It seemed unlikely that the author of these
definitions
would himself be pensioned.
Macaulay
30
14. A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these
obscure labours, he published a work which at once placed
him high among the writers of his age. It is probable that
what he had suffered during his first year in London had often
reminded him of some parts of that noble poem in which
Juvenal had described the misery and degradation of a needy
man of letters, lodged among the pigeons' nests in the tottering
garrets which overhung the streets of Rome. Pope's
admirable imitations of Horace's Satires and Epistles had 5
recently appeared, were in every hand, and were by many
readers thought superior to the originals. What Pope had
done for Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juvenal. The
enterprise was bold, and yet judicious. For between Johnson
and Juvenal there was much in common, much more certainly 10
than between Pope and Horace.
15. Johnson's London appeared without his name in
May 1738. He received only ten guineas for this stately and
vigorous poem: but the sale was rapid, and the success complete.
A second edition was required within a week. Those 15
small critics who are always desirous to lower established
reputations ran about proclaiming that the anonymous satirist
was superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department of
literature. It ought to be remembered, to the honour of Pope,
that he joined heartily in the applause with which the appearance 20
of a rival genius was welcomed. He made inquiries about
the author of London. Such a man, he said, could not long
be concealed. The name was soon discovered; and Pope,
with great kindness, exerted himself to obtain an academical
degree and the mastership of a grammar school for the poor 25
young poet. The attempt failed, and Johnson remained a
bookseller's hack.
16. It does not appear that these two men, the most
eminent writer of the generation which was going out, and
the most eminent writer of the generation which was coming 30
in, ever saw each other. They lived in very different circles,
one surrounded by dukes and earls, the other by starving
pamphleteers and indexmakers. Among Johnson's associates
at this time may be mentioned Boyse, who, when his shirts
were pledged, scrawled Latin verses sitting up in bed with his
arms through two holes in his blanket, who composed very
respectable sacred poetry when he was sober, and who was at
last run over by a hackney coach when he was drunk; Hoole,
surnamed the metaphysical tailor, who, instead of attending 5
to his measures, used to trace geometrical diagrams on the
board where he sate cross-legged; and the penitent impostor,
George Psalmanazar, who, after poring all day, in a humble
lodging, on the folios of Jewish rabbis and Christian fathers,
indulged himself at night with literary and theological 10
conversation at an alehouse in the city. But the most remarkable
of the persons with whom at this time Johnson consorted
was Richard Savage, an earl's son, a shoemaker's apprentice,
who had seen life in all its forms, who had feasted among blue
ribands in Saint James's Square, and had lain with fifty pounds' 15
weight of iron on his legs in the condemned ward of Newgate.
This man had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last
into abject and hopeless poverty. His pen had failed him.
His patrons had been taken away by death, or estranged by
the riotous profusion with which he squandered their bounty, 20
and the ungrateful insolence with which he rejected their
advice. He now lived by begging. He dined on venison
and champagne whenever he had been so fortunate as to
borrow a guinea. If his questing had been unsuccessful, he
appeased the rage of hunger with some scraps of broken meat, 25
and lay down to rest under the Piazza of Covent Garden in
warm weather, and, in cold weather, as near as he could get
to the furnace of a glass house. Yet, in his misery, he was still
an agreeable companion. He had an inexhaustible store of
anecdotes about that gay and brilliant world from which he 30
was now an outcast. He had observed the great men of both
parties in hours of careless relaxation, had seen the leaders
of opposition without the mask of patriotism, and had heard
the prime minister roar with laughter and tell stories not over
decent. During some months Savage lived in the closest
familiarity with Johnson; and then the friends parted, not
without tears. Johnson remained in London to drudge for
Cave. Savage went to the West of England, lived there as
he had lived everywhere, and, in 1743, died, penniless and 5
heart-broken, in Bristol gaol.
17. Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was
strongly excited about his extraordinary character, and his
not less extraordinary adventures, a life of him appeared
widely different from the catchpenny lives of eminent men 10
which were then a staple article of manufacture in Grub
Street. The style was indeed deficient in ease and variety;
and the writer was evidently too partial to the Latin element
of our language. But the little work, with all its faults, was
a masterpiece. No finer specimen of literary biography existed 15
in any language, living or dead; and a discerning critic might
have confidently predicted that the author was destined to be
the founder of a new school of English eloquence.
18. The life of Savage was anonymous; but it was well
known in literary circles that Johnson was the writer. During 20
the three years which followed, he produced no important
work; but he was not, and indeed could not be, idle. The fame
of his abilities and learning continued to grow. Warburton
pronounced him a man of parts and genius; and the praise
of Warburton was then no light thing. Such was Johnson's 25
reputation that, in 1747, several eminent booksellers combined
to employ him in the arduous work of preparing a
Dictionary of the English language, in two folio volumes. The
sum which they agreed to pay him was only fifteen hundred
guineas; and out of this sum he had to pay several poor men 30
of letters who assisted him in the humbler parts of his task.
19. The prospectus of the Dictionary he addressed to the
Earl of Chesterfield. Chesterfield had long been celebrated
for the politeness of his manners, the brilliancy of his wit,
and the delicacy of his taste. He was acknowledged to be
the finest speaker in the House of Lords. He had recently
governed Ireland, at a momentous conjuncture, with eminent
firmness, wisdom, and humanity; and he had since become
Secretary of State. He received Johnson's homage with the 5
most winning affability, and requited it with a few guineas,
bestowed doubtless in a very graceful manner, but was by no
means desirous to see all his carpets blackened with the London
mud, and his soups and wines thrown to right and left over
the gowns of fine ladies and the waistcoats of fine gentlemen, 10
by an absent, awkward scholar, who gave strange starts and
uttered strange growls, who dressed like a scarecrow, and ate
like a cormorant. During some time Johnson continued to
call on his patron, but after being repeatedly told by the
porter that his lordship was not at home, took the hint, and 15
ceased to present himself at the inhospitable door.
20. Johnson had flattered himself that he should have completed
his Dictionary by the end of 1750; but it was not till
1755 that he at length gave his huge volumes to the world.
During the seven years which he passed in the drudgery of 20
penning definitions and marking quotations for transcription,
he sought for relaxation in literary labour of a more agreeable
kind. In 1749 he published the Vanity of Human Wishes,
an excellent imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. It is
in truth not easy to say whether the palm belongs to the 25
ancient or to the modern poet. The couplets in which the
fall of Wolsey is described, though lofty and sonorous, are feeble
when compared with the wonderful lines which bring before us
all Rome in tumult on the day of the fall of Sejanus, the laurels
on the doorposts, the white bull stalking towards the Capitol, 30
the statues rolling down from their pedestals, the flatterers of
the disgraced minister running to see him dragged with a hook
through the streets, and to have a kick at his carcase before
it is hurled into the Tiber. It must be owned too that in the
concluding passage the Christian moralist has not made the
most of his advantages, and has fallen decidedly short of
the sublimity of his pagan model. On the other hand, Juvenal's
Hannibal must yield to Johnson's Charles; and Johnson's
vigorous and pathetic enumeration of the miseries of a literary 5
life must be allowed to be superior to Juvenal's lamentation
over the fate of Demosthenes and Cicero.
21. For the copyright of the Vanity of Human Wishes
Johnson received only fifteen guineas.
22. A few days after the publication of this poem, his 10
tragedy, begun many years before, was brought on the stage.
His pupil, David Garrick, had, in 1741, made his appearance
on a humble stage in Goodman's Fields, had at once risen to the
first place among actors, and was now, after several years of
almost uninterrupted success, manager of Drury Lane Theatre. 15
The relation between him and his old preceptor was of a very
singular kind. They repelled each other strongly, and yet
attracted each other strongly. Nature had made them of very
different clay; and circumstances had fully brought out the
natural peculiarities of both. Sudden prosperity had turned 20
Garrick's head. Continued adversity had soured Johnson's
temper. Johnson saw with more envy than became so great
a man the villa, the plate, the china, the Brussels carpet, which
the little mimic had got by repeating, with grimaces and
gesticulations, what wiser men had written; and the exquisitely 25
sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled by the thought that,
while all the rest of the world was applauding him, he could
obtain from one morose cynic, whose opinion it was impossible
to despise, scarcely any compliment not acidulated with scorn.
Yet the two Lichfield men had so many early recollections in 30
common, and sympathised with each other on so many points
on which they sympathised with nobody else in the vast population
of the capital, that, though the master was often provoked
by the monkey-like impertinence of the pupil, and the
pupil by the bearish rudeness of the master, they remained
friends till they were parted by death. Garrick now brought
Irene out, with alterations sufficient to displease the author,
yet not sufficient to make the piece pleasing to the audience.
The public, however, listened with little emotion, but with 5
much civility, to five acts of monotonous declamation. After
nine representations the play was withdrawn. It is, indeed,
altogether unsuited to the stage, and, even when perused in
the closet, will be found hardly worthy of the author. He had
not the slightest notion of what blank verse should be. A 10
change in the last syllable of every other line would make the
versification of the Vanity of Human Wishes closely resemble
the versification of Irene. The poet, however, cleared, by
his benefit nights, and by the sale of the copyright of his
tragedy, about three hundred pounds, then a great sum in 15
his estimation.
23. About a year after the representation of Irene, he
began to publish a series of short essays on morals, manners,
and literature. This species of composition had been brought
into fashion by the success of the Tatler, and by the still more 20
brilliant success of the Spectator. A crowd of small writers
had vainly attempted to rival Addison. The Lay Monastery,
the Censor, the Freethinker, the Plain Dealer, the Champion,
and other works of the same kind, had had their short day.
None of them had obtained a permanent place in our literature; 25
and they are now to be found only in the libraries of
the curious. At length Johnson undertook the adventure in
which so many aspirants had failed. In the thirty-sixth year
after the appearance of the last number of the Spectator
appeared the first number of the Rambler. From March 30
1750 to March 1752, this paper continued to come out every
Tuesday and Saturday.
24. From the first the Rambler was enthusiastically admired
by a few eminent men. Richardson, when only five numbers
had appeared, pronounced it equal, if not superior, to the
Spectator. Young and Hartley expressed their approbation
not less warmly. Bubb Dodington, among whose many faults
indifference to the claims of genius and learning cannot be
reckoned, solicited the acquaintance of the writer. In 5
consequence probably of the good offices of Dodington, who was
then the confidential adviser of Prince Frederic, two of His
Royal Highness's gentlemen carried a gracious message to
the printing office, and ordered seven copies for Leicester
House. But these overtures seem to have been very coldly 10
received. Johnson had had enough of the patronage of the
great to last him all his life, and was not disposed to haunt
any other door as he had haunted the door of Chesterfield.
