No More Learning

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. On Easter eve 1777, some persons, deputed by a meeting
which consisted of forty of the first booksellers in London, 10
called upon him. Though he had some scruples about doing
business at that season, he received his visitors with much
civility. They came to inform him that a new edition of the English
poets, from Cowley downwards, was in contemplation, and to ask
him to furnish short biographical prefaces. He readily undertook 15
the task, a task for which he was pre-eminently qualified.
His knowledge of the literary history of England since the
Restoration was unrivalled. That knowledge he had derived
partly from books, and partly from sources which had long been
closed; from old Grub Street traditions; from the talk of 20
forgotten poetasters and pamphleteers who had long been lying
in parish vaults; from the recollections of such men as Gilbert
Walmesley, who had conversed with the wits of Button's; Cibber,
who had mutilated the plays of two generations of dramatists;
Orrery, who had been admitted to the society of Swift; and 25
Savage, who had rendered services of no very honourable kind
to Pope. The biographer therefore sate down to his task with
a mind full of matter.
He had at first intended to give only
a paragraph to every minor poet, and only four or five pages
to the greatest name. But the flood of anecdote and criticism 30
overflowed the narrow channel. The work, which was originally
meant to consist only of a few sheets, swelled into ten
volumes, small volumes, it is true, and not closely printed.
The first four appeared in 1779, the remaining six in 1781.

46. The Lives of the Poets are, on the whole, the best of
Johnson's works. The narratives are as entertaining as any
novel. The remarks on life and on human nature are eminently
shrewd and profound. The criticisms are often excellent, and,
even when grossly and provokingly unjust, well deserve to be 5
studied. For, however erroneous they may be, they are never
silly. They are the judgments of a mind trammelled by prejudice
and deficient in sensibility, but vigorous and acute.
They therefore generally contain a portion of valuable truth
which deserves to be separated from the alloy; and, at the 10
very worst, they mean something, a praise to which much of
what is called criticism in our time has no pretensions.

47. Savage's Life Johnson reprinted nearly as it had
appeared in 1744. Whoever, after reading that life, will
turn to the other lives will be struck by the difference of 15
style. Since Johnson had been at ease in his circumstances
he had written little and had talked much. When, therefore,
he, after the lapse of years, resumed his pen, the mannerism
which he had contracted while he was in the constant habit
of elaborate composition was less perceptible than formerly; 20
and his diction frequently had a colloquial ease which it had
formerly wanted. The improvement may be discerned by a
skilful critic in the Journey to the Hebrides, and in the Lives
of the Poets is so obvious that it cannot escape the notice of
the most careless reader. 25

48. Among the lives the best are perhaps those of Cowley,
Dryden, and Pope. The very worst is, beyond all doubt,
that of Gray.

49. This great work at once became popular. There was,
indeed, much just and much unjust censure: but even those 30
who were loudest in blame were attracted by the book in
spite of themselves. Malone computed the gains of the publishers
at five or six thousand pounds. But the writer was
very poorly remunerated. Intending at first to write very
short prefaces, he had stipulated for only two hundred guineas.
The booksellers, when they saw how far his performance had
surpassed his promise, added only another hundred. Indeed,
Johnson, though he did not despise, or affect to despise, money,
and though his strong sense and long experience ought to 5
have qualified him to protect his own interests, seems to have
been singularly unskilful and unlucky in his literary bargains.
He was generally reputed the first English writer of his time.
Yet several writers of his time sold their copyrights for sums
such as he never ventured to ask. To give a single instance, 10
Robertson received four thousand five hundred pounds for
the History of Charles V. ; and it is no disrespect to the
memory of Robertson to say that the History of Charles V.
is both a less valuable and a less amusing book than the Lives
of the Poets. 15

