“That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,Or decomposes but to recomposeBecome my universe that feels and knows!”
“That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,Or decomposes but to recomposeBecome my universe that feels and knows!”
“That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,Or decomposes but to recomposeBecome my universe that feels and knows!”
“That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
Or decomposes but to recompose
Become my universe that feels and knows!”
“That face,” said Browning to a friend, “that face is the face of Christ: that is how I feel Him.”
Surely this is the religious message that the world most needs to-day. More and more everything in Christianity hangs upon the truth of the Incarnation. The alternative declares itself. Either no God whom we can know and love at all, or God personally manifest in Christ!
3. The third religious element in Browning’s poetry is his faith that this life is a probation, a discipline for the future. He says, again and again,
“I count life just a stuffTo try the soul’s strength on, educe the man.”
“I count life just a stuffTo try the soul’s strength on, educe the man.”
“I count life just a stuffTo try the soul’s strength on, educe the man.”
“I count life just a stuff
To try the soul’s strength on, educe the man.”
The glory of the imperfect lies in the power of progress, “man’s distinctive mark.” And progress comes by conflict; conflict with falsehood and ignorance,—
“Living here means nescience simply; ’tis next life that helps to learn—”
“Living here means nescience simply; ’tis next life that helps to learn—”
“Living here means nescience simply; ’tis next life that helps to learn—”
“Living here means nescience simply; ’tis next life that helps to learn—”
and conflict with evil,—
“Why comes temptation but for man to meet,And master and make crouch beneath his foot,And so be pedestalled in triumph?”
“Why comes temptation but for man to meet,And master and make crouch beneath his foot,And so be pedestalled in triumph?”
“Why comes temptation but for man to meet,And master and make crouch beneath his foot,And so be pedestalled in triumph?”
“Why comes temptation but for man to meet,
And master and make crouch beneath his foot,
And so be pedestalled in triumph?”
The poet is always calling us to be glad we are engaged in such a noble strife.
“Rejoice we are alliedTo that which doth provideAnd not partake, effect and not receive!A spark disturbs our clod;Nearer we hold of GodWho gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe.Then welcome each rebuffThat turns earth’s smoothness rough,Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!Be our joys three-parts pain!Strive and hold cheap the strain;Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!”
“Rejoice we are alliedTo that which doth provideAnd not partake, effect and not receive!A spark disturbs our clod;Nearer we hold of GodWho gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe.Then welcome each rebuffThat turns earth’s smoothness rough,Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!Be our joys three-parts pain!Strive and hold cheap the strain;Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!”
“Rejoice we are alliedTo that which doth provideAnd not partake, effect and not receive!A spark disturbs our clod;Nearer we hold of GodWho gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe.
“Rejoice we are allied
To that which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A spark disturbs our clod;
Nearer we hold of God
Who gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe.
Then welcome each rebuffThat turns earth’s smoothness rough,Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!Be our joys three-parts pain!Strive and hold cheap the strain;Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!”
Then welcome each rebuff
That turns earth’s smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!”
Now this is fine doctrine, lofty, strenuous, stimulating. It appeals to the will, which is man’s central power. It proclaims the truth that virtue must be active in its essence though it may also be passive in its education, positive in its spirit and negative only by contrast.
But it is in the working out of this doctrine intoan ethical system that Browning enters upon dangerous ground, and arrives at results which seem to obscure the clearness, and to threaten the stability of the moral order, by which alone, if the world’s greatest teachers have been right, the ultimate good of humanity can be attained. Here, it seems to me, his teaching, especially in its latter utterances, is often confused, turbulent, misleading. His light is mixed with darkness. He seems almost to say that it matters little which way we go, provided only we go.
He overlooks the deep truth that there is an activity of the soul in self-restraint as well as in self-assertion. It takes as much courage to dare not to do evil as it does to dare to do good. The hero is sometimes the man who stands still. Virtue is noblest when it is joined to virility. But virility alone is not virtue nor does it always lead to moral victory. Sometimes it leads straight towards moral paralysis, death, extinction. Browning fails to see this, because his method is dramatic and because he dramatizes through himself. He puts himself into this or the other character, and works himselfout through it, preserving still in himself, though all unconsciously, the soul of something good. Thus he does not touch that peculiar deadening of spiritual power which is one result of the unrestrained following of impulse and passion. It is this defect in his vision of life that leads to the dubious and interrogatory moral of such a poem asThe Statue and the Bust.
Browning values the individual so much that he lays all his emphasis upon the development of stronger passions and aspirations, the unfolding of a more vivid and intense personality, and has comparatively little stress to lay upon the larger thought of the progress of mankind in harmony and order. Indeed he poetizes so vigorously against the conventional judgments of society that he often seems to set himself against the moral sentiments on which those conventional judgments, however warped, ultimately rest. “Over and over again in Browning’s poetry,” says a penetrating critic, “we meet with this insistence on the value of moments of high excitement, of intense living, of full experience of pleasure, even though such moments be of theessence of evil and fruitful in all dark consequences.”
Take for example his treatment of love. He is right in saying “Love is best.” But is he right in admitting, even by inference, that love has a right to take its own way of realizing itself? Can love be at its best unless it is obedient to law? Does it not make its truest music when it keeps its place in the harmony of purity and peace and good living? Surely the wild and reckless view of love as its own law which seems to glimmer through the unconsumed smoke of Browning’s later poems, such asFifine at the Fair,The Inn Album, andRed Cotton Nightcap Country, needs correction by a true flash of insight like that which we find in two lines ofOne Word More:
“Dante, who loved well because he hated,Hated wickedness that hinders loving.”
“Dante, who loved well because he hated,Hated wickedness that hinders loving.”
“Dante, who loved well because he hated,Hated wickedness that hinders loving.”