25. By the public the Rambler was at first very coldly
received. Though the price of a number was only twopence, 15
the sale did not amount to five hundred. The profits were
therefore very small. But as soon as the flying leaves were
collected and reprinted they became popular. The author
lived to see thirteen thousand copies spread over England
alone. Separate editions were published for the Scotch and 20
Irish markets. A large party pronounced the style perfect, so
absolutely perfect that in some essays it would be impossible
for the writer himself to alter a single word for the better.
Another party, not less numerous, vehemently accused him of
having corrupted the purity of the English tongue. The best 25
critics admitted that his diction was too monotonous, too
obviously artificial, and now and then turgid even to absurdity.
But they did justice to the acuteness of his observations on
morals and manners, to the constant precision and frequent
brilliancy of his language, to the weighty and magnificent 30
eloquence of many serious passages, and to the solemn yet
pleasing humour of some of the lighter papers. On the question
of precedence between Addison and Johnson, a question
which, seventy years ago, was much disputed, posterity has
pronounced a decision from which there is no appeal. Sir
Roger, his chaplain and his butler, Will Wimble and Will
Honeycomb, the Vision of Mirza, the Journal of the Retired
Citizen, the Everlasting Club, the Dunmow Flitch, the Loves
of Hilpah and Shalum, the Visit to the Exchange, and the 5
Visit to the Abbey, are known to everybody. But many men
and women, even of highly cultivated minds, are unacquainted
with Squire Bluster and Mrs. Busy, Quisquilius and Venustulus,
the Allegory of Wit and Learning, the Chronicle of the Revolutions
of a Garret, and the sad fate of Aningait and Ajut. 10
26. The last Rambler was written in a sad and gloomy
hour. Mrs. Johnson had been given over by the physicians.
Three days later she died. She left her husband almost
broken-hearted. Many people had been surprised to see a
man of his genius and learning stooping to every drudgery, 15
and denying himself almost every comfort, for the purpose of
supplying a silly, affected old woman with superfluities, which
she accepted with but little gratitude. But all his affection
had been concentrated on her. He had neither brother nor
sister, neither son nor daughter. To him she was beautiful as 20
the Gunnings, and witty as Lady Mary. Her opinion of his
writings was more important to him than the voice of the
pit of Drury Lane Theatre or the judgment of the Monthly
Review. The chief support which had sustained him through
the most arduous labour of his life was the hope that she would 25
enjoy the fame and the profit which he anticipated from his
Dictionary. She was gone; and in that vast labyrinth of
streets, peopled by eight hundred thousand human beings,
he was alone. Yet it was necessary for him to set himself, as
he expressed it, doggedly to work. After three more laborious 30
years, the Dictionary was at length complete.
27. It had been generally supposed that this great work
would be dedicated to the eloquent and accomplished nobleman
to whom the prospectus had been addressed. He well
knew the value of such a compliment; and therefore, when
the day of publication drew near, he exerted himself to soothe,
by a show of zealous and at the same time of delicate and
judicious kindness, the pride which he had so cruelly wounded.
Since the Ramblers had ceased to appear, the town had been 5
entertained by a journal called The World, to which many men
of high rank and fashion contributed. In two successive numbers
of the World the Dictionary was, to use the modern phrase,
puffed with wonderful skill. The writings of Johnson were
warmly praised. It was proposed that he should be invested 10
with the authority of a Dictator, nay, of a Pope, over our
language, and that his decisions about the meaning and the
spelling of words should be received as final. His two folios,
it was said, would of course be bought by everybody who could
afford to buy them. It was soon known that these papers were 15
written by Chesterfield. But the just resentment of Johnson
was not to be so appeased. In a letter written with singular
energy and dignity of thought and language, he repelled the
tardy advances of his patron. The Dictionary came forth without
a dedication. In the preface the author truly declared that 20
he owed nothing to the great, and described the difficulties with
which he had been left to struggle so forcibly and pathetically
that the ablest and most malevolent of all the enemies of his
fame, Horne Tooke, never could read that passage without tears.
28. The public, on this occasion, did Johnson full justice, 25
and something more than justice. The best lexicographer
may well be content if his productions are received by the
world with cold esteem. But Johnson's Dictionary was hailed
with an enthusiasm such as no similar work has ever excited.
It was indeed the first dictionary which could be read with 30
pleasure. The definitions show so much acuteness of thought
and command of language, and the passages quoted from poets,
divines, and philosophers are so skilfully selected, that a leisure
hour may always be very agreeably spent in turning over the
pages. The faults of the book resolve themselves, for the most
part, into one great fault. Johnson was a wretched etymologist.
He knew little or nothing of any Teutonic language
except English, which indeed, as he wrote it, was scarcely a
Teutonic language; and thus he was absolutely at the mercy 5
of Junius and Skinner.
29. The Dictionary, though it raised Johnson's fame, added
nothing to his pecuniary means. The fifteen hundred guineas
which the booksellers had agreed to pay him had been advanced
and spent before the last sheets issued from the press. It is 10
painful to relate that, twice in the course of the year which
followed the publication of this great work, he was arrested
and carried to spunging-houses, and that he was twice indebted
for his liberty to his excellent friend Richardson. It was still
necessary for the man who had been formally saluted by the 15
highest authority as Dictator of the English language to supply
his wants by constant toil. He abridged his Dictionary. He
proposed to bring out an edition of Shakspeare by subscription;
and many subscribers sent in their names and laid down their
money; but he soon found the task so little to his taste that 20
he turned to more attractive employments. He contributed
many papers to a new monthly journal, which was called the
Literary Magazine. Few of these papers have much interest;
but among them was the very best thing that he ever wrote, a
masterpiece both of reasoning and of satirical pleasantry, the 25
review of Jenyns's Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil.
30. In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of a
series of essays, entitled The Idler. During two years these
essays continued to appear weekly. They were eagerly read,
widely circulated, and, indeed, impudently pirated, while they 30
were still in the original form, and had a large sale when
collected into volumes. The Idler may be described as a second
part of the Rambler, somewhat livelier and somewhat weaker
than the first part.
31. While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his mother, who
had accomplished her ninetieth year, died at Lichfield. It was
long since he had seen her; but he had not failed to contribute
largely, out of his small means, to her comfort. In order to
defray the charges of her funeral, and to pay some debts which 5
she had left, he wrote a little book in a single week, and sent
off the sheets to the press without reading them over. A
hundred pounds were paid him for the copyright; and the
purchasers had great cause to be pleased with their bargain;
for the book was Rasselas. 10
32. The success of Rasselas was great, though such ladies
as Miss Lydia Languish must have been grievously disappointed
when they found that the new volume from the circulating
library was little more than a dissertation on the author's
favourite theme, the Vanity of Human Wishes; that the Prince 15
of Abyssinia was without a mistress, and the Princess without a
lover; and that the story set the hero and the heroine down
exactly where it had taken them up. The style was the subject
of much eager controversy. The Monthly Review and the
Critical Review took different sides. Many readers pronounced 20
the writer a pompous pedant, who would never use a word of
two syllables where it was possible to use a word of six, and
who could not make a waiting woman relate her adventures
without balancing every noun with another noun, and every
epithet with another epithet. Another party, not less zealous, 25
cited with delight numerous passages in which weighty meaning
was expressed with accuracy and illustrated with splendour.
And both the censure and the praise were merited.
33. About the plan of Rasselas little was said by the
critics; and yet the faults of the plan might seem to invite 30
severe criticism. Johnson has frequently blamed Shakspeare
for neglecting the proprieties of time and place, and for ascribing
to one age or nation the manners and opinions of another.
Yet Shakspeare has not sinned in this way more grievously
than Johnson. Rasselas and Imlac, Nekayah and Pekuah, are
evidently meant to be Abyssinians of the eighteenth century:
for the Europe which Imlac describes is the Europe of the
eighteenth century; and the inmates of the Happy Valley
talk familiarly of that law of gravitation which Newton 5
discovered, and which was not fully received even at Cambridge
till the eighteenth century. What a real company of Abyssinians
would have been may be learned from Bruce's Travels.
But Johnson, not content with turning filthy savages, ignorant
of their letters, and gorged with raw steaks cut from living 10
cows, into philosophers as eloquent and enlightened as himself
or his friend Burke, and into ladies as highly accomplished as
Mrs. Lennox or Mrs. Sheridan, transferred the whole domestic
system of England to Egypt. Into a land of harems, a land of
polygamy, a land where women are married without ever being 15
seen, he introduced the flirtations and jealousies of our
ballrooms. In a land where there is boundless liberty of divorce,
wedlock is described as the indissoluble compact. "A youth
and maiden meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice,
exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream 20
of each other. Such," says Rasselas, "is the common process
of marriage. " Such it may have been, and may still be, in
London, but assuredly not at Cairo. A writer who was guilty
of such improprieties had little right to blame the poet who
made Hector quote Aristotle, and represented Julio Romano 25
as flourishing in the days of the oracle of Delphi.
34. By such exertions as have been described, Johnson
supported himself till the year 1762. In that year a great
change in his circumstances took place. He had from a child
been an enemy of the reigning dynasty. His Jacobite prejudices 30
had been exhibited with little disguise both in his works
and in his conversation. Even in his massy and elaborate
Dictionary, he had, with a strange want of taste and judgment,
inserted bitter and contumelious reflections on the Whig party.
The excise, which was a favourite resource of Whig financiers,
he had designated as a hateful tax. He had railed against the
commissioners of excise in language so coarse that they had
seriously thought of prosecuting him. He had with difficulty
been prevented from holding up the Lord Privy Seal by name 5
as an example of the meaning of the word "renegade. " A
pension he had defined as pay given to a state hireling to betray
his country; a pensioner as a slave of state hired by a stipend
to obey a master.
It seemed unlikely that the author of these definitions would himself be pensioned. But that was a time 10
of wonders. George the Third had ascended the throne; and
had, in the course of a few months, disgusted many of the old
friends and conciliated many of the old enemies of his house.
The city was becoming mutinous. Oxford was becoming loyal.
Cavendishes and Bentincks were murmuring. Somersets and 15
Wyndhams were hastening to kiss hands. The head of the
treasury was now Lord Bute, who was a Tory, and could have
no objection to Johnson's Toryism. Bute wished to be thought
a patron of men of letters; and Johnson was one of the most
eminent and one of the most needy men of letters in Europe. 20
A pension of three hundred a year was graciously offered, and
with very little hesitation accepted.
