"How small of all that human hearts endureThat part which kings or laws can cause or cure!"
"How small of all that human hearts endureThat part which kings or laws can cause or cure!"
"How small of all that human hearts endure
That part which kings or laws can cause or cure!"
He had previously put expressions very similar into the mouth of Rasselas. It is amusing to contrast these passages with the30torrents of raving abuse which he poured forth against the Long Parliament and the American Congress. In one of the conversations reported by Boswell this inconsistency displays itself in the most ludicrous manner.
22. "Sir Adam Ferguson," says Boswell, "suggested thatluxury corrupts a people, and destroys the spirit of liberty.Johnson: 'Sir, that is all visionary. I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.5Sir, the danger of the abuse of power is nothing to a private man. What Frenchman is prevented passing his life as he pleases?'Sir Adam: 'But, sir, in the British constitution it is surely of importance to keep up a spirit in the people, so as to preserve a balance against the crown.'Johnson: 'Sir, I10perceive you are a vile Whig. Why all this childish jealousy of the power of the crown? The crown has not power enough.'"
23. One of the old philosophers, Lord Bacon tells us, used to say that life and death were just the same to him. "Why, then," said an objector, "do you not kill yourself?" The15philosopher answered, "Because it is just the same." If the difference between two forms of government be not worth half a guinea, it is not easy to see how Whiggism can be viler than Toryism, or how the crown can have too little power. If the happiness of individuals is not affected by20political abuses, zeal for liberty is doubtless ridiculous. But zeal for monarchy must be equally so. No person would have been more quick-sighted than Johnson to such a contradiction as this in the logic of an antagonist.
24. The judgments which Johnson passed on books were,25in his own time, regarded with superstitious veneration, and, in our time, are generally treated with indiscriminate contempt. They are the judgments of a strong but enslaved understanding. The mind of the critic was hedged round by an uninterrupted fence of prejudices and superstitions. Within his narrow limits,30he displayed a vigour and an activity which ought to have enabled him to clear the barrier that confined him.
25. How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his premisesso ably, should assume his premises so foolishly, is one of the great mysteries of human nature. The same inconsistency may be observed in the schoolmen of the middle ages. Those writers show so much acuteness and force of mind in arguing on their wretched data, that a modern reader is perpetually at a loss to comprehend how such minds came by5such data. Not a flaw in the superstructure of the theory which they are rearing escapes their vigilance. Yet they are blind to the obvious unsoundness of the foundation. It is the same with some eminent lawyers. Their legal arguments are intellectual prodigies, abounding with the happiest analogies10and the most refined distinctions. The principles of their arbitrary science being once admitted, the statute-book and the reports being once assumed as the foundations of reasoning, these men must be allowed to be perfect masters of logic. But if a question arises as to the postulates on which15their whole system rests, if they are called upon to vindicate the fundamental maxims of that system which they have passed their lives in studying, these very men often talk the language of savages or of children. Those who have listened to a man of this class in his own court, and who have witnessed the skill20with which he analyses and digests a vast mass of evidence, or reconciles a crowd of precedents which at first sight seem contradictory, scarcely know him again when, a few hours later, they hear him speaking on the other side of Westminster Hall in his capacity of legislator. They can scarcely believe25that the paltry quirks which are faintly heard through a storm of coughing, and which do not impose on the plainest country gentleman, can proceed from the same sharp and vigorous intellect which had excited their admiration under the same roof, and on the same day.30
26. Johnson decided literary questions like a lawyer, not like a legislator. He never examined foundations where a point was already ruled. His whole code of criticism restedon pure assumption, for which he sometimes quoted a precedent or an authority, but rarely troubled himself to give a reason drawn from the nature of things. He took it for granted that the kind of poetry which flourished in his own time, which he had been accustomed to hear praised from his childhood, and which he had himself written with success, was the best kind5of poetry. In his biographical work he has repeatedly laid it down as an undeniable proposition that during the latter part of the seventeenth century, and the earlier part of the eighteenth, English poetry had been in a constant progress of improvement. Waller, Denham, Dryden, and Pope, had10been, according to him, the great reformers. He judged of all works of the imagination by the standard established among his own contemporaries. Though he allowed Homer to have been a greater man than Virgil, he seems to have thought the Æneid a greater poem than the Iliad. Indeed he well might15have thought so; for he preferred Pope's Iliad to Homer's. He pronounced that, after Hoole's translation of Tasso, Fairfax's would hardly be reprinted. He could see no merit in our fine old English ballads, and always spoke with the most provoking contempt of Percy's fondness for them. Of the20great original works of imagination which appeared during his time, Richardson's novels alone excited his admiration. He could see little or no merit in Tom Jones, in Gulliver's Travels, or in Tristram Shandy. To Thomson's Castle of Indolence, he vouchsafed only a line of cold commendation,25of commendation much colder than what he has bestowed on the Creation of that portentous bore, Sir Richard Blackmore. Gray was, in his dialect, a barren rascal. Churchill was a blockhead. The contempt which he felt for the trash of Macpherson was indeed just; but it was, we suspect,30just by chance. He despised the Fingal for the very reason which led many men of genius to admire it. He despised it, not because it was essentially commonplace, but because it had a superficial air of originality.