50. Johnson was now in his seventy-second year. The
infirmities of age were coming fast upon him. That inevitable
event of which he never thought without horror was brought
near to him; and his whole life was darkened by the shadow
of death. He had often to pay the cruel price of longevity. 20
Every year he lost what could never be replaced. The strange
dependents to whom he had given shelter, and to whom,
in spite of their faults, he was strongly attached by habit,
dropped off one by one; and, in the silence of his home, he
regretted even the noise of their scolding matches. The kind 25
and generous Thrale was no more; and it would have been
well if his wife had been laid beside him. But she survived
to be the laughing-stock of those who had envied her, and
to draw from the eyes of the old man who had loved her
beyond anything in the world tears far more bitter than he 30
would have shed over her grave. With some estimable and
many agreeable qualities, she was not made to be independent.
The control of a mind more steadfast than her own
was necessary to her respectability. While she was restrained
by her husband, a man of sense and firmness, indulgent to
her taste in trifles, but always the undisputed master of his
house, her worst offences had been impertinent jokes, white
lies, and short fits of pettishness ending in sunny good humour.
But he was gone; and she was left an opulent widow of forty, 5
with strong sensibility, volatile fancy, and slender judgment.
She soon fell in love with a music-master from Brescia, in
whom nobody but herself could discover anything to admire.
Her pride, and perhaps some better feelings, struggled hard
against this degrading passion. But the struggle irritated her 10
nerves, soured her temper, and at length endangered her
health. Conscious that her choice was one which Johnson
could not approve, she became desirous to escape from his
inspection. Her manner towards him changed. She was
sometimes cold and sometimes petulant. She did not conceal 15
her joy when he left Streatham; she never pressed him
to return; and, if he came unbidden, she received him in a
manner which convinced him he was no longer a welcome
guest. He took the very intelligible hints which she gave.
He read, for the last time, a chapter of the Greek Testament in 20
the library which had been formed by himself. In a solemn
and tender prayer he commended the house and its inmates
to the Divine protection, and, with emotions which choked
his voice and convulsed his powerful frame, left for ever that
beloved home for the gloomy and desolate house behind Fleet 25
Street, where the few and evil days which still remained to
him were to run out. Here, in June 1783, he had a paralytic
stroke, from which, however, he recovered, and which
does not appear to have at all impaired his intellectual faculties.
But other maladies came thick upon him. His asthma 30
tormented him day and night. Dropsical symptoms made
their appearance. While sinking under a complication of
diseases, he heard that the woman whose friendship had been
the chief happiness of sixteen years of his life had married an
Italian fiddler; that all London was crying shame upon her;
and that the newspapers and magazines were filled with
allusions to the Ephesian matron, and the two pictures in
Hamlet. He vehemently said that he would try to forget her
existence. He never uttered her name. Every memorial 5
of her which met his eye he flung into the fire. She meanwhile
fled from the laughter and hisses of her countrymen
and countrywomen to a land where she was unknown, hastened
across Mount Cenis, and learned, while passing a merry
Christmas of concerts and lemonade parties at Milan, that 10
the great man with whose name hers is inseparably associated
had ceased to exist.

51. He had, in spite of much mental and much bodily
affliction, clung vehemently to life. The feeling described
in that fine but gloomy paper which closes the series of his 15
Idlers seemed to grow stronger in him as his last hour drew
near. He fancied that he should be able to draw his breath
more easily in a southern climate, and would probably have
set out for Rome and Naples, but for his fear of the expense
of the journey. That expense, indeed, he had the means of 20
defraying; for he had laid up about two thousand pounds,
the fruit of labours which had made the fortune of several
publishers. But he was unwilling to break in upon this hoard,
and he seems to have wished even to keep its existence a
secret. Some of his friends hoped that the government might 25
be induced to increase his pension to six hundred pounds a
year, but this hope was disappointed, and he resolved to stand
one English winter more. That winter was his last. His
legs grew weaker; his breath grew shorter; the fatal water
gathered fast, in spite of incisions which he, courageous against 30
pain, but timid against death, urged his surgeons to make
deeper and deeper. Though the tender care which had mitigated
his sufferings during months of sickness at Streatham
was withdrawn, he was not left desolate. The ablest physicians
and surgeons attended him, and refused to accept fees from
him. Burke parted from him with deep emotion. Windham
sate much in the sick-room, arranged the pillows, and sent his
own servant to watch at night by the bed. Frances Burney,
whom the old man had cherished with fatherly kindness, stood 5
weeping at the door; while Langton, whose piety eminently
qualified him to be an adviser and comforter at such a time,
received the last pressure of his friend's hand within. When
at length the moment, dreaded through so many years, came
close, the dark cloud passed away from Johnson's mind. His 10
temper became unusually patient and gentle; he ceased to
think with terror of death, and of that which lies beyond
death; and he spoke much of the mercy of God, and of the
propitiation of Christ. In this serene frame of mind he died
on the 13th of December 1784. He was laid, a week later, 15
in Westminster Abbey, among the eminent men of whom he
had been the historian,--Cowley and Denham, Dryden and
Congreve, Gay, Prior, and Addison.