35. This event produced a change in Johnson's whole way
of life. For the first time since his boyhood he no longer felt
the daily goad urging him to the daily toil. He was at liberty, 25
after thirty years of anxiety and drudgery, to indulge his
constitutional indolence, to lie in bed till two in the afternoon,
and to sit up talking till four in the morning, without fearing
either the printer's devil or the sheriff's officer.
36. One laborious task indeed he had bound himself to 30
perform. He had received large subscriptions for his promised
edition of Shakspeare; he had lived on those subscriptions
during some years; and he could not without disgrace omit
to perform his part of the contract. His friends repeatedly
exhorted him to make an effort; and he repeatedly resolved
to do so. But, notwithstanding their exhortations and his
resolutions, month followed month, year followed year, and
nothing was done. He prayed fervently against his idleness;
he determined, as often as he received the sacrament, that 5
he would no longer doze away and trifle away his time; but
the spell under which he lay resisted prayer and sacrament.
His private notes at this time are made up of self-reproaches.
"My indolence," he wrote on Easter eve in 1764, "has sunk
into grosser sluggishness. A kind of strange oblivion has 10
overspread me, so that I know not what has become of the last
year. " Easter 1765 came, and found him still in the same
state. "My time," he wrote, "has been unprofitably spent,
and seems as a dream that has left nothing behind. My
memory grows confused, and I know not how the days pass 15
over me. " Happily for his honour, the charm which held him
captive was at length broken by no gentle or friendly hand.
He had been weak enough to pay serious attention to a story
about a ghost which haunted a house in Cock Lane, and had
actually gone himself with some of his friends, at one in the 20
morning, to St. John's Church, Clerkenwell, in the hope of
receiving a communication from the perturbed spirit. But the
spirit, though adjured with all solemnity, remained obstinately
silent; and it soon appeared that a naughty girl of eleven had
been amusing herself by making fools of so many philosophers. 25
Churchill, who, confident in his powers, drunk with popularity,
and burning with party spirit, was looking for some man of
established fame and Tory politics to insult, celebrated the
Cock Lane Ghost in three cantos, nicknamed Johnson Pomposo,
asked where the book was which had been so long 30
promised and so liberally paid for, and directly accused the
great moralist of cheating. This terrible word proved effectual;
and in October 1765 appeared, after a delay of nine
years, the new edition of Shakspeare.
37. This publication saved Johnson's character for honesty,
but added nothing to the fame of his abilities and learning.
The preface, though it contains some good passages, is not in
his best manner. The most valuable notes are those in which
he had an opportunity of showing how attentively he had 5
during many years observed human life and human nature.
The best specimen is the note on the character of Polonius.
Nothing so good is to be found even in Wilhelm Meister's
admirable examination of Hamlet. But here praise must end.
It would be difficult to name a more slovenly, a more worthless 10
edition of any great classic. The reader may turn over play
after play without finding one happy conjectural emendation,
or one ingenious and satisfactory explanation of a passage
which had baffled preceding commentators. Johnson had, in
his prospectus, told the world that he was peculiarly fitted for 15
the task which he had undertaken, because he had, as a
lexicographer, been under the necessity of taking a wider view of
the English language than any of his predecessors. That his
knowledge of our literature was extensive is indisputable. But,
unfortunately, he had altogether neglected that very part of 20
our literature with which it is especially desirable that an editor
of Shakspeare should be conversant. It is dangerous to assert
a negative. Yet little will be risked by the assertion, that in
the two folio volumes of the English Dictionary there is not a
single passage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan 25
age, except Shakspeare and Ben. Even from Ben the quotations
are few. Johnson might easily, in a few months, have
made himself well acquainted with every old play that was
extant. But it never seems to have occurred to him that this
was a necessary preparation for the work which he had undertaken. 30
He would doubtless have admitted that it would be
the height of absurdity in a man who was not familiar with
the works of Æschylus and Euripides to publish an edition of
Sophocles. Yet he ventured to publish an edition of Shakspeare,
without having ever in his life, as far as can be discovered,
read a single scene of Massinger, Ford, Decker, Webster,
Marlow, Beaumont, or Fletcher. His detractors were noisy
and scurrilous. Those who most loved and honoured him had
little to say in praise of the manner in which he had discharged 5
the duty of a commentator. He had, however, acquitted himself
of a debt which had long lain heavy on his conscience;
and he sank back into the repose from which the sting of satire
had roused him. He long continued to live upon the fame
which he had already won. He was honoured by the University 10
of Oxford with a Doctor's degree, by the Royal Academy
with a professorship, and by the King with an interview, in
which his Majesty most graciously expressed a hope that so
excellent a writer would not cease to write. In the interval,
however, between 1765 and 1775 Johnson published only two 15
or three political tracts, the longest of which he could have
produced in forty-eight hours, if he had worked as he worked
on the Life of Savage and on Rasselas.
38. But, though his pen was now idle, his tongue was active.
The influence exercised by his conversation, directly upon 20
those with whom he lived, and indirectly on the whole literary
world, was altogether without a parallel. His colloquial talents
were indeed of the highest order. He had strong sense, quick
discernment, wit, humour, immense knowledge of literature
and of life, and an infinite store of curious anecdotes. As 25
respected style, he spoke far better than he wrote. Every sentence
which dropped from his lips was as correct in structure
as the most nicely balanced period of the Rambler. But in
his talk there were no pompous triads, and little more than a fair
proportion of words in _osity_ and _ation_. All was simplicity, 30
ease, and vigour. He uttered his short, weighty, and pointed
sentences with a power of voice, and a justness and energy of
emphasis, of which the effect was rather increased than diminished
by the rollings of his huge form, and by the asthmatic
gaspings and puffings in which the peals of his eloquence generally
ended. Nor did the laziness which made him unwilling
to sit down to his desk prevent him from giving instruction or
entertainment orally. To discuss questions of taste, of learning,
of casuistry, in language so exact and so forcible that it might 5
have been printed without the alteration of a word, was to him
no exertion, but a pleasure. He loved, as he said, to fold his
legs and have his talk out. He was ready to bestow the overflowings
of his full mind on anybody who would start a subject,
on a fellow-passenger in a stage coach, or on the person who 10
sate at the same table with him in an eating-house. But his
conversation was nowhere so brilliant and striking as when he
was surrounded by a few friends, whose abilities and knowledge
enabled them, as he once expressed it, to send him back every
ball that he threw. Some of these, in 1764, formed themselves 15
into a club, which gradually became a formidable power in the
commonwealth of letters. The verdicts pronounced by this
conclave on new books were speedily known over all London,
and were sufficient to sell off a whole edition in a day, or to
condemn the sheets to the service of the trunk-maker and the 20
pastry-cook. Nor shall we think this strange when we consider
what great and various talents and acquirements met in the
little fraternity. Goldsmith was the representative of poetry
and light literature, Reynolds of the arts, Burke of political
eloquence and political philosophy. There, too, were Gibbon, 25
the greatest historian, and Jones, the greatest linguist, of the
age. Garrick brought to the meetings his inexhaustible pleasantry,
his incomparable mimicry, and his consummate knowledge
of stage effect. Among the most constant attendants
were two high-born and high-bred gentlemen, closely bound 30
together by friendship, but of widely different characters and
habits; Bennet Langton, distinguished by his skill in Greek
literature, by the orthodoxy of his opinions, and by the sanctity
of his life; and Topham Beauclerk, renowned for his amours,
his knowledge of the gay world, his fastidious taste, and his
sarcastic wit. To predominate over such a society was not
easy. Yet even over such a society Johnson predominated.
Burke might indeed have disputed the supremacy to which
others were under the necessity of submitting. But Burke, 5
though not generally a very patient listener, was content to
take the second part when Johnson was present; and the
club itself, consisting of so many eminent men, is to this
day popularly designated as Johnson's Club.
39. Among the members of this celebrated body was one 10
to whom it has owed the greater part of its celebrity, yet who
was regarded with little respect by his brethren, and had not
without difficulty obtained a seat among them. This was
James Boswell, a young Scotch lawyer, heir to an honourable
name and a fair estate. That he was a coxcomb and a bore, 15
weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous, was obvious to all who
were acquainted with him. That he could not reason, that
he had no wit, no humour, no eloquence, is apparent from
his writings. And yet his writings are read beyond the
Mississippi, and under the Southern Cross, and are likely to be 20
read as long as the English exists, either as a living or as a
dead language. Nature had made him a slave and an idolater.
His mind resembled those creepers which the botanists call
parasites, and which can subsist only by clinging round the
stems and imbibing the juices of stronger plants. He must 25
have fastened himself on somebody. He might have fastened
himself on Wilkes, and have become the fiercest patriot in the
Bill of Rights Society. He might have fastened himself on
Whitfield, and have become the loudest field preacher among
the Calvinistic Methodists. In a happy hour he fastened himself 30
on Johnson. The pair might seem ill matched. For
Johnson had early been prejudiced against Boswell's country.
To a man of Johnson's strong understanding and irritable
temper, the silly egotism and adulation of Boswell must have
been as teasing as the constant buzz of a fly. Johnson hated
to be questioned; and Boswell was eternally catechising him
on all kinds of subjects, and sometimes propounded such
questions as "What would you do, sir, if you were locked up
in a tower with a baby? " Johnson was a water drinker; and 5
Boswell was a wine-bibber, and indeed little better than a
habitual sot. It was impossible that there should be perfect
harmony between two such companions. Indeed, the great
man was sometimes provoked into fits of passion in which he
said things which the small man, during a few hours, seriously 10
resented. Every quarrel, however, was soon made up. During
twenty years the disciple continued to worship the master:
the master continued to scold the disciple, to sneer at him, and
to love him. The two friends ordinarily resided at a great
distance from each other. Boswell practised in the Parliament 15
House of Edinburgh, and could pay only occasional
visits to London. During those visits his chief business was
to watch Johnson, to discover all Johnson's habits, to turn the
conversation to subjects about which Johnson was likely to
say something remarkable, and to fill quarto note books with 20
minutes of what Johnson had said. In this way were gathered
the materials out of which was afterwards constructed the most
interesting biographical work in the world.
40. Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson formed a
connection less important indeed to his fame, but much more 25
important to his happiness, than his connection with Boswell.