“Dante, who loved well because he hated,
Hated wickedness that hinders loving.”
Browning was at times misled by a perilous philosophy into a position where the vital distinction between good and evil dissolved away in a cloud of unreality. InFerishtah’s FanciesandParleyings with Certain People of Importance, any one who hasthe patience to read them will find himself in a nebulous moral world. The supposed necessity of showing that evil is always a means to good tempts to the assertion that it has no other reality. Perhaps it is altogether an illusion, needed to sting us into conflict, but really non-existent. Perhaps it is only the shadow cast by the good,—or “the silence implying sound.” Perhaps it is good in disguise, not yet developed from the crawling worm into the creature with wings. After this fashion the whimsical dervish Ferishtah strews his beans upon the table.
“This bean was white, this—black,Set by itself,—but see if good and badEach following other in companionship,Black have not grown less black and white less white,Till blackish seems but dun, and whitish,—gray,And the whole line turns—well, or black to theeOr white alike to me—no matter which.”
“This bean was white, this—black,Set by itself,—but see if good and badEach following other in companionship,Black have not grown less black and white less white,Till blackish seems but dun, and whitish,—gray,And the whole line turns—well, or black to theeOr white alike to me—no matter which.”
“This bean was white, this—black,Set by itself,—but see if good and badEach following other in companionship,Black have not grown less black and white less white,Till blackish seems but dun, and whitish,—gray,And the whole line turns—well, or black to theeOr white alike to me—no matter which.”
“This bean was white, this—black,
Set by itself,—but see if good and bad
Each following other in companionship,
Black have not grown less black and white less white,
Till blackish seems but dun, and whitish,—gray,
And the whole line turns—well, or black to thee
Or white alike to me—no matter which.”
Certainly if this were the essence of Browning’s poetry the best safeguard against its falsehood would be its own weakness. Such a message, if this were all, could never attract many hearers, nor inspire those whom it attracted. Effort, struggle, nobleconflict would be impossible in a world where there were no moral certainties or realities, but all men felt that they were playing at a stupid game like the Caucus race inAlice in Wonderland, where everything went round in a circle and every runner received a prize.
But in fact these elements of weakness in Browning’s work, as it seems to me, do not belong to his true poetry. They are expressed, generally, in his most obfuscated style, and at a prohibitory length. They are embodied in poems which no one is likely to read for fun, and few are capable of learning by heart.
But when we go back to his best work we find another spirit, we hear another message. Clear, resonant, trumpet-like his voice calls to us proclaiming the glorious possibilities of this imperfect life. Only do not despair; only do not sink down into conventionality, indifference, mockery, cynicism; only rise and hope and go forward out of the house of bondage into the land of liberty. True, the prophecy is not complete. But it is inspiring. He does not teach us how to live. But he does tellus to live,—with courage, with love to man, with trust in God,—and he bids us find life glorious, because it is still imperfect and therefore full of promise.
In April, 1653, Oliver Cromwell, after much bloodshed and amid great confusion, violently dissolved the “Rump Parliament.” In May of the same year, Izaak Walton publishedThe Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man’s Recreation. ’Twas a strange contrast between the tranquil book and the tempestuous time. But that the contrast was not displeasing may be inferred from the fact that five editions were issued during the author’s life, which ended in 1683, at the house of his son-in-law in the cathedral close at Winchester, Walton being then in his ninety-first year and at peace with God and man.
Doubtless one of the reasons why those early editions, especially the first, the second, and the fifth, (in which Walton’s friend Charles Cotton added his “Instructions How to Angle for a Trout or Graylingin a Clear Stream,”) are now become so rare and costly, is because they were carried about by honest anglers of the 17th Century in their coat-pockets or in their wallets, a practice whereby the body of a book is soon worn out, though its soul be immortal.
That this last is true of Walton’sAnglerseems proven by its continual reappearance. The Hundredth Edition (called after the rivers Lea and Dove, which Walton loved) was brought out in 1888, by the genial fisherman and bibliophile, R. B. Marston of the LondonFishing Gazette. Among the other English editions I like John Major’s second (1824); and Sir John Hawkins’, reissued by Bagster (1808); and Pickering’s richly illustrated two volumes edited by Sir Harris Nicolas (1836). There is a 32mo reprint by the same publisher, (and a “diamond” from the Oxford University Press,) small enough to go comfortably in a vest-pocket with your watch or your pipe. I must speak also of the admirable introductions to theAnglerwritten in these latter years by James Russell Lowell, Andrew Lang, and Richard Le Gallienne; and of the great American edition made by the Reverend DoctorGeorge W. Bethune in 1847, a work in which the learning, wit, and sympathy of the editor illuminate the pages. This edition is already hard to find, but no collector of angling books would willingly go without it.
The gentle reader has a wide choice, then, of the form in which he will take his Walton,—something rare and richly adorned for the library, or something small and plain for the pocket or the creel. But in what shape soever he may choose to read the book, if he be not “a severe, sour-complexioned man” he will find it good company. There is a most propitiating paragraph in the “Address” at the beginning of the first edition. Explaining why he has introduced “some innocent harmless mirth” into his work, Walton writes:
“I am the willinger to justify this innocent mirth because the whole discourse is a kind of picture of my own disposition, at least of my disposition in such days and times as I allow myself, when honestNat.andR.R.and I go a-fishing together.”
This indeed is one of the great attractions of the book, that it so naturally and simply shows theauthor. I know of no other in which this quality of self-revelation without pretense or apology is as modest and engaging,—unless it be theEssaysof Charles Lamb, or those of M. de Montaigne. We feel well acquainted with Walton when we have read theAngler, and perhaps have added to our reading his only other volume,—a series of briefLivesof certain excellent and beloved men of his time, wherein he not only portrays their characters but further discloses his own. They were men of note in their day: Sir Henry Wotton, ambassador to Venice; Dr. John Donne, Dean of St. Paul’s; Richard Hooker, famous theologian; George Herbert, sacred poet; Bishop Sanderson, eminent churchman. With most of these, and with other men of like standing, Walton was in friendship. The company he kept indicates his quality. Whatever his occupation or his means, he was certainly a gentleman and a scholar, as well as a good judge of fishing.
