FOOTNOTES:[32]It is curious that Johnson, who was not exactly delicate in his manner of eating (see p.64), should be greatly upset by this. But he complained of the same thing of a waiter in Edinburgh.[33]See p.45.[34]Johnson produced an abridged edition in 1756.
[32]It is curious that Johnson, who was not exactly delicate in his manner of eating (see p.64), should be greatly upset by this. But he complained of the same thing of a waiter in Edinburgh.
[32]It is curious that Johnson, who was not exactly delicate in his manner of eating (see p.64), should be greatly upset by this. But he complained of the same thing of a waiter in Edinburgh.
[33]See p.45.
[33]See p.45.
[34]Johnson produced an abridged edition in 1756.
[34]Johnson produced an abridged edition in 1756.
For all his love of a post-chaise, Johnson was happiest in London. "You yourself, Sir," said Boswell when they were in the Hebrides "have never seen, till now, any thing but your native island." "Johnson.'But, Sir, by seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can shew.'Boswell.'You have not seen Pekin.'Johnson.'What is Pekin? Ten thousand Londoners woulddriveall the people of Pekin: they would drive them like deer.'"
The town, he said, was his element. He rejoiced in the "animated appearance" of Fleet Street and "the full tide of life" at Charing Cross,not so much because he loved shops and pavements better than fields and hedgerows, as because London held his friends, his books, and his amusements. Boswell once suggested that he himself might grow tired of the city if he lived continuously in it:
"Johnson.'Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford'"; and to the very end he found that "such conversation as London affords, could be found nowhere else."
So, in his last illness in November 1784, he came to London to die. A month later he was buried in Westminster Abbey; Edmund Burke and Bennet Langton helped to bear the pall and Dr Taylor read the service. His monument, which Reynolds did not wish to see in the overcrowded Abbey, was erected in St Paul's Cathedral, and it is fitting that the nation's memorial of Dr Johnson should be within sound of Fleet Street.
If London meant life to Johnson, it meant the life of England. His prejudice against foreigners was of the old-fashioned kind:
"Like the ancient Greeks and Romans, he allowed himself to look upon all nations but his own as barbarians.... If he was particularly prejudiced against the Scots, it was because they were more in his way; because he thought their success in England rather exceeded the due proportion of their real merit.... He was indeed, if I may beallowed the phrase, much of aJohn Bull; much of a blunttrue born Englishman."
Fleet Street in Johnson's dayFleet Street in Johnson's day
His hatred of the Whigs was life-long and violent—the first Whig, he said, was the Devil; but whatever may be thought of his political opinions, there can be no doubt of his patriotism. What did he mean by a patriot[35]? Here is his definition:
"Apatriotis he whose publick conduct is regulated by one single motive, the love of his country; who, as an agent in parliament, has for himself neither hope nor fear, neither kindness nor resentment, but refers everything to the common interest. A true patriot is no lavish promiser; he undertakes not to shorten parliament, to repeal laws.... Much less does he make a vague and indefinite promise of obeying the mandates of his constituents.... He considers himself as deputed to promote the publick good, and to preserve his constituents, with the rest of his countrymen, not only from being hurt by others, but from hurting themselves."
Johnson had no patience with a popular cry for liberty, such as was raised by the crowds that rallied round John Wilkes. "They make a rout" he said "aboutuniversalliberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, isprivateliberty."
Sir Adam Fergusson, a Scotch member ofparliament, once suggested that luxury 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.' ...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, I perceive you are a vile Whig. Why all this childish jealousy of the power of the crown? The crown has not power enough. When I say that all governments are alike, I consider that in no government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it. If a sovereign oppresses his people to a great degree, they will rise and cut off his head.'"
It was his contempt forpoliticalliberty that made him vehemently support the losing side in the American War. He regarded the colonists as rebels andTaxation no Tyrannywas the title of a pamphlet he wrote in support of the king's cause.
But what specially enraged him was that the cry of "liberty" should be raised by slave-owners. "How is it" he asked "that we hear the loudestyelpsfor liberty among the drivers of negroes?"
Nearly fifty years before the abolition of slavery was first discussed in Parliament, Johnson had maintained "the natural right of the negroes to liberty and independence." "An individual" he said "may, indeed, forfeit his liberty by a crime;but he cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty of his children."
Johnson's loyalty to the Crown was strengthened by an interview he had with George III in 1767. It was in the library at the Queen's house[36]:
"His Majesty enquired if he was then writing any thing.... Johnson said, he thought he had already done his part as a writer. 'I should have thought so too, (said the King,) if you had not written so well.'—Johnson observed to me, upon this, that 'No man could have paid a handsomer compliment; and it was fit for a King to pay. It was decisive.' When asked by another friend, at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, whether he made any reply to this high compliment, he answered, 'No, Sir. When the King had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to bandy civilities with my Sovereign.'"
Had he so chosen, Johnson might have entered Parliament. To the friends of the king, it was urged, he would be found a lamb, to his enemies a lion.
But Johnson knew that he was better fitted to be a public oracle in Fleet Street than to catch the Speaker's eye at Westminster.
A true-born Englishman, he extolled the English virtues of honesty and courage. Of the 'English common soldier' he wrote:
"Our nation may boast, beyond any other people in the world, of a kind of epidemick bravery, diffused equally through all its ranks. We can shewa peasantry of heroes, and fill our armies with clowns, whose courage may vie with that of their general."