Henry Thrale, one of the most opulent brewers in the kingdom,
a man of sound and cultivated understanding, rigid principles,
and liberal spirit, was married to one of those clever,
kind-hearted, engaging, vain, pert young women, who are 30
perpetually doing or saying what is not exactly right, but who, do
or say what they may, are always agreeable. In 1765 the
Thrales became acquainted with Johnson, and the acquaintance
ripened fast into friendship. They were astonished and
delighted by the brilliancy of his conversation. They were
flattered by finding that a man so widely celebrated, preferred
their house to any other in London. Even the peculiarities
which seemed to unfit him for civilised society, his gesticulations,
his rollings, his puffings, his mutterings, the strange way 5
in which he put on his clothes, the ravenous eagerness with
which he devoured his dinner, his fits of melancholy, his fits of
anger, his frequent rudeness, his occasional ferocity, increased
the interest which his new associates took in him. For these
things were the cruel marks left behind by a life which had 10
been one long conflict with disease and with adversity. In a
vulgar hack writer such oddities would have excited only disgust.
But in a man of genius, learning, and virtue their effect
was to add pity to admiration and esteem. Johnson soon had
an apartment at the brewery in Southwark, and a still more 15
pleasant apartment at the villa of his friends on Streatham
Common. A large part of every year he passed in those
abodes, abodes which must have seemed magnificent and luxurious
indeed, when compared with the dens in which he had
generally been lodged. But his chief pleasures were derived 20
from what the astronomer of his Abyssinian tale called "the
endearing elegance of female friendship. " Mrs. Thrale rallied
him, soothed him, coaxed him, and, if she sometimes provoked
him by her flippancy, made ample amends by listening to his
reproofs with angelic sweetness of temper. When he was 25
diseased in body and in mind, she was the most tender of
nurses. No comfort that wealth could purchase, no contrivance
that womanly ingenuity, set to work by womanly compassion,
could devise, was wanting to his sick-room. He
requited her kindness by an affection pure as the affection of 30
a father, yet delicately tinged with a gallantry which, though
awkward, must have been more flattering than the attentions
of a crowd of the fools who gloried in the names, now obsolete,
of Buck and Maccaroni. It should seem that a full half of
Johnson's life, during about sixteen years, was passed under
the roof of the Thrales. He accompanied the family sometimes
to Bath, and sometimes to Brighton, once to Wales, and once
to Paris. But he had at the same time a house in one of the
narrow and gloomy courts on the north of Fleet Street. In 5
the garrets was his library, a large and miscellaneous collection
of books, falling to pieces and begrimed with dust. On
a lower floor he sometimes, but very rarely, regaled a friend
with a plain dinner, a veal pie, or a leg of lamb and spinage,
and a rice pudding. Nor was the dwelling uninhabited during 10
his long absences. It was the home of the most extraordinary
assemblage of inmates that ever was brought together. At
the head of the establishment Johnson had placed an old
lady named Williams, whose chief recommendations were her
blindness and her poverty. But, in spite of her murmurs and 15
reproaches, he gave an asylum to another lady who was as poor
as herself, Mrs. Desmoulins, whose family he had known many
years before in Staffordshire. Room was found for the daughter
of Mrs. Desmoulins, and for another destitute damsel, who was
generally addressed as Miss Carmichael, but whom her generous 20
host called Polly. An old quack doctor named Levett,
who bled and dosed coal-heavers and hackney coachmen, and
received for fees crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin,
and sometimes a little copper, completed this strange menagerie.
All these poor creatures were at constant war with each 25
other, and with Johnson's negro servant Frank. Sometimes,
indeed, they transferred their hostilities from the servant to
the master, complained that a better table was not kept for
them, and railed or maundered till their benefactor was glad to
make his escape to Streatham, or to the Mitre Tavern. And 30
yet he, who was generally the haughtiest and most irritable
of mankind, who was but too prompt to resent anything which
looked like a slight on the part of a purse-proud bookseller,
or of a noble and powerful patron, bore patiently from
mendicants, who, but for his bounty, must have gone to the
workhouse, insults more provoking than those for which he had
knocked down Osborne and bidden defiance to Chesterfield.
Year after year Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Desmoulins, Polly, and
Levett continued to torment him and to live upon him. 5
41. The course of life which has been described was
interrupted in Johnson's sixty-fourth year by an important
event. He had early read an account of the Hebrides, and
had been much interested by learning that there was so near
him a land peopled by a race which was still as rude and 10
simple as in the middle ages. A wish to become intimately
acquainted with a state of society so utterly unlike all that he
had ever seen frequently crossed his mind. But it is not
probable that his curiosity would have overcome his habitual
sluggishness, and his love of the smoke, the mud, and the 15
cries of London, had not Boswell importuned him to attempt
the adventure, and offered to be his squire. At length, in
August 1773, Johnson crossed the Highland line, and plunged
courageously into what was then considered, by most Englishmen,
as a dreary and perilous wilderness. After wandering 20
about two months through the Celtic region, sometimes in
rude boats which did not protect him from the rain, and
sometimes on small shaggy ponies which could hardly bear
his weight, he returned to his old haunts with a mind full of
new images and new theories. During the following year he 25
employed himself in recording his adventures. About the
beginning of 1775, his Journey to the Hebrides was published,
and was, during some weeks, the chief subject of conversation
in all circles in which any attention was paid to literature.
The book is still read with pleasure. The narrative is 30
entertaining; the speculations, whether sound or unsound, are
always ingenious; and the style, though too stiff and pompous,
is somewhat easier and more graceful than that of his
early writings. His prejudice against the Scotch had at
length become little more than matter of jest; and whatever
remained of the old feeling had been effectually removed by
the kind and respectful hospitality with which he had been
received in every part of Scotland. It was, of course, not to
be expected that an Oxonian Tory should praise the Presbyterian 5
polity and ritual, or that an eye accustomed to the
hedgerows and parks of England should not be struck by the
bareness of Berwickshire and East Lothian. But even in
censure Johnson's tone is not unfriendly. The most enlightened
Scotchmen, with Lord Mansfield at their head, were 10
well pleased. But some foolish and ignorant Scotchmen were
moved to anger by a little unpalatable truth which was
mingled with much eulogy, and assailed him whom they chose
to consider as the enemy of their country, with libels much
more dishonourable to their country than anything that he 15
had ever said or written. They published paragraphs in the
newspapers, articles in the magazines, sixpenny pamphlets,
five-shilling books. One scribbler abused Johnson for being
blear-eyed; another for being a pensioner; a third informed
the world that one of the Doctor's uncles had been convicted 20
of felony in Scotland, and had found that there was in that
country one tree capable of supporting the weight of an
Englishman. Macpherson, whose Fingal had been proved
in the Journey to be an impudent forgery, threatened to take
vengeance with a cane. The only effect of this threat was 25
that Johnson reiterated the charge of forgery in the most
contemptuous terms, and walked about, during some time,
with a cudgel, which, if the impostor had not been too wise
to encounter it, would assuredly have descended upon him,
to borrow the sublime language of his own epic poem, "like 30
a hammer on the red son of the furnace. "
42. Of other assailants Johnson took no notice whatever.
He had early resolved never to be drawn into controversy;
and he adhered to his resolution with a steadfastness which
is the more extraordinary, because he was, both intellectually
and morally, of the stuff of which controversialists are made.
In conversation, he was a singularly eager, acute, and pertinacious
disputant. When at a loss for good reasons, he
had recourse to sophistry; and, when heated by altercation, 5
he made unsparing use of sarcasm and invective. But, when
he took his pen in his hand, his whole character seemed
to be changed. A hundred bad writers misrepresented him
and reviled him; but not one of the hundred could boast of
having been thought by him worthy of a refutation, or even 10
of a retort. The Kenricks, Campbells, MacNicols, and Hendersons
did their best to annoy him, in the hope that he would
give them importance by answering them. But the reader will
in vain search his works for any allusion to Kenrick or Campbell,
to MacNicol or Henderson. One Scotchman, bent on 15
vindicating the fame of Scotch learning, defied him to the
combat in a detestable Latin hexameter.
"Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum. "
But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had learned,
both from his own observation and from literary history, 20
in which he was deeply read, that the place of books in
the public estimation is fixed, not by what is written about
them, but by what is written in them; and that an author
whose works are likely to live is very unwise if he stoops to
wrangle with detractors whose works are certain to die. He 25
always maintained that fame was a shuttlecock which could
be kept up only by being beaten back, as well as beaten forward,
and which would soon fall if there were only one battledore.
No saying was oftener in his mouth than that fine
apophthegm of Bentley, that no man was ever written down 30
but by himself.
43. Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of the
Journey to the Hebrides, Johnson did what none of his
envious assailants could have done, and to a certain extent
succeeded in writing himself down. The disputes between
England and her American colonies had reached a point at
which no amicable adjustment was possible. Civil war was
evidently impending; and the ministers seem to have thought 5
that the eloquence of Johnson might with advantage be
employed to inflame the nation against the opposition here,
and against the rebels beyond the Atlantic. He had already
written two or three tracts in defence of the foreign and
domestic policy of the government; and those tracts, though 10
hardly worthy of him, were much superior to the crowd of
pamphlets which lay on the counters of Almon and Stockdale.
But his Taxation no Tyranny was a pitiable failure. The very
title was a silly phrase, which can have been recommended
to his choice by nothing but a jingling alliteration which he 15
ought to have despised. The arguments were such as boys
use in debating societies. The pleasantry was as awkward as
the gambols of a hippopotamus. Even Boswell was forced to
own that, in this unfortunate piece, he could detect no trace
of his master's powers. The general opinion was that the 20
strong faculties which had produced the Dictionary and the
Rambler were beginning to feel the effect of time and of
disease, and that the old man would best consult his credit
by writing no more.
44. But this was a great mistake. Johnson had failed, not 25
because his mind was less vigorous than when he wrote Rasselas
in the evenings of a week, but because he had foolishly
chosen, or suffered others to choose for him, a subject such as
he would at no time have been competent to treat. He was
in no sense a statesman. He never willingly read or thought 30
or talked about affairs of state. He loved biography, literary
history, the history of manners; but political history was
positively distasteful to him. The question at issue between
the colonies and the mother country was a question about
which he had really nothing to say. He failed, therefore, as
the greatest men must fail when they attempt to do that for
which they are unfit; as Burke would have failed if Burke
had tried to write comedies like those of Sheridan; as Reynolds
would have failed if Reynolds had tried to paint landscapes 5
like those of Wilson. Happily, Johnson soon had an
opportunity of proving most signally that his failure was not
to be ascribed to intellectual decay.