27. He was undoubtedly an excellent judge of compositionsfashioned on his own principles. But when a deeper philosophy was required, when he undertook to pronounce judgment on the works of those great minds which "yield homage only to eternal laws," his failure was ignominious. He criticised5Pope's Epitaphs excellently. But his observations on Shakespeare's plays and Milton's poems seem to us for the most part as wretched as if they had been written by Rymer himself, whom we take to have been the worst critic that ever lived.10
28. Some of Johnson's whims on literary subjects can be compared only to that strange nervous feeling which made him uneasy if he had not touched every post between the Mitre tavern and his own lodgings. His preference of Latin epitaphs to English epitaphs is an instance. An English epitaph, he15said, would disgrace Smollett. He declared that he would not pollute the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English epitaph on Goldsmith. What reason there can be for celebrating a British writer in Latin, which there was not for covering the Roman arches of triumph with Greek inscriptions, or for20commemorating the deeds of the heroes of Thermopylæ in Egyptian hieroglyphics, we are utterly unable to imagine.
29. On men and manners, at least on the men and manners of a particular place and a particular age, Johnson had certainly looked with a most observant and discriminating eye.25His remarks on the education of children, on marriage, on the economy of families, on the rules of society, are always striking, and generally sound. In his writings, indeed, the knowledge of life which he possessed in an eminent degree is very imperfectly exhibited. Like those unfortunate chiefs of30the middle ages who were suffocated by their own chain-mail and cloth of gold, his maxims perish under that load of words which was designed for their defence and their ornament.But it is clear from the remains of his conversation, that he had more of that homely wisdom which nothing but experience and observation can give than any writer since the time of Swift. If he had been content to write as he talked, he might have left books on the practical art of living superior to the Directions to Servants.5
30. Yet even his remarks on society, like his remarks on literature, indicate a mind at least as remarkable for narrowness as for strength. He was no master of the great science of human nature. He had studied, not the genus man, but the species Londoner. Nobody was ever so thoroughly conversant10with all the forms of life and all the shades of moral and intellectual character which were to be seen from Islington to the Thames, and from Hyde-Park corner to Mile-end green. But his philosophy stopped at the first turnpike-gate. Of the rural life of England he knew nothing; and he took it for15granted that every body who lived in the country was either stupid or miserable. "Country gentlemen," said he, "must be unhappy; for they have not enough to keep their lives in motion"; as if all those peculiar habits and associations which made Fleet Street and Charing Cross the finest views in the20world to himself had been essential parts of human nature. Of remote countries and past times he talked with wild and ignorant presumption. "The Athenians of the age of Demosthenes," he said to Mrs. Thrale, "were a people of brutes, a barbarous people." In conversation with Sir Adam Ferguson25he used similar language. "The boasted Athenians," he said, "were barbarians. The mass of every people must be barbarous where there is no printing." The fact was this: he saw that a Londoner who could not read was a very stupid and brutal fellow: he saw that great refinement of taste and activity of30intellect were rarely found in a Londoner who had not read much; and, because it was by means of books that people acquired almost all their knowledge in the society with whichhe was acquainted, he concluded, in defiance of the strongest and clearest evidence, that the human mind can be cultivated by means of books alone. An Athenian citizen might possess very few volumes; and the largest library to which he had access might be much less valuable than Johnson's bookcase in Bolt Court. But the Athenian might pass every morning5in conversation with Socrates, and might hear Pericles speak four or five times every month. He saw the plays of Sophocles and Aristophanes: he walked amidst the friezes of Phidias and the paintings of Zeuxis: he knew by heart the choruses of Æschylus: he heard the rhapsodist at the corner of the10street reciting the Shield of Achilles or the Death of Argus: he was a legislator, conversant with high questions of alliance, revenue, and war: he was a soldier, trained under a liberal and generous discipline: he was a judge, compelled every day to weigh the effect of opposite arguments. These things were15in themselves an education, an education eminently fitted, not, indeed, to form exact or profound thinkers, but to give quickness to the perceptions, delicacy to the taste, fluency to the expression, and politeness to the manners. All this was overlooked. An Athenian who did not improve his mind by reading20was, in Johnson's opinion, much such a person as a Cockney who made his mark, much such a person as black Frank before he went to school, and far inferior to a parish clerk or a printer's devil.