Of the actual events of his life, despite diligent research, little is known, and all to his credit. Perhaps there were no events of public importance or interest. He came as near as possible to the fortunateestate of the nation which has a good repute but no history.
He was born in the town of Stafford, August 9th, 1593. Of his schooling he speaks with becoming modesty; and it must have been brief, for at the age of sixteen or seventeen he was an apprentice in London. Whether he was a linendraper or an ironmonger is a matter of dispute. Perhaps he was first one and then the other. His first shop, in the Royal Burse, Cornhill, was about seven and a half feet long by five wide. But he must have done a good business in those narrow quarters; for in 1624 he had a better place on Fleet Street, and from 1628 to 1644 he was a resident of the parish of St. Dunstan’s, having a comfortable dwelling (and probably his shop) in Chancery Lane, “about the seventh house on the left hand side.” He served twice on the grand jury, and was elected a vestryman of St. Dunstan’s twice.
It was during his residence here that he lost his first wife, Rachel Floud, and the seven children whom she had borne to him. In 1644, finding the city “dangerous for honest men” on account of thecivil strife and disorder, he retired from London, and probably from business, and lived in the country, “sometimes at Stafford,” (according to Anthony Wood, the antiquary,) “but mostly in the families of the eminent clergymen of England, of whom he was much beloved.” This life gave him large opportunity for his favourite avocation of fishing, and widened the circle of his friendships, for wherever he came as a guest he was cherished as a friend. I make no doubt that the love of angling, to which innocent recreation he was attached by a temperate and enduring passion, was either the occasion or the promoter of many of these intimacies. For it has often been observed that this sport inclines those that practise it to friendliness; and there are no closer or more lasting companionships than such as are formed beside flowing streams by men who study to be quiet and go a-fishing.
After his second marriage, about 1646, to Anne Ken, half-sister of Bishop Thomas Ken, (author of the well-known hymns, “Awake, my soul, and with the sun,” and “All praise to Thee, my God, this night,”) Walton went to live for some years atClerkenwell. While he was there, the book for which he had been long preparing,The Compleat Angler, was published, and gave him his sure place in English literature and in the heart of an innumerable company of readers.
Never was there a better illustration of “fisherman’s luck” than the success of Walton’s book. He set out to make a little “discourse of fish and fishing,” a “pleasant curiositie” he calls it, full of useful information concerning the history and practice of the gentle art, and, as the author modestly claims on his title-page, “not unworthy the perusal of most anglers.” Instead of this he produced an imperishable classic, which has been read with delight by thousands who have never wet a line. It was as if a man went forth to angle for smelts and caught a lordly salmon.
As a manual of practical instruction the book is long since out of date. The kind of rod which Walton describes is too cumbrous for the modern angler, who catches his trout with a split bamboo weighing no more than four or five ounces, and a thin waterproofed line of silk beside which Father Izaak’sfavourite line twisted of seven horse-hairs would look like a bed-cord. Most of his recipes for captivating baits and lures, and his hints about “oyl,” or “camphire” with which they may be made infallibly attractive to reluctant fish, are now more curious than valuable. They seem like ancient superstitions,—although this very summer I have had recommended to me a secret magic ointment one drop of which upon a salmon-fly would (supposedly) render it irresistible. (Yes, reader, I did try it; but its actual effect, owing to various incalculable circumstances, could not be verified. The salmon took the anointed fly sometimes, but at other times they took the unanointed, and so I could not make affidavit that it was the oil that allured them. It may have been some tickling in the brain, some dim memory of the time when they were little parr, living in fresh water for their first eighteen months and feeding mainly on floating insects, that made them wish to rise again.)
But to return to my subject. The angler of to-day who wishes to understand the technics of modern fishing-gear will go to such books as H. B. Wells’Fly Rods and Fly Tackle, or to Dr. George Holden’sThe Idyl of the Split Bamboo. This very year two volumes have been published, each of which in its way goes far beyond Walton: Mr. William Radcliffe’sFishing from the Earliest Times, which will undoubtedly take its place as the standard history of the ancient craft of fish-catching; and Mr. Edward R. Hewitt’sSecrets of the Salmon, a brilliant and suggestive piece of work, full of acute scientific observation and successful experiment. These belong to what De Quincey called “the literature of knowledge.” But theAnglerbelongs to “the literature of power,”—that which has a quickening and inspiring influence upon the spirit,—and here it is unsurpassed, I may even say unrivalled, by any book ever written about any sport. Charles Lamb wrote to Coleridge commending it to his perusal: “It might sweeten a man’s temper at any time to readThe Compleat Angler.”
The unfailing charm of the book lives in its delicately clear descriptions of the country and of rural life; in its quaint pastoral scenes, like the interview with the milkmaid and her mother, and the convocationof gipsies under the hedge; and in its sincerely happy incitements to patience, cheerfulness, a contented spirit, and a tranquil mind.