45.
14. A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these
obscure labours, he published a work which at once placed
him high among the writers of his age. It is probable that
what he had suffered during his first year in London had often
reminded him of some parts of that noble poem in which
Juvenal had described the misery and degradation of a needy
man of letters, lodged among the pigeons' nests in the tottering
garrets which overhung the streets of Rome. Pope's
admirable imitations of Horace's Satires and Epistles had 5
recently appeared, were in every hand, and were by many
readers thought superior to the originals. What Pope had
done for Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juvenal. The
enterprise was bold, and yet judicious. For between Johnson
and Juvenal there was much in common, much more certainly 10
than between Pope and Horace.
15. Johnson's London appeared without his name in
May 1738. He received only ten guineas for this stately and
vigorous poem: but the sale was rapid, and the success complete.
A second edition was required within a week. Those 15
small critics who are always desirous to lower established
reputations ran about proclaiming that the anonymous satirist
was superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department of
literature. It ought to be remembered, to the honour of Pope,
that he joined heartily in the applause with which the appearance 20
of a rival genius was welcomed. He made inquiries about
the author of London. Such a man, he said, could not long
be concealed. The name was soon discovered; and Pope,
with great kindness, exerted himself to obtain an academical
degree and the mastership of a grammar school for the poor 25
young poet. The attempt failed, and Johnson remained a
bookseller's hack.
16. It does not appear that these two men, the most
eminent writer of the generation which was going out, and
the most eminent writer of the generation which was coming 30
in, ever saw each other. They lived in very different circles,
one surrounded by dukes and earls, the other by starving
pamphleteers and indexmakers. Among Johnson's associates
at this time may be mentioned Boyse, who, when his shirts
were pledged, scrawled Latin verses sitting up in bed with his
arms through two holes in his blanket, who composed very
respectable sacred poetry when he was sober, and who was at
last run over by a hackney coach when he was drunk; Hoole,
surnamed the metaphysical tailor, who, instead of attending 5
to his measures, used to trace geometrical diagrams on the
board where he sate cross-legged; and the penitent impostor,
George Psalmanazar, who, after poring all day, in a humble
lodging, on the folios of Jewish rabbis and Christian fathers,
indulged himself at night with literary and theological 10
conversation at an alehouse in the city. But the most remarkable
of the persons with whom at this time Johnson consorted
was Richard Savage, an earl's son, a shoemaker's apprentice,
who had seen life in all its forms, who had feasted among blue
ribands in Saint James's Square, and had lain with fifty pounds' 15
weight of iron on his legs in the condemned ward of Newgate.
This man had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last
into abject and hopeless poverty. His pen had failed him.
His patrons had been taken away by death, or estranged by
the riotous profusion with which he squandered their bounty, 20
and the ungrateful insolence with which he rejected their
advice. He now lived by begging. He dined on venison
and champagne whenever he had been so fortunate as to
borrow a guinea. If his questing had been unsuccessful, he
appeased the rage of hunger with some scraps of broken meat, 25
and lay down to rest under the Piazza of Covent Garden in
warm weather, and, in cold weather, as near as he could get
to the furnace of a glass house. Yet, in his misery, he was still
an agreeable companion. He had an inexhaustible store of
anecdotes about that gay and brilliant world from which he 30
was now an outcast. He had observed the great men of both
parties in hours of careless relaxation, had seen the leaders
of opposition without the mask of patriotism, and had heard
the prime minister roar with laughter and tell stories not over
decent. During some months Savage lived in the closest
familiarity with Johnson; and then the friends parted, not
without tears. Johnson remained in London to drudge for
Cave. Savage went to the West of England, lived there as
he had lived everywhere, and, in 1743, died, penniless and 5
heart-broken, in Bristol gaol.
17. Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was
strongly excited about his extraordinary character, and his
not less extraordinary adventures, a life of him appeared
widely different from the catchpenny lives of eminent men 10
which were then a staple article of manufacture in Grub
Street. The style was indeed deficient in ease and variety;
and the writer was evidently too partial to the Latin element
of our language. But the little work, with all its faults, was
a masterpiece. No finer specimen of literary biography existed 15
in any language, living or dead; and a discerning critic might
have confidently predicted that the author was destined to be
the founder of a new school of English eloquence.
18. The life of Savage was anonymous; but it was well
known in literary circles that Johnson was the writer. During 20
the three years which followed, he produced no important
work; but he was not, and indeed could not be, idle. The fame
of his abilities and learning continued to grow. Warburton
pronounced him a man of parts and genius; and the praise
of Warburton was then no light thing. Such was Johnson's 25
reputation that, in 1747, several eminent booksellers combined
to employ him in the arduous work of preparing a
Dictionary of the English language, in two folio volumes. The
sum which they agreed to pay him was only fifteen hundred
guineas; and out of this sum he had to pay several poor men 30
of letters who assisted him in the humbler parts of his task.
19. The prospectus of the Dictionary he addressed to the
Earl of Chesterfield. Chesterfield had long been celebrated
for the politeness of his manners, the brilliancy of his wit,
and the delicacy of his taste. He was acknowledged to be
the finest speaker in the House of Lords. He had recently
governed Ireland, at a momentous conjuncture, with eminent
firmness, wisdom, and humanity; and he had since become
Secretary of State. He received Johnson's homage with the 5
most winning affability, and requited it with a few guineas,
bestowed doubtless in a very graceful manner, but was by no
means desirous to see all his carpets blackened with the London
mud, and his soups and wines thrown to right and left over
the gowns of fine ladies and the waistcoats of fine gentlemen, 10
by an absent, awkward scholar, who gave strange starts and
uttered strange growls, who dressed like a scarecrow, and ate
like a cormorant. During some time Johnson continued to
call on his patron, but after being repeatedly told by the
porter that his lordship was not at home, took the hint, and 15
ceased to present himself at the inhospitable door.
20. Johnson had flattered himself that he should have completed
his Dictionary by the end of 1750; but it was not till
1755 that he at length gave his huge volumes to the world.
During the seven years which he passed in the drudgery of 20
penning definitions and marking quotations for transcription,
he sought for relaxation in literary labour of a more agreeable
kind. In 1749 he published the Vanity of Human Wishes,
an excellent imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. It is
in truth not easy to say whether the palm belongs to the 25
ancient or to the modern poet. The couplets in which the
fall of Wolsey is described, though lofty and sonorous, are feeble
when compared with the wonderful lines which bring before us
all Rome in tumult on the day of the fall of Sejanus, the laurels
on the doorposts, the white bull stalking towards the Capitol, 30
the statues rolling down from their pedestals, the flatterers of
the disgraced minister running to see him dragged with a hook
through the streets, and to have a kick at his carcase before
it is hurled into the Tiber. It must be owned too that in the
concluding passage the Christian moralist has not made the
most of his advantages, and has fallen decidedly short of
the sublimity of his pagan model. On the other hand, Juvenal's
Hannibal must yield to Johnson's Charles; and Johnson's
vigorous and pathetic enumeration of the miseries of a literary 5
life must be allowed to be superior to Juvenal's lamentation
over the fate of Demosthenes and Cicero.
21. For the copyright of the Vanity of Human Wishes
Johnson received only fifteen guineas.
22. A few days after the publication of this poem, his 10
tragedy, begun many years before, was brought on the stage.
His pupil, David Garrick, had, in 1741, made his appearance
on a humble stage in Goodman's Fields, had at once risen to the
first place among actors, and was now, after several years of
almost uninterrupted success, manager of Drury Lane Theatre. 15
The relation between him and his old preceptor was of a very
singular kind. They repelled each other strongly, and yet
attracted each other strongly. Nature had made them of very
different clay; and circumstances had fully brought out the
natural peculiarities of both. Sudden prosperity had turned 20
Garrick's head. Continued adversity had soured Johnson's
temper. Johnson saw with more envy than became so great
a man the villa, the plate, the china, the Brussels carpet, which
the little mimic had got by repeating, with grimaces and
gesticulations, what wiser men had written; and the exquisitely 25
sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled by the thought that,
while all the rest of the world was applauding him, he could
obtain from one morose cynic, whose opinion it was impossible
to despise, scarcely any compliment not acidulated with scorn.
Yet the two Lichfield men had so many early recollections in 30
common, and sympathised with each other on so many points
on which they sympathised with nobody else in the vast population
of the capital, that, though the master was often provoked
by the monkey-like impertinence of the pupil, and the
pupil by the bearish rudeness of the master, they remained
friends till they were parted by death. Garrick now brought
Irene out, with alterations sufficient to displease the author,
yet not sufficient to make the piece pleasing to the audience.
The public, however, listened with little emotion, but with 5
much civility, to five acts of monotonous declamation. After
nine representations the play was withdrawn. It is, indeed,
altogether unsuited to the stage, and, even when perused in
the closet, will be found hardly worthy of the author. He had
not the slightest notion of what blank verse should be. A 10
change in the last syllable of every other line would make the
versification of the Vanity of Human Wishes closely resemble
the versification of Irene. The poet, however, cleared, by
his benefit nights, and by the sale of the copyright of his
tragedy, about three hundred pounds, then a great sum in 15
his estimation.
23. About a year after the representation of Irene, he
began to publish a series of short essays on morals, manners,
and literature. This species of composition had been brought
into fashion by the success of the Tatler, and by the still more 20
brilliant success of the Spectator. A crowd of small writers
had vainly attempted to rival Addison. The Lay Monastery,
the Censor, the Freethinker, the Plain Dealer, the Champion,
and other works of the same kind, had had their short day.
None of them had obtained a permanent place in our literature; 25
and they are now to be found only in the libraries of
the curious. At length Johnson undertook the adventure in
which so many aspirants had failed. In the thirty-sixth year
after the appearance of the last number of the Spectator
appeared the first number of the Rambler. From March 30
1750 to March 1752, this paper continued to come out every
Tuesday and Saturday.
24. From the first the Rambler was enthusiastically admired
by a few eminent men. Richardson, when only five numbers
had appeared, pronounced it equal, if not superior, to the
Spectator. Young and Hartley expressed their approbation
not less warmly. Bubb Dodington, among whose many faults
indifference to the claims of genius and learning cannot be
reckoned, solicited the acquaintance of the writer. In 5
consequence probably of the good offices of Dodington, who was
then the confidential adviser of Prince Frederic, two of His
Royal Highness's gentlemen carried a gracious message to
the printing office, and ordered seven copies for Leicester
House. But these overtures seem to have been very coldly 10
received. Johnson had had enough of the patronage of the
great to last him all his life, and was not disposed to haunt
any other door as he had haunted the door of Chesterfield.