31. Johnson's friends have allowed that he carried to a25ridiculous extreme his unjust contempt for foreigners. He pronounced the French to be a very silly people, much behind us, stupid, ignorant creatures. And this judgment he formed after having been at Paris about a month, during which he would not talk French, for fear of giving the natives an30advantage over him in conversation. He pronounced them, also, to be an indelicate people, because a French footman touched the sugar with his fingers. That ingenious andamusing traveller, M. Simond, has defended his countrymen very successfully against Johnson's accusation, and has pointed out some English practices which, to an impartial spectator, would seem at least as inconsistent with physical cleanliness and social decorum as those which Johnson so bitterly reprehended. To the sage, as Boswell loves to call him, it never5occurred to doubt that there must be something eternally and immutably good in the usages to which he had been accustomed. In fact, Johnson's remarks on society beyond the bills of mortality, are generally of much the same kind with those of honest Tom Dawson, the English footman in10Dr. Moore's Zeluco. "Suppose the king of France has no sons, but only a daughter, then, when the king dies, this here daughter, according to that there law, cannot be made queen, but the next near relative, provided he is a man, is made king, and not the last king's daughter, which, to be sure, is very15unjust. The French foot-guards are dressed in blue, and all the marching regiments in white, which has a very foolish appearance for soldiers; and as for blue regimentals, it is only fit for the blue horse or the artillery."
32. Johnson's visit to the Hebrides introduced him to a20state of society completely new to him; and a salutary suspicion of his own deficiencies seems on that occasion to have crossed his mind for the first time. He confessed, in the last paragraph of his Journey, that his thoughts on national manners were the thoughts of one who had seen but little, of25one who had passed his time almost wholly in cities. This feeling, however, soon passed away. It is remarkable that to the last he entertained a fixed contempt for all those modes of life and those studies which tend to emancipate the mind from the prejudices of a particular age or a particular nation.30Of foreign travel and of history he spoke with the fierce and boisterous contempt of ignorance. "What does a man learn by travelling? Is Beauclerk the better for travelling? Whatdid Lord Charlemont learn in his travels, except that there was a snake in one of the pyramids of Egypt?" History was, in his opinion, to use the fine expression of Lord Plunkett, an old almanack: historians could, as he conceived, claim no higher dignity than that of almanack-makers; and his favourite historians were those who, like Lord Hailes, aspired to no5higher dignity. He always spoke with contempt of Robertson. Hume he would not even read. He affronted one of his friends for talking to him about Catiline's conspiracy, and declared that he never desired to hear of the Punic war again as long as he lived.10
33. Assuredly one fact which does not directly affect our own interests, considered in itself, is no better worth knowing than another fact. The fact that there is a snake in a pyramid, or the fact that Hannibal crossed the Alps, are in themselves as unprofitable to us as the fact that there is a green15blind in a particular house in Threadneedle Street, or the fact that a Mr. Smith comes into the city every morning on the top of one of the Blackwall stages. But it is certain that those who will not crack the shell of history will never get at the kernel. Johnson, with hasty arrogance, pronounced the20kernel worthless, because he saw no value in the shell. The real use of travelling to distant countries and of studying the annals of past times is to preserve men from the contraction of mind which those can hardly escape whose whole communion is with one generation and one neighbourhood, who25arrive at conclusions by means of an induction not sufficiently copious, and who therefore constantly confound exceptions with rules, and accidents with essential properties. In short, the real use of travelling and of studying history is to keep men from being what Tom Dawson was in fiction, and30Samuel Johnson in reality.
34. Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, appears far greater in Boswell's books than in his own. His conversationappears to have been quite equal to his writings in matter, and far superior to them in manner. When he talked, he clothed his wit and his sense in forcible and natural expressions. As soon as he took his pen in his hand to write for the public, his style became systematically vicious. All his books are written in a learned language, in a language which5nobody hears from his mother or his nurse, in a language in which nobody ever quarrels, or drives bargains, or makes love, in a language in which nobody ever thinks. It is clear that Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in which he wrote. The expressions which came first to his tongue were10simple, energetic, and picturesque. When he wrote for publication he did his sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that work of which the Journey to the Hebrides is the translation; and it is amusing to compare the two versions.15"When we were taken up stairs," says he in one of his letters, "a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of us was to lie." This incident is recorded in the Journey as follows: "Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose started up, at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from20the forge." Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. "The Rehearsal," he said, very unjustly, "has not wit enough to keep it sweet"; then, after a pause, "it has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction."
35. Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even agreeable,25when the manner, though vicious, is natural. Few readers, for example, would be willing to part with the mannerism of Milton or of Burke. But a mannerism which does not sit easy on the mannerist, which has been adopted on principle, and which can be sustained only by constant effort, is always30offensive. And such is the mannerism of Johnson.
36. The characteristic faults of his style are so familiar to all our readers, and have been so often burlesqued, that itis almost superfluous to point them out. It is well known that he made less use than any other eminent writer of those strong plain words, Anglo-Saxon or Norman-French, of which the roots lie in the inmost depths of our language; and that he felt a vicious partiality for terms which, long after our own speech had been fixed, were borrowed from the Greek and5Latin, and which therefore, even when lawfully naturalised, must be considered as born aliens, not entitled to rank with the king's English. His constant practice of padding out a sentence with useless epithets, till it became as stiff as the bust of an exquisite, his antithetical forms of expression,10constantly employed even where there is no opposition in the ideas expressed, his big words wasted on little things, his harsh inversions, so widely different from those graceful and easy inversions which give variety, spirit, and sweetness to the expression of our great old writers, all these peculiarities15have been imitated by his admirers and parodied by his assailants, till the public has become sick of the subject.
37. Goldsmith said to him, very wittily and very justly, "If you were to write a fable about little fishes, doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like whales." No man surely20ever had so little talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-hunter or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he wrote in the same pompous and unbending style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shafton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him25under every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclea talk as finely as Imlac the poet, or Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia. The gay Cornelia describes her reception at the country-house of her relations in such terms as these: "I was surprised, after the civilities of my first reception, to find, instead of the leisure30and tranquillity which a rural life always promises, and, if well conducted, might always afford, a confused wildness of care, and a tumultuous hurry of diligence, by which everyface was clouded, and every motion agitated." The gentle Tranquilla informs us, that she "had not passed the earlier part of life without the flattery of courtship, and the joys of triumph; but had danced the round of gaiety amidst the murmurs of envy and the gratulations of applause, had been attended from pleasure to pleasure by the great, the sprightly,5and the vain, and had seen her regard solicited by the obsequiousness of gallantry, the gaiety of wit, and the timidity of love." Surely Sir John Falstaff himself did not wear his petticoats with a worse grace. The reader may well cry out, with honest Sir Hugh Evans, "I like not when a 'oman has10a great peard: I spy a great peard under hermuffler."19
38. We had something more to say. But our article is already too long; and we must close it. We would fain part in good humour from the hero, from the biographer, and even from the editor, who, ill as he has performed his15task, has at least this claim to our gratitude, that he has induced us to read Boswell's book again. As we close it, the club-room is before us, and the table on which stands the omelet for Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those heads which live for ever on the canvass of20Reynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke and the tall thin form of Langton, the courtly sneer of Beauclerk, and the beaming smile of Garrick, Gibbon tapping his snuff-box, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the figures of25those among whom we have been brought up, the gigantic body, the huge massy face, seamed with the scars of disease, the brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the grey wig with the scorched foretop, the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and mouth moving30with convulsive twitches; we see the heavy form rolling; we hear it puffing; and then comes the "Why, sir!" and the "What then, sir?" and the "No, sir!" and the "You don't see your way through the question, sir!"
39. What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man! To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and5in ours as a companion. To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity! To be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries! That kind of fame which is commonly the most transient is,10in his case, the most durable. The reputation of those writings, which he probably expected to be immortal, is every day fading; while those peculiarities of manner and that careless table-talk, the memory of which, he probably thought, would die with him, are likely to be remembered as long as the15English language is spoken in any quarter of the globe.
Page 1.Line 4.Lichfield.Observe how near Lichfield comes to being in the exact center of England.