52. Since his death the popularity of his works--the Lives
of the Poets, and, perhaps, the Vanity of Human Wishes, 20
excepted--has greatly diminished. His Dictionary has been
altered by editors till it can scarcely be called his. An allusion
to his Rambler or his Idler is not readily apprehended in
literary circles. The fame even of Rasselas has grown somewhat
dim. But, though the celebrity of the writings may have 25
declined, the celebrity of the writer, strange to say, is as great
as ever. Boswell's book has done for him more than the best
of his own books could do. The memory of other authors is
kept alive by their works. But the memory of Johnson keeps
many of his works alive. The old philosopher is still among 30
us in the brown coat with the metal buttons and the shirt which
ought to be at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his head, drumming
with his fingers, tearing his meat like a tiger, and swallowing
his tea in oceans. No human being who has been more
than seventy years in the grave is so well known to us. And
it is but just to say that our intimate acquaintance with what
he would himself have called the anfractuosities of his intellect
and of his temper serves only to strengthen our conviction that
he was both a great and a good man. 5




FROM MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON CROKER'S EDITION OF BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON

(_Edinburgh Review, September, 1831_)


1. The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great
work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets,
Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists,
Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than
Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. He has 5
distanced all his competitors so decidedly that it is not worth
while to place them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere.

2. We are not sure that there is in the whole history of the
human intellect so strange a phænomenon as this book. Many
of the greatest men that ever lived have written biography. 10
Boswell was one of the smallest men that ever lived, and he has
beaten them all. He was, if we are to give any credit to his
own account or to the united testimony of all who knew him, a
man of the meanest and feeblest intellect. Johnson described
him as a fellow who had missed his only chance of immortality 15
by not having been alive when the Dunciad was written.
Beauclerk used his name as a proverbial expression for a bore.
He was the laughing-stock of the whole of that brilliant society
which has owed to him the greater part of its fame. He was
always laying himself at the feet of some eminent man, and 20
begging to be spit upon and trampled upon. He was always
earning some ridiculous nickname, and then "binding it as a
crown unto him," not merely in metaphor, but literally. He
exhibited himself, at the Shakspeare Jubilee, to all the crowd
which filled Stratford-on-Avon, with a placard round his hat
bearing the inscription of Corsica Boswell. In his Tour he
proclaimed to all the world that at Edinburgh he was known 5
by the appellation of Paoli Boswell. Servile and impertinent,
shallow and pedantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family
pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of a born
gentleman, yet stooping to be a tale-bearer, an eavesdropper,
a common butt in the taverns of London, so curious to know 10
every body who was talked about, that, Tory and high Churchman
as he was, he manoeuvred, we have been told, for an introduction
to Tom Paine, so vain of the most childish distinctions,
that when he had been to court, he drove to the office where
his book was printing without changing his clothes, and summoned 15
all the printer's devils to admire his new ruffles and
sword; such was this man, and such he was content and proud
to be. Every thing which another man would have hidden,
every thing the publication of which would have made another
man hang himself, was matter of gay and clamorous exultation 20
to his weak and diseased mind. What silly things he said,
what bitter retorts he provoked, how at one place he was
troubled with evil presentiments which came to nothing, how
at another place, on waking from a drunken doze, he read the
prayerbook and took a hair of the dog that had bitten him, 25
how he went to see men hanged and came away maudlin, how
he added five hundred pounds to the fortune of one of his babies
because she was not scared at Johnson's ugly face, how he was
frightened out of his wits at sea, and how the sailors quieted
him as they would have quieted a child, how tipsy he was at 30
Lady Cork's one evening and how much his merriment annoyed
the ladies, how impertinent he was to the Duchess of Argyle
and with what stately contempt she put down his impertinence,
how Colonel Macleod sneered to his face at his impudent
obtrusiveness, how his father and the very wife of his bosom
laughed and fretted at his fooleries; all these things he proclaimed
to all the world, as if they had been subjects for pride
and ostentatious rejoicing. All the caprices of his temper, all
the illusions of his vanity, all his hypochondriac whimsies, all 5
his castles in the air, he displayed with a cool self-complacency,
a perfect unconsciousness that he was making a fool of himself,
to which it is impossible to find a parallel in the whole history
of mankind. He has used many people ill; but assuredly
he has used nobody so ill as himself. 10