In its first form the book opened with a dialogue between Piscator and Viator; but later this was revised to a three-sided conversation in which Venator, a hunter, and Auceps, a falconer, take the place of Viator and try valiantly to uphold the merits of their respective sports as superior to angling. Of course Piscator easily gets the best of them, (authors always have this power to reserve victory for their favourites,) and Auceps goes off stage, vanquished, while Venator remains as a convert and willing disciple, to follow his “Master” by quiet streams and drink in his pleasant and profitable discourse. As a dialogue it is not very convincing, it lacks salt and pepper; Venator is too easy a convert; he makes two or three rather neat repartees, but in general, he seems to have no mind of his own. But as a monologue it is very agreeable, being written in a sincere, colloquial, unaffected yet not undignified manner, with a plenty of digressions. And these, like the by-paths on a journey, are the pleasantestparts of all. Piscator’s talk appears easy, unconstrained, rambling, yet always sure-footed, like the walk of one who has wandered by the little rivers so long that he can move forward safely without watching every step, finding his footing by a kind of instinct while his eyes follow the water and the rising fish.
But we must not imagine that such a style as this, fluent as it seems and easy to read as it is for any one with an ear for music, either comes by nature or is attained without effort. Walton speaks somewhere of his “artless pencil”; but this is true only in the sense that he makes us forget the processes of his art in the simplicity of its results. He was in fact very nice in his selection and ordering of words. He wrote and rewrote his simplest sentences and revised his work in each of the five earlier editions, except possibly the fourth.
Take, for example, the bit which I have already quoted from the “address to the reader” in the first edition, and compare it with the corresponding passage in the fifth edition:
“I am the willinger to justifythe pleasant part ofit, because,though it is known I can be serious at reasonable times, yet the whole discourse is,or rather was, a picture of my own disposition,especiallyin such days and times as Ihave laid aside business, and gone a-fishing withhonest Nat. and R. Roe;but they are gone, and with them most of my pleasant hours, even as a shadow that passeth away and returns not.”
All the phrases in italics are either altered or added.
He cites Montaigne’s opinion of cats,—a familiar judgment expressed with lightness,—and in the first edition Winds up his quotation with the sentence, “To this purpose speaks Montaigne concerning cats.” In the fifth edition this is humourously improved to, “Thusfreelyspeaks Montaigne concerning cats,”—as if it were something noteworthy to take a liberty with this petted animal.
The beautiful description of the song of the nightingale, and of the lark, and the fine passage beginning, “Every misery that I miss is a new mercy,” are jewels that Walton added in revision.
In the first edition he gravely tells how the salmon“will force themselves over the tops of weirs and hedges or stops in the water,by taking their tails into their mouths and leaping over those places, even to a height beyond common belief.” But upon reflection this fish-story seems to him dubious; and so in the later edition you find the mouth-and-tail legend in a poetical quotation, to which Walton cautiously adds, “This Michael Drayton tells youof this leap or summer-salt of the salmon.”
It would be easy to continue these illustrations of Walton’s care in revising his work through successive editions; indeed a long article, or even a little book might be made upon this subject, and if I had the time I should like to do it.
Another theme would well repay study, and that is the influence of the King James Version of the Bible upon his style and thought. That wonderful example of pure, strong, and stately English prose, was first printed and published when Walton was eighteen years old, about the time he came to London as an apprentice. Yet to such good purpose did he read and study it that his two books, theAnglerand theLives, are full of apt quotations fromit, and almost every page shows the exemplary effect of its admirable diction. Indeed it has often seemed to me that his fine description of the style of the Prophet Amos, (in the first chapter of theAngler,) reveals something of the manner in which Walton himself desired to write; and in this desire he was not altogether unsuccessful.
How clearly the man shines through his book! An honest, kindly man, not ashamed of his trade, nor of his amusements, nor of his inmost faith. A man contented with his modest place in the world, and never doubting that it was a good world or that God made it. A firm man, not without his settled convictions and strong aversions, yet “content that every reader should enjoy his own opinion.” A liberal-mannered man, enjoying the music of birds and of merry songs and glees, grateful for good food, and “barly-wine, the good liquor that our honest Fore-fathers did use to drink of,” and a fragrant pipe afterwards; sitting down to meat not only with “the eminent clergymen of England,” but also, (as his Master did,) with publicans and sinners; and counting among his friends such dignitariesas Dr. John Hales, Bishop King, and Sir Henry Wotton, and such lively and vagarious persons as Ben Jonson, Carey, and Charles Cotton. A loyal, steadfast man, not given to change, anxiety of mind, or vain complaining, but holding to the day’s duty and the day’s reward of joy as God sent them to him, and bearing the day’s grief with fortitude. Thus he worked and read and angled quietly through the stormy years of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, wishing that men would beat their swords into fish-hooks, and cast their leaden bullets into sinkers, and study peace and the Divine will.
When James Boswell, Esq., wroteThe Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., he not only achieved his purpose of giving the world “a rich intellectual treasure,” but also succeeded in making himself a subject of permanent literary interest.
Among the good things which the year 1922 has brought to us I count theBoswell redivivusfrom the industrious and skilful hand of Professor Chauncey Brewster Tinker of Yale. He calls his excellent book, which is largely enriched with new material in the way of hitherto unpublished letters,Young Boswell. This does not mean that he deals only with the early years, amatory episodes, and first literary ventures of Johnson’s inimitable biographer, but that he sees in the man a certain persistent youngness which accounts for the exuberance of his faults and follies as well as for the enthusiasm of his hero-worship.
Mr. Tinker does not attempt to camouflage the incorrigible absurdities of Boswell’s disposition, nor the excesses of his conduct, but finds an explanation if not an excuse for them in the fact that he had a juvenile temperament which inclined him all through life to self-esteem and self-indulgence, and kept him “very much a boy” until he died of it. Whether this is quite consistent with his being “in fullest truth a genius,” as Mr. Tinker claims, may be doubted; for genius in the high sense is something that ripens if time be given it. But what is certain beyond a question is that this vain and vagarious little Scotch laird had in him a gift of observation, a talent of narration, and above all a power of generous admiration, which enabled him to become, by dint of hard work, what Macaulay entitled him, “the first of biographers.”