14–5.the midland counties.As you run your eye over the map, what counties should you naturally include under this head? In what county is Lichfield?
19.oracle."Johnson, the Lichfield librarian, is now here; he propagates learning all over this diocese, and advanceth knowledge to its just height; all the clergy here are his pupils, and suck all they have from him."—From a letter written by Rev. George Plaxton, quoted by Boswell.
110–11.a strong religious and political sympathy.Macaulay's use of the article would lead us to think that the two kinds of sympathy were very closely connected. Michael Johnson was a member of the Established Church of England, and at heart a believer in the "divine right" kings. The student who is not familiar with the history of this period will do well to look upJacobitein Brewer'sHistoric Note-bookand then to read in some brief history an account of thesovereigns in possessionwho followed James II,—William and Mary (1689–1702) and Anne (1702–1714). Boswell says, "He no doubt had an early attachment to the House of Stuart; but his zeal had cooled as his reason strengthened."
116.In the child.Pause to take the glimpse ahead which this sentence gives. The construction helps one to remember the three kinds of peculiarities and the order in which they are mentioned.
226.Augustan delicacy of taste.You may read in Harper'sDictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities, in the article on Augustus Cæsar, how "the court of Augustus thus became a school of culture, where men of genius acquired that delicacy of taste, elevation of sentiment, and purity of expression which characterize the writers of the age."
232.Petrarch.Does Macaulay imply that Petrarch is one of "the great restorers of learning"? SeeRenaissanceinThe Century Dictionaryand Harper'sDictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities.Note that Petrarch "may be said to have rediscovered Greek, which for some six centuries had been lost to the western world." Keep in mind, too, that his friend and disciple, Boccaccio, translated Homer into Latin.
311.Pembroke College.The University of Oxford consists of twenty-one colleges which together form a corporate body. The colleges are "endowed by their founders and others with estates and benefices; out of the revenue arising from the estates, as well as other resources, the Heads and Senior and Junior Memberson the foundationreceive an income, and the expenses of the colleges are defrayed. Membersnot on the foundation, called 'independent members,' reside entirely at their own expense." Among the memberson the foundationare the Heads, Fellows, and Scholars.
317–18.Macrobius.A Roman grammarian who probably lived at the beginning of the fifth century.
320.about three years.Apparently Johnson remained at Oxford only fourteen months. See Dr. Hill'sDr. Johnson, His Friends and His Critics.
41–2."It was bitterness which they mistook for frolic. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I disregarded all power and all authority."—Johnson, quoted by Boswell. Although aware of what he considered the defects of his college, Johnson loved Pembroke as long as he lived. He delighted in boasting of its eminent graduates and would have left to it his house at Lichfield had not wiser friends induced him to bequeath it to some poor relatives.
415–16.his father died."I now therefore see that I must make my own fortune. Meanwhile let me take care that the powers of my mind be not debilitated by poverty, and that indigence do not force me into any criminal act."—Johnson, quoted by Boswell.
532.Walmesley."I am not able to name a man of equal knowledge. His acquaintance with books was great, and what he did not immediately know, he could, at least, tell where to find."—Johnson, quoted by Boswell.
613.Politian.Another of "the great restorers of learning" (see231). His beginning of a translation of theIliadinto Latin attracted the attention of Lorenzo de' Medici, under whose patronage he became one of the first scholars of Italy.
617.fell in love.Boswell says that Johnson's early attachments to the fair sex were "very transient," and considers it but natural that when the passion of love once seized him it should be exceedingly strong, concentrated as it was in one object.
622.Queensberrys and Lepels.Families of high rank in England.
73–4.half ludicrous.Carlyle says it is no matter for ridicule that the man "whose look all men both laughed at and shuddered at, should find any brave female heart, to acknowledge, at first sight and hearing of him, 'This is the most sensible man I ever met with'; and then, with generous courage, to take him to itself, and say Be thou mine!... Johnson's deathless affection for his Tetty was always venerable and noble."
76–7.At Edial. Although this enterprise did not prosper, the man, as Carlyle says, "was to become a Teacher of grown gentlemen, in the most surprising way; a man of Letters, and Ruler of the British Nation for some time,—not of their bodies merely, but of their minds; not over them, butinthem."