25. By the public the Rambler was at first very coldly
received. Though the price of a number was only twopence, 15
the sale did not amount to five hundred. The profits were
therefore very small. But as soon as the flying leaves were
collected and reprinted they became popular. The author
lived to see thirteen thousand copies spread over England
alone. Separate editions were published for the Scotch and 20
Irish markets. A large party pronounced the style perfect, so
absolutely perfect that in some essays it would be impossible
for the writer himself to alter a single word for the better.
Another party, not less numerous, vehemently accused him of
having corrupted the purity of the English tongue. The best 25
critics admitted that his diction was too monotonous, too
obviously artificial, and now and then turgid even to absurdity.
But they did justice to the acuteness of his observations on
morals and manners, to the constant precision and frequent
brilliancy of his language, to the weighty and magnificent 30
eloquence of many serious passages, and to the solemn yet
pleasing humour of some of the lighter papers. On the question
of precedence between Addison and Johnson, a question
which, seventy years ago, was much disputed, posterity has
pronounced a decision from which there is no appeal. Sir
Roger, his chaplain and his butler, Will Wimble and Will
Honeycomb, the Vision of Mirza, the Journal of the Retired
Citizen, the Everlasting Club, the Dunmow Flitch, the Loves
of Hilpah and Shalum, the Visit to the Exchange, and the 5
Visit to the Abbey, are known to everybody. But many men
and women, even of highly cultivated minds, are unacquainted
with Squire Bluster and Mrs. Busy, Quisquilius and Venustulus,
the Allegory of Wit and Learning, the Chronicle of the Revolutions
of a Garret, and the sad fate of Aningait and Ajut. 10
26. The last Rambler was written in a sad and gloomy
hour. Mrs. Johnson had been given over by the physicians.
Three days later she died. She left her husband almost
broken-hearted. Many people had been surprised to see a
man of his genius and learning stooping to every drudgery, 15
and denying himself almost every comfort, for the purpose of
supplying a silly, affected old woman with superfluities, which
she accepted with but little gratitude. But all his affection
had been concentrated on her. He had neither brother nor
sister, neither son nor daughter. To him she was beautiful as 20
the Gunnings, and witty as Lady Mary. Her opinion of his
writings was more important to him than the voice of the
pit of Drury Lane Theatre or the judgment of the Monthly
Review. The chief support which had sustained him through
the most arduous labour of his life was the hope that she would 25
enjoy the fame and the profit which he anticipated from his
Dictionary. She was gone; and in that vast labyrinth of
streets, peopled by eight hundred thousand human beings,
he was alone. Yet it was necessary for him to set himself, as
he expressed it, doggedly to work. After three more laborious 30
years, the Dictionary was at length complete.
27. It had been generally supposed that this great work
would be dedicated to the eloquent and accomplished nobleman
to whom the prospectus had been addressed. He well
knew the value of such a compliment; and therefore, when
the day of publication drew near, he exerted himself to soothe,
by a show of zealous and at the same time of delicate and
judicious kindness, the pride which he had so cruelly wounded.
Since the Ramblers had ceased to appear, the town had been 5
entertained by a journal called The World, to which many men
of high rank and fashion contributed. In two successive numbers
of the World the Dictionary was, to use the modern phrase,
puffed with wonderful skill. The writings of Johnson were
warmly praised. It was proposed that he should be invested 10
with the authority of a Dictator, nay, of a Pope, over our
language, and that his decisions about the meaning and the
spelling of words should be received as final. His two folios,
it was said, would of course be bought by everybody who could
afford to buy them. It was soon known that these papers were 15
written by Chesterfield. But the just resentment of Johnson
was not to be so appeased. In a letter written with singular
energy and dignity of thought and language, he repelled the
tardy advances of his patron. The Dictionary came forth without
a dedication. In the preface the author truly declared that 20
he owed nothing to the great, and described the difficulties with
which he had been left to struggle so forcibly and pathetically
that the ablest and most malevolent of all the enemies of his
fame, Horne Tooke, never could read that passage without tears.
28. The public, on this occasion, did Johnson full justice, 25
and something more than justice. The best lexicographer
may well be content if his productions are received by the
world with cold esteem. But Johnson's Dictionary was hailed
with an enthusiasm such as no similar work has ever excited.
It was indeed the first dictionary which could be read with 30
pleasure. The definitions show so much acuteness of thought
and command of language, and the passages quoted from poets,
divines, and philosophers are so skilfully selected, that a leisure
hour may always be very agreeably spent in turning over the
pages. The faults of the book resolve themselves, for the most
part, into one great fault. Johnson was a wretched etymologist.
He knew little or nothing of any Teutonic language
except English, which indeed, as he wrote it, was scarcely a
Teutonic language; and thus he was absolutely at the mercy 5
of Junius and Skinner.
29. The Dictionary, though it raised Johnson's fame, added
nothing to his pecuniary means. The fifteen hundred guineas
which the booksellers had agreed to pay him had been advanced
and spent before the last sheets issued from the press. It is 10
painful to relate that, twice in the course of the year which
followed the publication of this great work, he was arrested
and carried to spunging-houses, and that he was twice indebted
for his liberty to his excellent friend Richardson. It was still
necessary for the man who had been formally saluted by the 15
highest authority as Dictator of the English language to supply
his wants by constant toil. He abridged his Dictionary. He
proposed to bring out an edition of Shakspeare by subscription;
and many subscribers sent in their names and laid down their
money; but he soon found the task so little to his taste that 20
he turned to more attractive employments. He contributed
many papers to a new monthly journal, which was called the
Literary Magazine. Few of these papers have much interest;
but among them was the very best thing that he ever wrote, a
masterpiece both of reasoning and of satirical pleasantry, the 25
review of Jenyns's Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil.
30. In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of a
series of essays, entitled The Idler. During two years these
essays continued to appear weekly. They were eagerly read,
widely circulated, and, indeed, impudently pirated, while they 30
were still in the original form, and had a large sale when
collected into volumes. The Idler may be described as a second
part of the Rambler, somewhat livelier and somewhat weaker
than the first part.
31. While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his mother, who
had accomplished her ninetieth year, died at Lichfield. It was
long since he had seen her; but he had not failed to contribute
largely, out of his small means, to her comfort. In order to
defray the charges of her funeral, and to pay some debts which 5
she had left, he wrote a little book in a single week, and sent
off the sheets to the press without reading them over. A
hundred pounds were paid him for the copyright; and the
purchasers had great cause to be pleased with their bargain;
for the book was Rasselas. 10
32. The success of Rasselas was great, though such ladies
as Miss Lydia Languish must have been grievously disappointed
when they found that the new volume from the circulating
library was little more than a dissertation on the author's
favourite theme, the Vanity of Human Wishes; that the Prince 15
of Abyssinia was without a mistress, and the Princess without a
lover; and that the story set the hero and the heroine down
exactly where it had taken them up. The style was the subject
of much eager controversy. The Monthly Review and the
Critical Review took different sides. Many readers pronounced 20
the writer a pompous pedant, who would never use a word of
two syllables where it was possible to use a word of six, and
who could not make a waiting woman relate her adventures
without balancing every noun with another noun, and every
epithet with another epithet. Another party, not less zealous, 25
cited with delight numerous passages in which weighty meaning
was expressed with accuracy and illustrated with splendour.
And both the censure and the praise were merited.
33. About the plan of Rasselas little was said by the
critics; and yet the faults of the plan might seem to invite 30
severe criticism. Johnson has frequently blamed Shakspeare
for neglecting the proprieties of time and place, and for ascribing
to one age or nation the manners and opinions of another.
Yet Shakspeare has not sinned in this way more grievously
than Johnson. Rasselas and Imlac, Nekayah and Pekuah, are
evidently meant to be Abyssinians of the eighteenth century:
for the Europe which Imlac describes is the Europe of the
eighteenth century; and the inmates of the Happy Valley
talk familiarly of that law of gravitation which Newton 5
discovered, and which was not fully received even at Cambridge
till the eighteenth century. What a real company of Abyssinians
would have been may be learned from Bruce's Travels.
But Johnson, not content with turning filthy savages, ignorant
of their letters, and gorged with raw steaks cut from living 10
cows, into philosophers as eloquent and enlightened as himself
or his friend Burke, and into ladies as highly accomplished as
Mrs. Lennox or Mrs. Sheridan, transferred the whole domestic
system of England to Egypt. Into a land of harems, a land of
polygamy, a land where women are married without ever being 15
seen, he introduced the flirtations and jealousies of our
ballrooms. In a land where there is boundless liberty of divorce,
wedlock is described as the indissoluble compact. "A youth
and maiden meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice,
exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream 20
of each other. Such," says Rasselas, "is the common process
of marriage. " Such it may have been, and may still be, in
London, but assuredly not at Cairo. A writer who was guilty
of such improprieties had little right to blame the poet who
made Hector quote Aristotle, and represented Julio Romano 25
as flourishing in the days of the oracle of Delphi.
34. By such exertions as have been described, Johnson
supported himself till the year 1762. In that year a great
change in his circumstances took place. He had from a child
been an enemy of the reigning dynasty. His Jacobite prejudices 30
had been exhibited with little disguise both in his works
and in his conversation. Even in his massy and elaborate
Dictionary, he had, with a strange want of taste and judgment,
inserted bitter and contumelious reflections on the Whig party.
The excise, which was a favourite resource of Whig financiers,
he had designated as a hateful tax. He had railed against the
commissioners of excise in language so coarse that they had
seriously thought of prosecuting him. He had with difficulty
been prevented from holding up the Lord Privy Seal by name 5
as an example of the meaning of the word "renegade. " A
pension he had defined as pay given to a state hireling to betray
his country; a pensioner as a slave of state hired by a stipend
to obey a master.
It seemed unlikely that the author of these definitions would himself be pensioned. But that was a time 10
of wonders. George the Third had ascended the throne; and
had, in the course of a few months, disgusted many of the old
friends and conciliated many of the old enemies of his house.
The city was becoming mutinous. Oxford was becoming loyal.
Cavendishes and Bentincks were murmuring. Somersets and 15
Wyndhams were hastening to kiss hands. The head of the
treasury was now Lord Bute, who was a Tory, and could have
no objection to Johnson's Toryism. Bute wished to be thought
a patron of men of letters; and Johnson was one of the most
eminent and one of the most needy men of letters in Europe. 20
A pension of three hundred a year was graciously offered, and
with very little hesitation accepted.