Ever since it appeared in 1791, Boswell’sLife of Johnsonhas been a most companionable book. Reprinted again and again, it finds a perennial welcome. To see it in a new edition is no more remarkable nowadays than it once was to see Dr. Oliver Goldsmith in a new and vivid waistcoat. For my own part I prefer it handsomely drest, withlarge type, liberal margins, and a-plenty of illustrations. For it is not a book in which economy of bulk is needful; it is less suitable for company on a journey or a fishing-trip, than for a meditative hour in the library after dinner, or a pleasant wakeful hour in bed, when the reading-lamp glows clear and steady, and all the rest of the family are asleep or similarly engaged in recumbent reading.
There are some books with which we can never become intimate. However long we may know them they keep us on the cold threshold of acquaintance. Others boisterously grasp our hand and drag us in, only to bore us and make us regret the day of our introduction. But if there ever was a book which invited genially to friendship and delight it is this of Boswell’s. The man who does not know it is ignorant of some of the best cheer that can enliven a solitary fireside. The man who does not enjoy it is insensible alike to the attractions of a noble character vividly depicted, and to the amusement afforded by the sight of a great genius in company with an adoring follower capable, at times, of acting like an engaging ass.
Yet after all, I have always had my doubts aboutthe supposed “asininity” of Boswell. As his Great Friend said, “A man who talks nonsense so well must know that he is talking nonsense.” It is only fair to accept his own explanation and allow that when he said or did ridiculous things it was, partly at least, in order to draw out his Tremendous Companion. Thus we may think with pleasure of Boswell taking a rise out of Johnson. But we do not need to imagine Johnson taking a rise out of Boswell; it was not necessary; he rose of his own accord. He made a candid record of these diverting incidents because, though self-complacent, he was not touchy, and he had sense enough to see that the sure way to be entirely entertaining is to be quite frank.
Boswell threw a stone at one bird and brought down two. His triumphant effort to write the life of his Immense Hero just as it was, with all its surroundings, appurtenances, and eccentricities, has won for himself a singular honour: his proper name has become a common noun. It is hardly necessary to use a capital letter when we allude to a boswell. His pious boast that he had “Johnsonizedthe land,” is no more correct than it would be to say, (and if he were alive he would certainly say it,) that he had boswellized biography.
The success of the book appears the more remarkable when we remember that of the seventy-five years of Samuel Johnson’s life not more than two years and two months were passed in the society of James Boswell. Yet one would almost think that they had been rocked in the same cradle, or, (if this figure of speech seem irreverent,) that the Laird of Auchinleck had slept in a little trundle-bed beside the couch of the Mighty Lexicographer. I do not mean by this that the record is trivial and cubicular, but simply that Boswell has put into his book as much of Johnson as it will hold.
Let no one imagine, however, that a like success can be secured by following the same recipe with any chance subject. The exact portraiture of an insignificant person confers information where there is no curiosity, and becomes tedious in proportion as it is precise.[19]The first thing needful is to catcha giant for your hero; and in this little world it is seldom that one like Johnson comes to the net.
What a man he was,—this “old struggler,” as he called himself,—how uncouth and noble and genuine and profound,—“a labouring, working mind; an indolent, reposing body”! What a heart of fortitude in the bosom of his melancholy, what a kernel of human kindness within the shell of his rough manner! He was proud but not vain, sometimes rude but never cruel. His prejudices were insular, but his intellect was continental. There was enough of contradiction in his character to give it variety, and enough of sturdy faith to give it unity. It was not easy for him to be good, but it was impossible for him to be false; and he fought the battle of life through along his chosen line even to the last skirmish of mortality.
SAMUEL JOHNSON.Painted by Reynolds.From a photograph, copyright by Hollyer, London.
SAMUEL JOHNSON.
Painted by Reynolds.
From a photograph, copyright by Hollyer, London.
I suppose we Americans might harbour a grudge against him on the score of his opinion of our forefathers. It is on record that he said of them, during their little controversy with King George III, that they were “a race of convicts.” (How exciting it would have been to hear him say a thing like thatto the face of George Washington or Benjamin Franklin! He was quite capable of it.) But we can afford to laugh at such anobiter dictumnow. And upon my honesty it offends me less at the present time than Lionel Lispingly Nutt’s condescending advice on poetry and politics, or Stutterworth Bummell’s patronizing half-praise. Let a man smite us fairly on one cheek, and we can manage to turn the other,—out of his reach. But if he deals superciliously with us as “poor relations,” we can hardly help looking for a convenient and not too dangerous flight of stairs for his speedy descent.
Johnson may be rightly claimed as a Tory-Democrat on the strength of his serious saying that “the interest of millions must ever prevail over that of thousands,” and the temper of his pungent letter to Lord Chesterfield. And when we consider also his side remark in defense of card-playing on the ground that it “generates kindness and consolidates society,” we may differ from him in our estimate of the game, but we cannot deny that in small things as well as in great he spoke as a liberal friend of humanity.
His literary taste was not infallible; in some instances, (for example his extreme laudation of Sir John Denham’s poemCooper’s Hill, and his adverse criticism of Milton’s verse,) it was very bad. In general you may say that it was based upon theories and rules which are not really of universal application, though he conceived them to be so. But his style was much more the product of his own personality and genius. Ponderous it often was, but seldom clumsy. He had the art of saying what he meant in a deliberate, clear, forceful way. Words arrayed themselves at his command and moved forward in serried phalanx. He had the praiseworthy habit of completing his sentences and building his paragraphs firmly. It will not do us any good to belittle his merit as a writer, particularly in this age of slipper-shod and dressing-gowned English.
