Dr. Johnson is one of the few men whose reputation is due, not so much to his writings (which are generally the source of all permanent renown in a literary man) as to his conversation and his peculiarities as recorded by his wonderful biographer—things which in most men are the source of a very limited and evanescent fame.
It is not intended here to dispute the conclusions of Macaulay that he was both a great and a good man, but merely to point out how little good work he has put forth to justify his prodigious reputation. For instance, he compiled a dictionary; and although it was never a very good dictionary, and is now quite obsolete, yet the memory of the tremendous stir it made has lasted down to the present time. He wrote some annotations of Shakespeare’s plays, which show that he had a very limited understanding of their meaning, yet his observations have been more generally quoted than those of commentators far more accurate and discerning. He entered the field of fiction and wrote “Rasselas,” and there are very few novels (if “Rasselas” can be called a novel at all) which upon their intrinsic merits less deserve an extravagant reputation as one of the classics of our literature.
The plot is the slenderest possible. Rasselas,the fourth son of the emperor of Abyssinia, is confined within the “Happy Valley,” from which exit is impossible, and, wanting nothing, naturally suffers fromennui. He spends twenty months in fruitless imaginings, and then four months more in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves, when he is awakened to more vigorous exertion by hearing a maid who had broken a porcelain cup remark, “What cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.” Then for a few hours he “regretted his regret,” and from that time bent his whole mind to the means of escape. He spent ten months trying to find a way out (a job which would be laughed at by an able-bodied member of the Alpine Club) then he betook himself to an inventor of a flying machine, who of course came to grief. Finally a poet, named Imlac, told Rasselas of his extensive travels, and they received from the conies, who had “dug holes tending upwards in an oblique line,” a hint as to the means of escape, of which Dr. Johnson gives the following rather foggy description: “By piercing the mountain in the same direction, we will begin where the summit hangs over the middle part and labor upwards till we issue up behind the prominence.” The two now proceed to tunnel the mountain, and Nekayah, the prince’s sister, with her favorite maid, Pekuah, accompany them to the outside world. They journey to Cairo, where they engage in the search for happiness,—philosophy, the pastoral life, material prosperity, solitude,the life led “according to nature,” the splendor of courts, the modesty of humble life, marriage, and celibacy, all being successively examined and found wanting. They visit the pyramids, and here Pekuah is carried away by a band of Arabs, but she is afterwards ransomed and relates her adventures (which are not interesting) at considerable length. They admire the learning and happiness of a certain astronomer, but Imlac finds out that he is crazy; they consult an old man whose wisdom has deeply impressed them, but who can give them little comfort; they discuss the merits of conventual life; finally they visit the catacombs, where Imlac discourses on the nature of the soul; and at “the conclusion in which nothing is concluded” (for this is the title of the last chapter), Pekuah thinks she would like to be the prioress of a convent, Nekayah wants to learn all the sciences and found a college, Rasselas desires a little kingdom where he can administer justice, while Imlac and the astronomer (who has now recovered his right mind) “were contented to be driven along the stream of life without directing their course to any particular port.” They all know that none of their wishes can be gratified, so they resolve to go home. This conclusion might have been inserted almost anywhere else in the book with equal propriety.
The story is a mere thread upon which is hung a succession of reflections and homilies, some of which are shallow, many commonplace and trite, and only a few are at the same time striking, original, and worthy of remembrance.
The author maintains the existence of ghosts because belief in them is supported by the “concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages and of all nations,” and such an opinion “could become universal only by its truth!”
There is very little humor to be found in the ponderous moralizing of this book. There is, however, a touch of quaint satire upon the theories of contemporary French philosophy, that deserves to be remembered. Rasselas is listening to a philosopher who advises his hearers to “throw away the incumbrance of precepts” and carry with them “this simple and intelligible maxim that ‘deviation from nature is deviation from happiness.’” He asks what it is to live according to nature, and the philosopher answers:
“‘To live according to nature is to act always with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity; to cooperate with the general disposition and tendency of the present system of things.’“The prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should understand less as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed and was silent; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied, and the rest vanquished, rose up and departed with the air of a man that had coöperated with the present system.”
“‘To live according to nature is to act always with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity; to cooperate with the general disposition and tendency of the present system of things.’
“The prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should understand less as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed and was silent; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied, and the rest vanquished, rose up and departed with the air of a man that had coöperated with the present system.”
The style of “Rasselas” (like that of everything Dr. Johnson wrote) is stilted and affected.In the Happy Valley “every blast shook spices from the rocks and every month dropped fruits.” Its inhabitants “wandered in the gardens of fragrance and slept in the fortresses of security.” When Rasselas reaches Cairo he tells us of the gilded youth of that metropolis, that “their mirth was without images, their laughter without motive.... The frown of power dejected and the eye of wisdom abashed them.”
Of a professor who there lectured on philosophy, Rasselas declares: “He speaks, and attention watches his lips. He reasons, and conviction closes his periods.” This might do in an oration, but it is pretty poor for a novel. But worst of all, Dr. Johnson puts into the mouth of the young and innocent Nekayah the following words upon the subject of marriage:
“When I see and reckon the various forms of connubial infelicity, the unexpected causes of lasting discord, the diversities of temper, the oppositions of opinion, the rude collisions of contrary desire where both are urged by violent impulses, the obstinate contests of disagreeable virtues where both are supported by consciousness of good intention, I am sometimes disposed to think with the severer casuists of most nations, that marriage is rather permitted than approved, and that none, but by the instigation of a passion too much indulged, entangle themselves with indissoluble compacts.”
“When I see and reckon the various forms of connubial infelicity, the unexpected causes of lasting discord, the diversities of temper, the oppositions of opinion, the rude collisions of contrary desire where both are urged by violent impulses, the obstinate contests of disagreeable virtues where both are supported by consciousness of good intention, I am sometimes disposed to think with the severer casuists of most nations, that marriage is rather permitted than approved, and that none, but by the instigation of a passion too much indulged, entangle themselves with indissoluble compacts.”
Readers who think that this sort of conversation is natural and beautiful ought to be fond of“Rasselas,” but those who do not will inevitably feel that it was too bad that the author of the great Dictionary had so intimate an acquaintance with so many words.