3. That such a man should have written one of the best
books in the world is strange enough. But this is not all.
Many persons who have conducted themselves foolishly in
active life, and whose conversation has indicated no superior
powers of mind, have left us valuable works. Goldsmith was 15
very justly described by one of his contemporaries as an
inspired idiot, and by another as a being

"Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll. "

La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. His blunders
would not come in amiss among the stories of Hierocles. But 20
these men attained literary eminence in spite of their weaknesses.
Boswell attained it by reason of his weaknesses. If
he had not been a great fool, he would never have been a
great writer. Without all the qualities which made him the
jest and the torment of those among whom he lived, without 25
the officiousness, the inquisitiveness, the effrontery, the
toad-eating, the insensibility to all reproof, he never could have
produced so excellent a book. He was a slave, proud of his
servitude, a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity and
garrulity were virtues, an unsafe companion who never scrupled 30
to repay the most liberal hospitality by the basest violation of
confidence, a man without delicacy, without shame, without
sense enough to know when he was hurting the feelings of
others or when he was exposing himself to derision; and
because he was all this, he has, in an important department
of literature, immeasurably surpassed such writers as Tacitus,
Clarendon, Alfieri, and his own idol Johnson.

4. Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to eminence 5
as writers, Boswell had absolutely none. There is not in all
his books a single remark of his own on literature, politics,
religion, or society, which is not either commonplace or absurd.
His dissertations on hereditary gentility, on the slave-trade,
and on the entailing of landed estates, may serve as examples. 10
To say that these passages are sophistical would be to pay
them an extravagant compliment. They have no pretence to
argument, or even to meaning. He has reported innumerable
observations made by himself in the course of conversation.
Of those observations we do not remember one which is above 15
the intellectual capacity of a boy of fifteen. He has printed
many of his own letters, and in these letters he is always ranting
or twaddling. Logic, eloquence, wit, taste, all those things
which are generally considered as making a book valuable, were
utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation 20
and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a
man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed
to make him conspicuous; but, because he was a dunce,
a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made him immortal.

5. Those parts of his book which, considered abstractedly, 25
are most utterly worthless, are delightful when we read them
as illustrations of the character of the writer. Bad in themselves,
they are good dramatically, like the nonsense of Justice
Shallow, the clipped English of Dr. Caius, or the misplaced
consonants of Fluellen. Of all confessors, Boswell is the most 30
candid. Other men who have pretended to lay open their
own hearts, Rousseau, for example, and Lord Byron, have
evidently written with a constant view to effect, and are to be
then most distrusted when they seem to be most sincere.
There is scarcely any man who would not rather accuse himself
of great crimes and of dark and tempestuous passions,
than proclaim all his little vanities and wild fancies. It would
be easier to find a person who would avow actions like those
of Cæsar Borgia or Danton, than one who would publish a 5
daydream like those of Alnaschar and Malvolio. Those weaknesses
which most men keep covered up in the most secret
places of the mind, not to be disclosed to the eye of friendship
or of love, were precisely the weaknesses which Boswell
paraded before all the world. He was perfectly frank, because 10
the weakness of his understanding and the tumult of his spirits
prevented him from knowing when he made himself ridiculous.
His book resembles nothing so much as the conversation of
the inmates of the Palace of Truth.

6. His fame is great; and it will, we have no doubt, be 15
lasting; but it is fame of a peculiar kind, and indeed
marvellously resembles infamy. We remember no other case in
which the world has made so great a distinction between a
book and its author. In general, the book and the author
are considered as one. To admire the book is to admire the 20
author. The case of Boswell is an exception, we think the
only exception, to this rule. His work is universally allowed
to be interesting, instructive, eminently original: yet it has
brought him nothing but contempt. All the world reads it:
all the world delights in it: yet we do not remember ever to 25
have read or ever to have heard any expression of respect and
admiration for the man to whom we owe so much instruction
and amusement. While edition after edition of his book was
coming forth, his son, as Mr. Croker tells us, was ashamed of
it, and hated to hear it mentioned. This feeling was natural 30
and reasonable. Sir Alexander saw that, in proportion to the
celebrity of the work, was the degradation of the author. The
very editors of this unfortunate gentleman's books have forgotten
their allegiance, and, like those Puritan casuists who
took arms by the authority of the king against his person,
have attacked the writer while doing homage to the writings.
Mr. Croker, for example, has published two thousand five
hundred notes on the life of Johnson, and yet scarcely ever
mentions the biographer whose performance he has taken such 5
pains to illustrate without some expression of contempt.