His diction was much more varied than people usually suppose. He could suit his manner to almost any kind of subject, except possibly the very lightest. He had a keen sense of the shading of synonyms and rarely picked the wrong word. Of antithesis and the balanced sentence he was over-fond;and this device, intended originally to give a sharpened emphasis, being used too often, lends an air of monotony to his writing. Yet it has its merits too, as may be seen in these extracts from the fiftieth number ofThe Rambler,—extracts which, by the way, have some relation to a controversy still raging:
“Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. He recounts the decency and regularity of former times, and celebrates the discipline and sobriety of the age in which his youth was passed; a happy age, which is now no more to be expected, since confusion has broken in upon the world and thrown down all the boundaries of civility and reverence.... It may, therefore, very reasonably be suspected that the old draw upon themselves the greatest part of those insults which they so much lament, and that age is rarely despised but when it is contemptible.... He that would pass the latter part of his life with honour and decency, must, when he is young, consider that he shall one day be old; and remember, when he isold, that he has once been young. In youth, he must lay up knowledge for his support, when his powers of action shall forsake him; and in age forbear to animadvert with rigour on faults which experience only can correct.”
In meaning this is very much the same as Sir James Barrie’s recent admirable discourse on “Courage” at the University of St. Andrew’s; but in manner there is quite a difference.
It is commonly supposed that Dr. Johnson did a great deal to overload and oppress the English language by introducing new and awkward words of monstrous length. His opportunities in that way were large, but he always claimed that he had used them with moderation and had not coined above four or five words. When we note that “peregrinity” was one of them, we are grateful that he refrained so much; but when we remember that “clubbable” was another, we are glad that he did not refrain altogether. For there is no quality more easy to recognize and difficult to define than that which makes a man acceptable in a club; and of this Dr. Johnson has given us a fine example in his life and an appropriate name in his word.
I think one reason why he got on so well with people who differed from him, and why most of the sensible ones so readily put up with his downright and often brusque way of expressing his sentiments, was because they came so evidently from his sincere and unshakeable conviction that certain things are true, that they can not be changed, and that they should not be forgotten. Not only in politics, but also and more significantly in religion, Samuel Johnson stands out as a sturdy believer.
This seems the more noteworthy when we consider the conditions of his life. There is hardly one among the great men of history who can be called so distinctively “a man of letters,” undoubtedly none who has won as high a position and as large a contemporary influence by sheer strength of pen. Now the literary life is not generally considered to be especially favourable to the cultivation of religion; and Johnson’s peculiar circumstances were not of a kind to make it more favourable in his case than usual. He was poor and neglected, struggling during a great part of his career against the heaviest odds. His natural disposition was by no means such as to predispose him to faith. He was afflictedfrom childhood with a hypochondriac and irritable humour; a high, domineering spirit, housed in an unwieldy and disordered body; plagued by inordinate physical appetites; inclined naturally to rely with over-confidence upon the strength and accuracy of his reasoning powers; driven by his impetuous temper into violent assertion and controversy; deeply depressed by his long years of obscurity and highly elated by his final success,—he was certainly not one whom we would select as likely to be a remarkably religious man. Carlyle had less to embitter him. Goethe had no more to excuse self-idolatry. And yet, beyond a doubt, Johnson was a sincere, humble, and, in the main, a consistent Christian.
Of course, we cannot help seeing that his peculiarities and faults affected his religion. He was intolerant in his expression of theological views to a degree which seems almost ludicrous. We may, perhaps, keep a straight face and a respectful attitude when we see him turning his back on the Abbé Raynal, and refusing to “shake hands with an infidel.” But when he exclaims in regard to a younglady who had left the Church of England to become a Quaker, “I hate the wench and shall ever hate her; I hate all impudence of a chit; apostasy I nauseate”; and when he answers the gently expressed hope of a friend that he and the girl would meet, after all, in a blessed eternity, by saying, “Madam, I am not fond ofmeeting fools anywhere,” we cannot help joining in the general laughter of the company to whom he speaks; and as the Doctor himself finally laughs and becomes cheerful and entertaining, we feel that it was only the bear in him that growled,—an honest beast, but sometimes very surly.
As for his remarkable strictures upon Presbyterianism, his declaration that he preferred the Roman Catholic Church, his expressed hope that John Knox was buried in the highway, and his wish that a dangerous steeple in Edinburgh might not be taken down because if it were let alone it might fall on some of the posterity of John Knox, which, he said, would be “no great matter,”—if when we read these things we remember that he was talking to his Scotch friend Boswell, we get a new idea ofthe audacity of the great man’s humour. I believe he even stirred up his natural high-churchism to rise rampant and roar vigourously, for the pleasure of seeing Boswell’s eyes stand out, and his neat little pigtail vibrate in dismay.
There are many other sayings of Johnson’s which disclose a deeper vein of tolerance; such as that remark about the essential agreement and trivial differences of all Christians, and his warm commendation, on his dying bed, of the sermons of Dr. Samuel Clarke, a Dissenting minister.
But even suppose we are forced to admit that Dr. Johnson was lacking in that polished liberality, that willingness to admit that every other man’s opinions are as good as his own, which we have come nowadays to regard as the chief of the theological virtues; even suppose we must call him “narrow,” we must admit at the same time that he was “deep”; he had a profundity of conviction, a sincerity of utterance which made of his religion something, as the Germans say, “to take hold of with your hands.”
He had need of a sturdy belief. With that tempestuous, unruly disposition of his boiling all thetime within him, living in the age of Chesterfield and Bolingbroke, fighting his way through the world amid a thousand difficulties and temptations, he had great need to get a firm grip upon some realities of religion and hold fast to them as things that were settled. His first conviction of the truth of Christianity came to him while he was at Oxford, through a casual reading of Law’sCall to the Unconverted. There were some years after that, he tells us, when he was totally regardless of religion. But sickness and trouble brought it back, “and I hope,” says he, “that I have never lost it since.”