713.David Garrick.The mere fact that this celebrated actor and successful manager brought out twenty-four of Shakspere's plays is reason enough why we should look him up. A slight knowledge of his career enables one to enjoy all the more the frequent references to him in Boswell'sLife of Johnson. After reading the sketch in theEncyclopædia Britannicait would be a good plan to read Boswell's references consecutively by means of the index.
89.Fielding.For an enjoyable short sketch of the first great English novelist, see Thackeray'sEnglish Humourists.
810.The Beggar's Opera, by John Gay, appeared in 1728.
819.knot.SeeThe Century Dictionary.
834.Drury Lane.A street in the heart of the city, near the Strand,—one of the chief thoroughfares. It was beginning to lose its old-time respectability.
99.the sight of food.Once when Boswell was giving a dinner and one of the company was late, Boswell proposed to order dinner to be served, adding, "'Ought six people to be kept waiting for one?' 'Why, yes,' answered Johnson, with a delicate humanity, 'if the one will suffer more by your sitting down than the six will do by waiting.'" Is it probable that Macaulay exaggerates?
927.Harleian Library.The library collected by Robert Harley, First Earl of Oxford. Osborne afterwards bought it and Johnson did some of the cataloguing for him. As to Osborne's punishment, Boswell says: "The simple truth I had from Johnson himself. 'Sir, he was impertinent to me, and I beat him. But it was not in his shop: it was in my own chamber.'"
106.Blefuscu, Mildendo.If Blefuscu and Mildendo look unfamiliar, go to Lilliput for them. (SeeGulliver's Travels.)
109."Johnson told me, that as soon as he found that the speeches were thought genuine, he determined that he would write no more of them; for he 'would not be accessory to the propagation of falsehood.'"—Boswell.
1015.Cf.The Traveller. Do you suppose that either Johnson or Goldsmith really believed that one form of government is as good as another?
1017.Montagues.See Shakspere'sRomeo and Juliet.
1018.Greens.In Roman chariot races there was the bitterest rivalry between the different colors of the factions, and the betting often led to scenes of riot and bloodshed. Once in Justinian's reign, in the great circus at Constantinople, the tumult was not suppressed till about thirty thousand of the rioters had been killed. See Gibbon,Decline and Fall, Chapter XL.
1022.Sacheverell.What do you gather from the context about this preacher? Was he high church? Did he preach resistance to the king?
1031.Tom Tempest.See Johnson'sIdler, No. 10.
1032.Laud.Read in Gardiner'sStudent's History of Englandthe account of this archbishop who tried to enforce uniformity of worship.
112–4.Hampden, Falkland, Clarendon.In the case of these three statesmen, as well as in the case of Laud, the context shows which of them were supporters of Charles I and which resisted him. Does Macaulay imply that Johnson would have been excusable if he had sympathized with Hampden's refusal to pay "ship money"?
115.Roundheads.If you do not know why they were so called, seeThe Century Dictionary.
1120–21.Great Rebellion.If in doubt as to which rebellion Macaulay refers, seeThe Century Dictionaryor Brewer'sDictionary of Phrase and Fable.
122, 8, 10.Juvenal.Dryden has translated five of the poems of this great Roman satirist. It is worth while to compare Johnson'sLondon, a free imitation of the Third Satire, with Dryden's version. Johnson's poem may be found in Hales'sLonger English Poems.
1219.Boswell, too, asks us to remember Pope's candor and liberal conduct on this occasion. Let us not forget it.
138.Psalmanazar.Pretending to be a Japanese, this Frenchman wrote what he called aHistory of Formosa. Although fabulous, it deceived the learned world.
1314–15.blue ribands.Worn by members of the Order of the Garter.
1316.Newgate.The notorious London prison.
1326.Piazzahere has its first meaning,—"an open square in a town surrounded by buildings or colonnades, a plaza." This space was once the "convent" garden of the monks of Westminster. For a brief sketch of it down to the time its "coffee houses and taverns became the fashionable lounging-places for the authors, wits, and noted men of the kingdom," seeThe Century Dictionary.
1411–12.Grub Street."Originally the name of a street in Moorfields in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems; whence any mean production is calledgrubstreet.
'I'd sooner ballads write, andgrubstreetlays.' Gay."
—Johnson'sDictionary, edition of 1773.
1423.Warburton.Bishop Warburton thus praised Johnson in the Preface to his own edition ofShakspere, and Johnson showed his appreciation by saying to Boswell, "He praised me at a time when praise was of value to me." On another occasion, when asked whether he considered Warburton a superior critic to Theobald, he replied, "He'd make two-and-fifty Theobalds, cut into slices!" Johnson's sketch of him, in theLife of Pope, Boswell calls "the tribute due to him when he was no longer in 'high place,' but numbered with the dead."