7. An ill-natured man Boswell certainly was not. Yet the
malignity of the most malignant satirist could scarcely cut
deeper than his thoughtless loquacity. Having himself no
sensibility to derision and contempt, he took it for granted 10
that all others were equally callous. He was not ashamed to
exhibit himself to the whole world as a common spy, a common
tattler, a humble companion without the excuse of poverty,
and to tell a hundred stories of his own pertness and
folly, and of the insults which his pertness and folly brought 15
upon him. It was natural that he should show little discretion
in cases in which the feelings or the honour of others
might be concerned. No man, surely, ever published such
stories respecting persons whom he professed to love and
revere. He would infallibly have made his hero as contemptible 20
as he has made himself, had not his hero really
possessed some moral and intellectual qualities of a very high
order. The best proof that Johnson was really an extraordinary
man is that his character, instead of being degraded, has,
on the whole, been decidedly raised by a work in which all 25
his vices and weaknesses are exposed more unsparingly than
they ever were exposed by Churchill or by Kenrick.

8. Johnson grown old, Johnson in the fulness of his fame
and in the enjoyment of a competent fortune, is better known
to us than any other man in history. Every thing about him, his 30
coat, his wig, his figure, his face, his scrofula, his St. Vitus's
dance, his rolling walk, his blinking eye, the outward signs
which too clearly marked his approbation of his dinner, his
insatiable appetite for fish-sauce and veal-pie with plums, his
inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick of touching the posts
as he walked, his mysterious practice of treasuring up scraps of
orange-peel, his morning slumbers, his midnight disputations,
his contortions, his mutterings, his gruntings, his puffings,
his vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence, his sarcastic wit, his 5
vehemence, his insolence, his fits of tempestuous rage, his
queer inmates, old Mr. Levett and blind Mrs. Williams, the cat
Hodge and the negro Frank, all are as familiar to us as the
objects by which we have been surrounded from childhood.
But we have no minute information respecting those years of 10
Johnson's life during which his character and his manners
became immutably fixed. We know him, not as he was known
to the men of his own generation, but as he was known to men
whose father he might have been. That celebrated club of
which he was the most distinguished member contained few 15
persons who could remember a time when his fame was not
fully established and his habits completely formed. He had
made himself a name in literature while Reynolds and the
Wartons were still boys. He was about twenty years older
than Burke, Goldsmith, and Gerard Hamilton, about thirty 20
years older than Gibbon, Beauclerk, and Langton, and about
forty years older than Lord Stowell, Sir William Jones, and
Windham. Boswell and Mrs. Thrale, the two writers from
whom we derive most of our knowledge respecting him, never
saw him till long after he was fifty years old, till most of his 25
great works had become classical, and till the pension bestowed
on him by the Crown had placed him above poverty. Of those
eminent men who were his most intimate associates towards the
close of his life, the only one, as far as we remember, who knew
him during the first ten or twelve years of his residence in the 30
capital, was David Garrick; and it does not appear that, during
those years, David Garrick saw much of his fellow-townsman.

9. Johnson came up to London precisely at the time when
the condition of a man of letters was most miserable and
degraded. It was a dark night between two sunny days. The
age of patronage had passed away. The age of general curiosity
and intelligence had not arrived. The number of readers
is at present so great that a popular author may subsist in
comfort and opulence on the profits of his works. In the 5
reigns of William the Third, of Anne, and of George the First,
even such men as Congreve and Addison would scarcely have
been able to live like gentlemen by the mere sale of their
writings. But the deficiency of the natural demand for literature
was, at the close of the seventeenth and at the beginning 10
of the eighteenth century, more than made up by artificial
encouragement, by a vast system of bounties and premiums.
There was, perhaps, never a time at which the rewards of
literary merit were so splendid, at which men who could write
well found such easy admittance into the most distinguished 15
society, and to the highest honours of the state.