He was not unwilling to converse with friends at fitting opportunities in regard to religious subjects, and no one who heard him could have remained long in doubt as to the nature of his views. There was one conversation in particular, on the subject of the sacrifice of Christ, at the close of which he solemnly dictated to his friend a brief statement of his belief, saying finally, “The peculiar doctrine of Christianity is that of an universal sacrifice and a perpetual propitiation. Other prophets only proclaimed the will and the threatenings of God. Christsatisfied his justice.” Again, one calm, bright Sunday afternoon, when he was in a boat with some friends upon the sea (I think it was during his journey to the Hebrides,) he fell into discourse with Boswell about the fear of death, which was often very terrible to his mind. He would not admit that the close of life ought to be regarded with cheerfulness or indifference, or that a rational man should be as willing to leave the world as to go out of a show-room after he has seen it. “No, sir,” said he, “there is no rational principle by which a man can die contented, but a trust in the mercy of God through the merits of Jesus Christ.” He was not ashamed to say that he was afraid to die. He assumed no braggadocio before the grave. He was honest with himself, and he felt that he needed all the fortitude of a religious faith to meet the hour of dissolution and the prospect of divine judgment without flinching. He could never have understood the attitude of men who saunter as unconcernedly and airily towards the day of judgment as if they were going to the play.
But Johnson was by no means given to unseasonableor unreasonable religious discourse. He had a holy horror of cant, and of unprofitable controversy. He once said of a friend who was more loquacious than discreet, “Why, yes, sir; he will introduce religious discourse without seeing whether it will end in instruction and improvement, or produce some profane jest. He would introduce it in the company of Wilkes, and twenty moresuch.”
It was Dr. Johnson’s custom to keep a book ofPrayers and Meditationsfor his own private use. These were printed after his death, and they reveal to us the sincerity of his inner life as nothing else could do. Think of the old man kneeling down in his room before he began the painful labours of a studious day, and repeating this prayer:—
“Against inquisitive and perplexing thoughts: O Lord, my Maker and Protector, who hast graciously sent me into this world to work out my salvation, enable me to drive from me all such unquiet and perplexing thoughts as may mislead or hinder me in the practice of those duties which Thou hast required. When I behold the works of thy hands, and consider the course of thy providence, give megrace always to remember that thy thoughts are not my thoughts, nor thy ways my ways. And while it shall please Thee to continue me in this world, where much is to be done and little to be known, teach me by thy Holy Spirit to withdraw my mind from unprofitable and dangerous inquiries, from difficulties vainly curious, and doubts impossible to be solved. Let me rejoice in the light which Thou hast imparted; let me serve Thee with active zeal and humble confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the soul Thou receivest shall be satisfied with knowledge. Grant this, O Lord, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.”
These are honest and sensible petitions. And the more a man knows, the more devoted he is to serious and difficult studies, the more he ought to feel the need of just such a divine defense and guidance. It is good to be kept on the track. It is wise to mistrust your own doubts. It is happy to be delivered from them.
The fundamental quality of Dr. Johnson’s religion was the sense of reverence. He was never “known to utter the name of God but on properoccasions and with due respect.” He approached the consideration of divine things with genuine solemnity, and could not tolerate sacred trifling or pious profanity. He was not ashamed to kneel where men could see him, although he never courted their notice; or to pray where men could hear him, although he did not desire their approbation any more than he feared their ridicule.
There were grave faults and errors in his conduct. But no one had so keen a sense of their unworthiness as the man himself, who was bravely fighting against them, and sincerely lamenting their recurrence. They often tripped him and humiliated him, but they never got him completely down. He righted himself and went lumbering on. He never sold his heart to a lie, never confused the evil and the good. When he sinned he knew it and repented. It gives us confidence in his sincerity when we see him denying himself the use of wine because he was naturally prone to excess, and yet allowing it to his friends who were able to use it temperately. He was no puritan; and, on the other hand, he was no slipshod condoner of vice or suave preacher of moralindifference. He was a big, honest soul, trying hard to live straight along the line of duty and to do good as he found opportunity.
The kindness and generosity of his heart were known to few save his intimate friends, and not always appreciated even by those who had most cause to be grateful to him. The poor broken-down pensioners with whom he filled his house in later years, and to whom he alluded playfully as hisseraglio, were a constant source of annoyance. They grumbled perpetually and fought like so many cats. But he would not cast them off any more than he would turn out his favourite mouser, Hodge, for whom he used to “go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature.” He gave away a large part of his income in charity; and, what was still more generous, he devoted a considerable portion of his time to counseling young and unsuccessful authors and, (note this,)reading their manuscripts.
I suppose if one had been a poverty-stricken beginner at literature, in London of the eighteenth century, the best thing one could have done wouldhave been to find the way to Dr. Johnson’s house and tell him how the case stood. If he himself had no money to lend, he would have borrowed it from some of his friends. And if he could not say anything encouraging about the manuscripts, he would have been honest and kind enough to advise the unhappy aspirant to fame to prefer the life of a competent shoemaker to that of an incompetent scribbler.
Much of what was best in the character of Johnson came out in his friendships. He was as good a lover as he was a hater. He was loyal to a fault, and sincere, though never extravagant, in his admirations.
The picture of the old man in his last illness, surrounded by the friends whom he had cherished so faithfully, and who now delighted to testify their respect and affection for him, and brighten his lingering days with every attention, has little of the customary horror of a death-bed. It is strange indeed that he who had always been subject to such a dread of dying should have found it possible to meet the hour of dissolution with such composure.His old friend Sir Joshua Reynolds comes in to bid him farewell, and Johnson makes three requests of him,—to forgive him thirty pounds which he had borrowed from him, to read the Bible, and never to use his pencil on a Sunday. Good petitions, which Sir Joshua readily granted, although we cannot help fearing that he occasionally forgot the last.