1428–31.He employed six amanuenses, not a large number of assistants for a task of such magnitude. Nor was the sum of fifteen hundred guineas a generous one from which to pay these assistants.
1433.Chesterfield.Every young man should read an abridged edition of Chesterfield'sLetters to his Son; for example, the volume in the Knickerbocker Nugget Series. It contains much that is worth remembering, and the style is entertaining.
1517.It is hard to realize what a stupendous task Johnson undertook when he began his Dictionary. Other dictionaries, notably Bailey's, were in existence, but they were mere beginnings of what he had in mind. As lists of words, with explanations of the meanings, they were useful, but none of them could reasonably be considered a standard. A standard Johnson's certainly was. Although no etymologist, in general he not only gave full and clear definitions, but he chose remarkably happy illustrations of the meanings of words. By taking care, also, to select passages which were interesting and profitable reading as well as elegant English, he succeeded in making probably the most readable dictionary that has ever appeared.
1523.For theVanity of Human Wishes, see Hales'sLonger English Poemsor Syle'sFrom Milton to Tennyson. As in the case ofLondon, the student will wish to compare Dryden's translation.
168–9.And this was eleven years after theLondonhad appeared; as Boswell says, his fame was already established.
1613.Goodman's Fields.Garrick made this theater successful.
1615.Drury Lane Theatre.Near Drury Lane. (See note to834.) Other prominent actors in this famous old theatre were Kean, the Kembles, and Mrs. Siddons.
1713.See page 7. The story on whichIreneis based is asfollows:—
Mahomet the Great, first emperor of the Turks, in the year 1453 laid siege to the city of Constantinople, then possessed by the Greeks, and, after an obstinate resistance, took and sacked it. Among the many young women whom the commanders thought fit to lay hands on and present to him was one named Irene, a Greek, of incomparable beauty and such rare perfection of body and mind, that the emperor, becoming enamored of her, neglected the care of his government and empire for two whole years, and thereby so exasperated the Janizaries, that they mutinied and threatened to dethrone him. To prevent this mischief, Mustapha Bassa, a person of great credit with him, undertook to represent to him the great danger to which he lay exposed by the indulgence of his passion: he called to his remembrance the character, actions, and achievements of his predecessors, and the state of his government; and, in short, so roused him from his lethargy, that he took a horrible resolution to silence the clamors of his people by the sacrifice of this admirable creature. Accordingly, he commanded her to be dressed and adorned in the richest manner that she and her attendants could devise, and against a certain hour issued orders for the nobility and leaders of his army to attend him in the great hall of his palace. When they were all assembled, himself appeared with great pomp and magnificence, leading his captive by the hand, unconscious of guilt and ignorant of his design. With a furious and menacing look, he gave the beholders to understand that he meant to remove the cause of their discontent; but bade them first view that lady, whom he held with his left hand, and say whether any of them, possessed of a jewel so rare and precious, would for any cause forego her; to which they answered that he had great reason for his affection toward her. To this the emperor replied that he would convince them that he was yet master of himself. And having so said, presently, with one of his hands catching the fair Greek by the hair of the head, and drawing his falchion with the other, he, at one blow, struck off her head, to the great terror of them all; and having so done, he said unto them, "Now by this judge whether your emperor is able to bridle his affections or not."—Hawkins'sLife of Johnson.
Mahomet the Great, first emperor of the Turks, in the year 1453 laid siege to the city of Constantinople, then possessed by the Greeks, and, after an obstinate resistance, took and sacked it. Among the many young women whom the commanders thought fit to lay hands on and present to him was one named Irene, a Greek, of incomparable beauty and such rare perfection of body and mind, that the emperor, becoming enamored of her, neglected the care of his government and empire for two whole years, and thereby so exasperated the Janizaries, that they mutinied and threatened to dethrone him. To prevent this mischief, Mustapha Bassa, a person of great credit with him, undertook to represent to him the great danger to which he lay exposed by the indulgence of his passion: he called to his remembrance the character, actions, and achievements of his predecessors, and the state of his government; and, in short, so roused him from his lethargy, that he took a horrible resolution to silence the clamors of his people by the sacrifice of this admirable creature. Accordingly, he commanded her to be dressed and adorned in the richest manner that she and her attendants could devise, and against a certain hour issued orders for the nobility and leaders of his army to attend him in the great hall of his palace. When they were all assembled, himself appeared with great pomp and magnificence, leading his captive by the hand, unconscious of guilt and ignorant of his design. With a furious and menacing look, he gave the beholders to understand that he meant to remove the cause of their discontent; but bade them first view that lady, whom he held with his left hand, and say whether any of them, possessed of a jewel so rare and precious, would for any cause forego her; to which they answered that he had great reason for his affection toward her. To this the emperor replied that he would convince them that he was yet master of himself. And having so said, presently, with one of his hands catching the fair Greek by the hair of the head, and drawing his falchion with the other, he, at one blow, struck off her head, to the great terror of them all; and having so done, he said unto them, "Now by this judge whether your emperor is able to bridle his affections or not."—Hawkins'sLife of Johnson.