35. This event produced a change in Johnson's whole way
of life. For the first time since his boyhood he no longer felt
the daily goad urging him to the daily toil. He was at liberty, 25
after thirty years of anxiety and drudgery, to indulge his
constitutional indolence, to lie in bed till two in the afternoon,
and to sit up talking till four in the morning, without fearing
either the printer's devil or the sheriff's officer.
36. One laborious task indeed he had bound himself to 30
perform. He had received large subscriptions for his promised
edition of Shakspeare; he had lived on those subscriptions
during some years; and he could not without disgrace omit
to perform his part of the contract. His friends repeatedly
exhorted him to make an effort; and he repeatedly resolved
to do so. But, notwithstanding their exhortations and his
resolutions, month followed month, year followed year, and
nothing was done. He prayed fervently against his idleness;
he determined, as often as he received the sacrament, that 5
he would no longer doze away and trifle away his time; but
the spell under which he lay resisted prayer and sacrament.
His private notes at this time are made up of self-reproaches.
"My indolence," he wrote on Easter eve in 1764, "has sunk
into grosser sluggishness. A kind of strange oblivion has 10
overspread me, so that I know not what has become of the last
year. " Easter 1765 came, and found him still in the same
state. "My time," he wrote, "has been unprofitably spent,
and seems as a dream that has left nothing behind. My
memory grows confused, and I know not how the days pass 15
over me. " Happily for his honour, the charm which held him
captive was at length broken by no gentle or friendly hand.
He had been weak enough to pay serious attention to a story
about a ghost which haunted a house in Cock Lane, and had
actually gone himself with some of his friends, at one in the 20
morning, to St. John's Church, Clerkenwell, in the hope of
receiving a communication from the perturbed spirit. But the
spirit, though adjured with all solemnity, remained obstinately
silent; and it soon appeared that a naughty girl of eleven had
been amusing herself by making fools of so many philosophers. 25
Churchill, who, confident in his powers, drunk with popularity,
and burning with party spirit, was looking for some man of
established fame and Tory politics to insult, celebrated the
Cock Lane Ghost in three cantos, nicknamed Johnson Pomposo,
asked where the book was which had been so long 30
promised and so liberally paid for, and directly accused the
great moralist of cheating. This terrible word proved effectual;
and in October 1765 appeared, after a delay of nine
years, the new edition of Shakspeare.
37. This publication saved Johnson's character for honesty,
but added nothing to the fame of his abilities and learning.
The preface, though it contains some good passages, is not in
his best manner. The most valuable notes are those in which
he had an opportunity of showing how attentively he had 5
during many years observed human life and human nature.
The best specimen is the note on the character of Polonius.
Nothing so good is to be found even in Wilhelm Meister's
admirable examination of Hamlet. But here praise must end.
It would be difficult to name a more slovenly, a more worthless 10
edition of any great classic. The reader may turn over play
after play without finding one happy conjectural emendation,
or one ingenious and satisfactory explanation of a passage
which had baffled preceding commentators. Johnson had, in
his prospectus, told the world that he was peculiarly fitted for 15
the task which he had undertaken, because he had, as a
lexicographer, been under the necessity of taking a wider view of
the English language than any of his predecessors. That his
knowledge of our literature was extensive is indisputable. But,
unfortunately, he had altogether neglected that very part of 20
our literature with which it is especially desirable that an editor
of Shakspeare should be conversant. It is dangerous to assert
a negative. Yet little will be risked by the assertion, that in
the two folio volumes of the English Dictionary there is not a
single passage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan 25
age, except Shakspeare and Ben. Even from Ben the quotations
are few. Johnson might easily, in a few months, have
made himself well acquainted with every old play that was
extant. But it never seems to have occurred to him that this
was a necessary preparation for the work which he had undertaken. 30
He would doubtless have admitted that it would be
the height of absurdity in a man who was not familiar with
the works of Æschylus and Euripides to publish an edition of
Sophocles. Yet he ventured to publish an edition of Shakspeare,
without having ever in his life, as far as can be discovered,
read a single scene of Massinger, Ford, Decker, Webster,
Marlow, Beaumont, or Fletcher. His detractors were noisy
and scurrilous. Those who most loved and honoured him had
little to say in praise of the manner in which he had discharged 5
the duty of a commentator. He had, however, acquitted himself
of a debt which had long lain heavy on his conscience;
and he sank back into the repose from which the sting of satire
had roused him. He long continued to live upon the fame
which he had already won. He was honoured by the University 10
of Oxford with a Doctor's degree, by the Royal Academy
with a professorship, and by the King with an interview, in
which his Majesty most graciously expressed a hope that so
excellent a writer would not cease to write. In the interval,
however, between 1765 and 1775 Johnson published only two 15
or three political tracts, the longest of which he could have
produced in forty-eight hours, if he had worked as he worked
on the Life of Savage and on Rasselas.
38. But, though his pen was now idle, his tongue was active.
The influence exercised by his conversation, directly upon 20
those with whom he lived, and indirectly on the whole literary
world, was altogether without a parallel. His colloquial talents
were indeed of the highest order. He had strong sense, quick
discernment, wit, humour, immense knowledge of literature
and of life, and an infinite store of curious anecdotes. As 25
respected style, he spoke far better than he wrote. Every sentence
which dropped from his lips was as correct in structure
as the most nicely balanced period of the Rambler. But in
his talk there were no pompous triads, and little more than a fair
proportion of words in _osity_ and _ation_. All was simplicity, 30
ease, and vigour. He uttered his short, weighty, and pointed
sentences with a power of voice, and a justness and energy of
emphasis, of which the effect was rather increased than diminished
by the rollings of his huge form, and by the asthmatic
gaspings and puffings in which the peals of his eloquence generally
ended. Nor did the laziness which made him unwilling
to sit down to his desk prevent him from giving instruction or
entertainment orally. To discuss questions of taste, of learning,
of casuistry, in language so exact and so forcible that it might 5
have been printed without the alteration of a word, was to him
no exertion, but a pleasure. He loved, as he said, to fold his
legs and have his talk out. He was ready to bestow the overflowings
of his full mind on anybody who would start a subject,
on a fellow-passenger in a stage coach, or on the person who 10
sate at the same table with him in an eating-house. But his
conversation was nowhere so brilliant and striking as when he
was surrounded by a few friends, whose abilities and knowledge
enabled them, as he once expressed it, to send him back every
ball that he threw. Some of these, in 1764, formed themselves 15
into a club, which gradually became a formidable power in the
commonwealth of letters. The verdicts pronounced by this
conclave on new books were speedily known over all London,
and were sufficient to sell off a whole edition in a day, or to
condemn the sheets to the service of the trunk-maker and the 20
pastry-cook. Nor shall we think this strange when we consider
what great and various talents and acquirements met in the
little fraternity. Goldsmith was the representative of poetry
and light literature, Reynolds of the arts, Burke of political
eloquence and political philosophy. There, too, were Gibbon, 25
the greatest historian, and Jones, the greatest linguist, of the
age. Garrick brought to the meetings his inexhaustible pleasantry,
his incomparable mimicry, and his consummate knowledge
of stage effect. Among the most constant attendants
were two high-born and high-bred gentlemen, closely bound 30
together by friendship, but of widely different characters and
habits; Bennet Langton, distinguished by his skill in Greek
literature, by the orthodoxy of his opinions, and by the sanctity
of his life; and Topham Beauclerk, renowned for his amours,
his knowledge of the gay world, his fastidious taste, and his
sarcastic wit. To predominate over such a society was not
easy. Yet even over such a society Johnson predominated.
Burke might indeed have disputed the supremacy to which
others were under the necessity of submitting. But Burke, 5
though not generally a very patient listener, was content to
take the second part when Johnson was present; and the
club itself, consisting of so many eminent men, is to this
day popularly designated as Johnson's Club.
39. Among the members of this celebrated body was one 10
to whom it has owed the greater part of its celebrity, yet who
was regarded with little respect by his brethren, and had not
without difficulty obtained a seat among them. This was
James Boswell, a young Scotch lawyer, heir to an honourable
name and a fair estate. That he was a coxcomb and a bore, 15
weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous, was obvious to all who
were acquainted with him. That he could not reason, that
he had no wit, no humour, no eloquence, is apparent from
his writings. And yet his writings are read beyond the
Mississippi, and under the Southern Cross, and are likely to be 20
read as long as the English exists, either as a living or as a
dead language. Nature had made him a slave and an idolater.
His mind resembled those creepers which the botanists call
parasites, and which can subsist only by clinging round the
stems and imbibing the juices of stronger plants. He must 25
have fastened himself on somebody. He might have fastened
himself on Wilkes, and have become the fiercest patriot in the
Bill of Rights Society. He might have fastened himself on
Whitfield, and have become the loudest field preacher among
the Calvinistic Methodists. In a happy hour he fastened himself 30
on Johnson. The pair might seem ill matched. For
Johnson had early been prejudiced against Boswell's country.
To a man of Johnson's strong understanding and irritable
temper, the silly egotism and adulation of Boswell must have
been as teasing as the constant buzz of a fly. Johnson hated
to be questioned; and Boswell was eternally catechising him
on all kinds of subjects, and sometimes propounded such
questions as "What would you do, sir, if you were locked up
in a tower with a baby? " Johnson was a water drinker; and 5
Boswell was a wine-bibber, and indeed little better than a
habitual sot. It was impossible that there should be perfect
harmony between two such companions. Indeed, the great
man was sometimes provoked into fits of passion in which he
said things which the small man, during a few hours, seriously 10
resented. Every quarrel, however, was soon made up. During
twenty years the disciple continued to worship the master:
the master continued to scold the disciple, to sneer at him, and
to love him. The two friends ordinarily resided at a great
distance from each other. Boswell practised in the Parliament 15
House of Edinburgh, and could pay only occasional
visits to London. During those visits his chief business was
to watch Johnson, to discover all Johnson's habits, to turn the
conversation to subjects about which Johnson was likely to
say something remarkable, and to fill quarto note books with 20
minutes of what Johnson had said. In this way were gathered
the materials out of which was afterwards constructed the most
interesting biographical work in the world.
40. Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson formed a
connection less important indeed to his fame, but much more 25
important to his happiness, than his connection with Boswell.
Henry Thrale, one of the most opulent brewers in the kingdom,
a man of sound and cultivated understanding, rigid principles,
and liberal spirit, was married to one of those clever,
kind-hearted, engaging, vain, pert young women, who are 30
perpetually doing or saying what is not exactly right, but who, do
or say what they may, are always agreeable. In 1765 the
Thrales became acquainted with Johnson, and the acquaintance
ripened fast into friendship. They were astonished and
delighted by the brilliancy of his conversation. They were
flattered by finding that a man so widely celebrated, preferred
their house to any other in London. Even the peculiarities
which seemed to unfit him for civilised society, his gesticulations,
his rollings, his puffings, his mutterings, the strange way 5
in which he put on his clothes, the ravenous eagerness with
which he devoured his dinner, his fits of melancholy, his fits of
anger, his frequent rudeness, his occasional ferocity, increased
the interest which his new associates took in him. For these
things were the cruel marks left behind by a life which had 10
been one long conflict with disease and with adversity. In a
vulgar hack writer such oddities would have excited only disgust.
But in a man of genius, learning, and virtue their effect
was to add pity to admiration and esteem. Johnson soon had
an apartment at the brewery in Southwark, and a still more 15
pleasant apartment at the villa of his friends on Streatham
Common. A large part of every year he passed in those
abodes, abodes which must have seemed magnificent and luxurious
indeed, when compared with the dens in which he had
generally been lodged. But his chief pleasures were derived 20
from what the astronomer of his Abyssinian tale called "the
endearing elegance of female friendship. " Mrs. Thrale rallied
him, soothed him, coaxed him, and, if she sometimes provoked
him by her flippancy, made ample amends by listening to his
reproofs with angelic sweetness of temper. When he was 25
diseased in body and in mind, she was the most tender of
nurses. No comfort that wealth could purchase, no contrivance
that womanly ingenuity, set to work by womanly compassion,
could devise, was wanting to his sick-room. He
requited her kindness by an affection pure as the affection of 30
a father, yet delicately tinged with a gallantry which, though
awkward, must have been more flattering than the attentions
of a crowd of the fools who gloried in the names, now obsolete,
of Buck and Maccaroni. It should seem that a full half of
Johnson's life, during about sixteen years, was passed under
the roof of the Thrales. He accompanied the family sometimes
to Bath, and sometimes to Brighton, once to Wales, and once
to Paris. But he had at the same time a house in one of the
narrow and gloomy courts on the north of Fleet Street. In 5
the garrets was his library, a large and miscellaneous collection
of books, falling to pieces and begrimed with dust. On
a lower floor he sometimes, but very rarely, regaled a friend
with a plain dinner, a veal pie, or a leg of lamb and spinage,
and a rice pudding. Nor was the dwelling uninhabited during 10
his long absences. It was the home of the most extraordinary
assemblage of inmates that ever was brought together. At
the head of the establishment Johnson had placed an old
lady named Williams, whose chief recommendations were her
blindness and her poverty. But, in spite of her murmurs and 15
reproaches, he gave an asylum to another lady who was as poor
as herself, Mrs. Desmoulins, whose family he had known many
years before in Staffordshire. Room was found for the daughter
of Mrs. Desmoulins, and for another destitute damsel, who was
generally addressed as Miss Carmichael, but whom her generous 20
host called Polly. An old quack doctor named Levett,
who bled and dosed coal-heavers and hackney coachmen, and
received for fees crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin,
and sometimes a little copper, completed this strange menagerie.
All these poor creatures were at constant war with each 25
other, and with Johnson's negro servant Frank. Sometimes,
indeed, they transferred their hostilities from the servant to
the master, complained that a better table was not kept for
them, and railed or maundered till their benefactor was glad to
make his escape to Streatham, or to the Mitre Tavern. And 30
yet he, who was generally the haughtiest and most irritable
of mankind, who was but too prompt to resent anything which
looked like a slight on the part of a purse-proud bookseller,
or of a noble and powerful patron, bore patiently from
mendicants, who, but for his bounty, must have gone to the
workhouse, insults more provoking than those for which he had
knocked down Osborne and bidden defiance to Chesterfield.
Year after year Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Desmoulins, Polly, and
Levett continued to torment him and to live upon him. 5
41. The course of life which has been described was
interrupted in Johnson's sixty-fourth year by an important
event. He had early read an account of the Hebrides, and
had been much interested by learning that there was so near
him a land peopled by a race which was still as rude and 10
simple as in the middle ages. A wish to become intimately
acquainted with a state of society so utterly unlike all that he
had ever seen frequently crossed his mind. But it is not
probable that his curiosity would have overcome his habitual
sluggishness, and his love of the smoke, the mud, and the 15
cries of London, had not Boswell importuned him to attempt
the adventure, and offered to be his squire. At length, in
August 1773, Johnson crossed the Highland line, and plunged
courageously into what was then considered, by most Englishmen,
as a dreary and perilous wilderness. After wandering 20
about two months through the Celtic region, sometimes in
rude boats which did not protect him from the rain, and
sometimes on small shaggy ponies which could hardly bear
his weight, he returned to his old haunts with a mind full of
new images and new theories. During the following year he 25
employed himself in recording his adventures. About the
beginning of 1775, his Journey to the Hebrides was published,
and was, during some weeks, the chief subject of conversation
in all circles in which any attention was paid to literature.
The book is still read with pleasure. The narrative is 30
entertaining; the speculations, whether sound or unsound, are
always ingenious; and the style, though too stiff and pompous,
is somewhat easier and more graceful than that of his
early writings. His prejudice against the Scotch had at
length become little more than matter of jest; and whatever
remained of the old feeling had been effectually removed by
the kind and respectful hospitality with which he had been
received in every part of Scotland. It was, of course, not to
be expected that an Oxonian Tory should praise the Presbyterian 5
polity and ritual, or that an eye accustomed to the
hedgerows and parks of England should not be struck by the
bareness of Berwickshire and East Lothian. But even in
censure Johnson's tone is not unfriendly. The most enlightened
Scotchmen, with Lord Mansfield at their head, were 10
well pleased. But some foolish and ignorant Scotchmen were
moved to anger by a little unpalatable truth which was
mingled with much eulogy, and assailed him whom they chose
to consider as the enemy of their country, with libels much
more dishonourable to their country than anything that he 15
had ever said or written. They published paragraphs in the
newspapers, articles in the magazines, sixpenny pamphlets,
five-shilling books. One scribbler abused Johnson for being
blear-eyed; another for being a pensioner; a third informed
the world that one of the Doctor's uncles had been convicted 20
of felony in Scotland, and had found that there was in that
country one tree capable of supporting the weight of an
Englishman. Macpherson, whose Fingal had been proved
in the Journey to be an impudent forgery, threatened to take
vengeance with a cane. The only effect of this threat was 25
that Johnson reiterated the charge of forgery in the most
contemptuous terms, and walked about, during some time,
with a cudgel, which, if the impostor had not been too wise
to encounter it, would assuredly have descended upon him,
to borrow the sublime language of his own epic poem, "like 30
a hammer on the red son of the furnace. "
42. Of other assailants Johnson took no notice whatever.
He had early resolved never to be drawn into controversy;
and he adhered to his resolution with a steadfastness which
is the more extraordinary, because he was, both intellectually
and morally, of the stuff of which controversialists are made.
In conversation, he was a singularly eager, acute, and pertinacious
disputant. When at a loss for good reasons, he
had recourse to sophistry; and, when heated by altercation, 5
he made unsparing use of sarcasm and invective. But, when
he took his pen in his hand, his whole character seemed
to be changed. A hundred bad writers misrepresented him
and reviled him; but not one of the hundred could boast of
having been thought by him worthy of a refutation, or even 10
of a retort. The Kenricks, Campbells, MacNicols, and Hendersons
did their best to annoy him, in the hope that he would
give them importance by answering them. But the reader will
in vain search his works for any allusion to Kenrick or Campbell,
to MacNicol or Henderson. One Scotchman, bent on 15
vindicating the fame of Scotch learning, defied him to the
combat in a detestable Latin hexameter.
"Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum. "
But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had learned,
both from his own observation and from literary history, 20
in which he was deeply read, that the place of books in
the public estimation is fixed, not by what is written about
them, but by what is written in them; and that an author
whose works are likely to live is very unwise if he stoops to
wrangle with detractors whose works are certain to die. He 25
always maintained that fame was a shuttlecock which could
be kept up only by being beaten back, as well as beaten forward,
and which would soon fall if there were only one battledore.
No saying was oftener in his mouth than that fine
apophthegm of Bentley, that no man was ever written down 30
but by himself.
43. Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of the
Journey to the Hebrides, Johnson did what none of his
envious assailants could have done, and to a certain extent
succeeded in writing himself down. The disputes between
England and her American colonies had reached a point at
which no amicable adjustment was possible. Civil war was
evidently impending; and the ministers seem to have thought 5
that the eloquence of Johnson might with advantage be
employed to inflame the nation against the opposition here,
and against the rebels beyond the Atlantic. He had already
written two or three tracts in defence of the foreign and
domestic policy of the government; and those tracts, though 10
hardly worthy of him, were much superior to the crowd of
pamphlets which lay on the counters of Almon and Stockdale.
But his Taxation no Tyranny was a pitiable failure. The very
title was a silly phrase, which can have been recommended
to his choice by nothing but a jingling alliteration which he 15
ought to have despised. The arguments were such as boys
use in debating societies. The pleasantry was as awkward as
the gambols of a hippopotamus. Even Boswell was forced to
own that, in this unfortunate piece, he could detect no trace
of his master's powers. The general opinion was that the 20
strong faculties which had produced the Dictionary and the
Rambler were beginning to feel the effect of time and of
disease, and that the old man would best consult his credit
by writing no more.
44. But this was a great mistake. Johnson had failed, not 25
because his mind was less vigorous than when he wrote Rasselas
in the evenings of a week, but because he had foolishly
chosen, or suffered others to choose for him, a subject such as
he would at no time have been competent to treat. He was
in no sense a statesman. He never willingly read or thought 30
or talked about affairs of state. He loved biography, literary
history, the history of manners; but political history was
positively distasteful to him. The question at issue between
the colonies and the mother country was a question about
which he had really nothing to say. He failed, therefore, as
the greatest men must fail when they attempt to do that for
which they are unfit; as Burke would have failed if Burke
had tried to write comedies like those of Sheridan; as Reynolds
would have failed if Reynolds had tried to paint landscapes 5
like those of Wilson. Happily, Johnson soon had an
opportunity of proving most signally that his failure was not
to be ascribed to intellectual decay.
45.