“Tell me,” says the sick man to his physician, “can I possibly recover? Give me a direct answer.” Being hard pressed, Dr. Brocklesby confesses that in his opinion recovery is out of the question. “Then,” says Johnson, “I will take no more physick, not even my opiates: for I have prayed that I may render up my soul to God unclouded.”
And so with kind and thoughtful words to his servant, and a “God bless you, my dear” to the young daughter of a friend who stood lingering at the door of his room, this sturdy old believer went out to meet the God whom he had tried so honestly to serve. His life was an amazing victory over poverty, sickness, and sin. Greatness alone could not have insured, nor could perseverance alone havecommanded, three of his good fortunes in this world: that Sir Joshua Reynolds painted his portrait; that Boswell wrote his biography; and thatHis Wifesaid of him that “he was the most sensible man she had ever met.”
A friend of mine, one of the Elder Bookmen of Harvard, told me some twenty years ago that he had only once seen Ralph Waldo Emerson vexed out of his transcendental tranquillity and almost Olympian calm. It was a Sunday afternoon in Concord, and the philosopher had been drawn from his study by an unwonted noise in the house. On the back porch he found his own offspring and some children of the neighbours engaged in a romping, boisterous game. With visible anger he stopped it, saying, “Even if you have no reverence for the day, you ought to have enough sense and manners to respect the traditions of your forefathers.”
Emerson’s puritanism was in the blood. Seven of his ancestors were ministers of New England churches of the early type. Among them was PeterBulkley, who left his comfortable parish in Bedfordshire, England, to become the pastor of “the church in the wilderness” at Concord, Massachusetts; Father Samuel Moody of Agamenticus, Maine, who was such a zealous reformer that he pursued wayward sinners even into the alehouse to reprove them; Joseph Emerson of Malden, a “heroic scholar,” who prayed every night that no descendant of his might ever be rich; and William Emerson, the patriot preacher, who died while serving in the army of the Revolution. These were verily “soldiers of the Lord,” and from them and women of like stamina and mettle, Emerson inherited the best of puritan qualities: independence, sobriety, fearless loyalty to conscience, strenuous and militant virtue.
But he had also a super-gift which was not theirs. That which made him different from them, gave him a larger and more beautiful vision of the world, led him into ways of thinking and speaking which to them would have seemed strange and perilous, (though in conduct he followed the strait and narrow path,)—in short, that which made him what he was in himself and to countless other men, a seer,an inspirer, a singer of new light and courage and joy, was the gift of poetic imagination and interpretation. He was a puritanpluspoetry.
Graduating from Harvard he began life as a teacher in a Boston school and afterwards the minister of a Boston church. But there was something in his temperament which unfitted him for the service of institutions. He was a servant of ideas. To do his best work he needed to feel himself entirely independent of everything except allegiance to the truth as God gave him to see it from day to day. The scholastic routine of a Female Academy irked him. The social distinctions and rivalries of city life appeared to him both insincere and tiresome. Even the mild formulas and regulations of a Unitarian church seemed to hamper him. He was a come-outer; he wished to think for himself, to proclaim his own visions, to act and speak only from the inward impulse, though always with an eye to the good of others. So he left his parish in Boston and became a preacher at large to “these United States.” His pulpit was the lecture-platform; his little books of prose and verse carried hiswords to a still larger audience; no man in America during his life had a more extended or a deeper influence; he became famous both as an orator and as a writer; but in fact he was always preaching. As Lamb said to Coleridge, “I never heard you do anything else.”
The central word of all his discourse is Self-reliance,—be yourself, trust yourself, and fear not! But in order to interpret this rightly one must have at least an inkling of his philosophy, which was profoundly religious and essentially poetical. He was a mystic, an intuitional thinker. He believed that the whole universe of visible things is only a kind of garment which covers the real world of invisible ideas and laws and principles. He believed also that each man, having a share in the Divine Reason which is the source of all things, may have a direct knowledge of truth through his own innate ideas and intuitive perceptions. Emerson wrote in his diary, “The highest revelation is that God is in every man.”
This way of thinking is called transcendentalism, because it overleaps logic and scientific reasoning.It is easy to see how such a philosophy might lead unbalanced persons into wild and queer and absurd views and practices. And so it did when it struck the neighbourhood of Boston in the second quarter of the 19th Century, and began to spread from that sacred centre.
But with these vagaries Emerson had little sympathy. His mysticism was strongly tinctured with common sense, (which also is of divine origin,) and his orderly nature recoiled from eccentric and irregular ways. Although for a time he belonged to the “Transcendental Club,” he frequently said that he would not be called a transcendentalist, and at times he made fun, in a mild and friendly spirit, of the extreme followers of that doctrine. He held as strongly as any one that the Divine light of reason in each man is the guide to truth; but he held it with the important reservation that when this inner light really shines, free from passion and prejudice, it will never lead a man away from good judgment and the moral law. All through his life he navigated the transcendental sea safely, piloted by a puritan conscience, warned off the rocks by a keen sense ofhumour, and kept from capsizing by a solid ballast of New England prudence.
He was in effect one of the most respected, sagacious, prosperous and virtuous villagers of Concord. Some slight departures from common custom he tranquilly tested and as tranquilly abandoned. He tried vegetarianism for a while, but gave it up when he found that it did him no good. He attempted to introduce domestic democracy by having the servants sit at table with the rest of the household, but was readily induced to abandon the experiment by the protest of his two sensible hired girls against such an inconvenient arrangement. He began to practise a theory that manual labour should form part of the scholar’s life, but was checked by the personal discovery that hard work in the garden meant poor work in the study. “The writer shall not dig,” was his conclusion. Intellectual freedom was what he chiefly desired; and this he found could best be attained in an inconspicuous manner of living and dressing, not noticeably different from that of the average college professor or country minister.