1720–21.Tatler, Spectator.It is to be hoped that the reader needs no introduction to these papers or to the account of them in Macaulay's essay on Addison.
1730.Rambler.A suitable title for a series of moral discourses? At the time of the undertaking he composed a prayer to the effect that he might in this way promote the glory of Almighty God and the salvation both of himself and others.—Prayers and Meditations, p. 9, quoted by Boswell.
1731–32.Boswell considers it a strong confirmation of the truth of Johnson's remark that "a man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly to it," that "notwithstanding his constitutional indolence, his depression of spirits, and his labour in carrying on his Dictionary, he answered the stated calls of the press twice a week from the stores of his mind during all that time."
1734.Richardson.Samuel Richardson. When he was a boy, the girls employed him to write love letters for them; and his novels, written in after life, also took the form of letters. He wrotePamela, or Virtue Rewarded;Clarissa Harlowe, or the History of a Young Lady; andThe History of Sir Charles Grandison(about 1750). Johnson called him "an author who has enlarged the knowledge of human nature and taught the passions to move at the command of virtue."
182.Young.Johnson held a high opinion of Edward Young's most famous work,Night Thoughts, and Boswell writes, "No book whatever can be recommended to young persons, with better hopes of seasoning their minds withvital religion, than Young'sNight Thoughts."—Hartley.David Hartley, prominent as a psychologist, and as a physician benevolent and studious. For intimate friends he chose such men as Warburton and Young.
183.Dodington.A member of Parliament who patronized men of letters and was complimented by Young and Fielding.
187.Frederic.When Frederick, Prince of Wales, became the center of the opposition to Walpole, in 1737, among the leaders of his political friends, called "the Leicester House Party,"—at that time Leicester House was the residence of the Prince of Wales,—were Chesterfield, William Pitt, and Bubb Dodington.
1825.In regard to the use of antiquated and hard words, for which Johnson was censured, he says inIdlerNo. 90, "He that thinks with more extent than another, will want words of larger meaning."
1830–32.brilliancy ... eloquence ... humour.Johnson wrote many of these discourses so hastily, says Boswell, that he did not even read them over before they were printed. Boswell continues: "Sir Joshua Reynolds once asked him by what means he had attained his extraordinary accuracy and flow of language. He told him, that he had early laid it down as a fixed rule to do his best on every occasion, andin every company: to impart whatever he knew in the most forcible language he could put it in; and that by constant practice, and never suffering any careless expressions to escape him, or attempting to deliver his thoughts without arranging them in the clearest manner, it became habitual to him." One man who knew Johnson intimately observed "that he always talked as if he was talking upon oath."
1832–1910.Cf. Johnson's comment: "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison."—Boswell, 1750.
191–2.Sir Roger, etc. These two sets of allusions offer a good excuse for handling complete editions of theSpectatorand theRambler.
1921.the Gunnings."The beautiful Misses Gunning," two sisters, were born in Ireland. They went to London in 1751, were continually followed by crowds, and were called "the handsomest women alive."—Lady Mary.Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Let one of the encyclopædias introduce you to this relative of Fielding who laughed at Pope when he made love to her, and whose wit had full play in the brilliant letters from Constantinople which added greatly to her reputation as an independent thinker.
1923–24.the Monthly Review.This Whig periodical would not appeal to Johnson as did its rival, theCritical Review. It was theMonthlythat Goldsmith did hack work for. Smollett wrote for the other. See Irving'sLife of Goldsmith, Chapter VII.
1931.It was published in 1755, price £4 10s., bound.
2017.The letter, which needs no comment, is as follows: