be remembered that his
world was England; that such was the culture England
commonly supplied and expected. Besides, Johnson has
been a voracious reader, though a desultory one, and oftenest
in strange scholastic, too obsolete Libraries; he has also
rubbed shoulders with the press of Actual Life for some
thirty years now: views or hallucinations of innumerable
things are weltering to and fro in him. Above all, be his
weapons what they may, he has an arm that can wield them.
Nature has given him her choicest gift,--an open eye and
heart. He will look on the world, wheresoever he can catch
a glimpse of it, with eager curiosity: to the last, we find
this a striking characteristic of him; for all human interests
he has a sense; the meanest handicraftsman could interest
him, even in extreme age, by speaking of his craft: the ways
of men are all interesting to him; any human thing, that he
did not know, he wished to know. Reflection, moreover,
Meditation, was what he practised incessantly, with or with-
out his will: for the mind of the man was earnest, deep as I
well as humane. Thus would the world, such fragments of
it as he could survey, form itself, or continually tend to form
itself, into a coherent Whole; on any and on all phases of
which, his vote and voice must be well worth listening to.
As a Speaker of the Word, he will speak real words; no idle
jargon or hollow triviality will issue from him. His aim too
is clear, attainable; that of working for his wages: let him do
this honestly, and all else will follow of its own accord.
With such omens, into such a warfare, did Johnson go
forth. A rugged hungry Kerne or Gallowglass, as we called
him: yet indomitable; in whom lay the true spirit of a
Soldier. With giant's force he toils, since such is his appoint-
ment, were it but at hewing of wood and drawing of water
for old sedentary bushy-wigged Cave; distinguishes himself
by mere quantity, if there is to be no other distinction. He
can write all things; frosty Latin verses, if these are the
saleable commodity; Book - prefaces, Political Philippics,
Review Articles, Parliamentary Debates: all things he does
rapidly; still more surprising, all things he does thoroughly
and well. How he sits there, in his rough-hewn amorphous
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust.