"Sir," he said at another time "you know courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other."
He himself had no small measure of it. True, he had an "aweful dread of death, or rather 'of something after death,'" but "he feared nothing else, not even what might occasion death":
"One day ... when two large dogs were fighting, he went up to them, and beat them till they separated; and at another time, when told of the danger there was that a gun might burst if charged with many balls, he put in six or seven, and fired it off against a wall.... He told me himself that one night he was attacked in the street by four men, to whom he would not yield, but kept them all at bay, till the watch came up, and carried both him and them to the round-house. In the play-house at Lichfield, as Mr Garrick informed me, Johnson having for a moment quitted a chair which was placed for him between the side-scenes, a gentleman took possession of it, and when Johnson on his return civilly demanded his seat, rudely refused to give it up; upon which Johnson laid hold of it, and tossed him and the chair into the pit."
Certainly Boswell may be allowed the phrase "much of aJohn Bull."
Honesty of heart, truth in the inward parts, was with Johnson the one thing needful.
To him no fraud could be innocent; the security of human society depended on truth and was weakened by a man whose words were at variance with his practice.
"Every man" he said (and here John Bull spoke again) "has a right to utter what he thinks truth and every other man has a right to knock him down for it."
To stretch a point intalking, in the use of a conventional phrase, did not matter. Common politeness, or the course of argument might demand it. Did he not himself often 'talk for victory'?
What he insisted on was that men should not deceive themselves and others bythinkingfoolishly. "Clear yourmind" he said "of cant."
"Such," to quote Boswell for the last time, "wasSamuel Johnson." Though he was the foremost man of letters of his generation, it is not for his scholarship or his writings, but rather for his pluck and his patriotism, his humour and his oddities, his blunt common-sense and his large humanity, and, above all, for the expression of these qualities in his talk, that he is best loved and remembered. For to appreciate Johnson's talk one need not be literary; it is enough to be English.
FOOTNOTES:[35]When he made the often-quoted remark 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel' Johnson was referring to 'patriots' only in the party sense, to those who made patriotism a "cloak for self-interest."[36]Buckingham House, which stood on the site of the present Buckingham Palace.
[35]When he made the often-quoted remark 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel' Johnson was referring to 'patriots' only in the party sense, to those who made patriotism a "cloak for self-interest."
[35]When he made the often-quoted remark 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel' Johnson was referring to 'patriots' only in the party sense, to those who made patriotism a "cloak for self-interest."
[36]Buckingham House, which stood on the site of the present Buckingham Palace.
[36]Buckingham House, which stood on the site of the present Buckingham Palace.
Boswell'sJournal of a Tour to the Hebrideswas published in 1785 and reached a sixth edition in 1813.
Many of the later editors of Boswell have included theTourin their editions of theLife.
It is published as a separate volume in Dent'sTemple Classics, with a few notes by Arnold Glover (1898) and is contained in a volume of Dent'sEveryman's Library.
TheLifeappeared in two quarto volumes in 1791 and went through ten editions before the much-criticised edition of J. W. Croker in 1831. The sixth edition, 1811, edited by Malone, is the safest of the early editions. It is not disfigured by the liberties which Croker took with Boswell's text.
Later editions are almost innumerable.
Napier's edition of 1884 included some valuable new material, but the incomparable edition for students is that of George Birkbeck Hill, published by the Oxford University Press in 1887. It is in six volumes, of which four contain theLife, one theTour, and one the monumental index to which every student of Johnson must pay his debt of gratitude.
Among modern editions the following may be noted:
Arnold Glover: 6 volumes (text of 1811), annotated. Dent. 1901.
Roger Ingpen: 2 volumes, illustrated. Pitman. 1907.
Among the cheapest and handiest modern reprints are:
TheOxfordedition. (Two volumes; or, on India paper, in one volume.)
TheGlobeedition. (One volume; double columns of print. Macmillan.)
TheEverymanedition. (Two volumes. Dent.)
The contemporary authorities for Johnson's life, other than Boswell, are Sir John Hawkins'sLife, Mrs Piozzi'sAnecdotes, Fanny Burney'sDiary, and anecdotes by many others.
Most of these were collected by the late Dr Birkbeck Hill in his two volumes ofJohnsonian Miscellanies(Oxford, 1897); two volumes of Johnson'sLetterswere also published by the same editor in 1892.
Of modern criticism on Johnson the following may be recommended:
Lord Macaulay:Boswell's Life of Johnson. 1831.
Article on Johnson in theEncyclopaedia Britannica, 1856.
Thomas Carlyle:Boswell's Life of Johnson. 1832.
Sir Leslie Stephen:Samuel Johnson. (English Men of Lettersseries. Macmillan, 1878.)
G. B. Hill:Dr Johnson, His Friends and His Critics. (1878.)
Sir Walter Raleigh:Six Essays on Johnson. (Oxford, 1910.)
Lieut.-Col. F. Grant:Life and Writings of Samuel Johnson, with a bibliography by J. P. Anderson. (Great Writersseries. Walter Scott Co.)
Johnson'sCollected Works, of which there were many editions, e.g. the Oxford edition (Works, 9 vols,Debates, 2 vols, 1825), are easily obtainable second-hand, as are alsoThe Lives of the PoetsandThe Rambler.
The Lives of the PoetsandRasselaswere edited with notes by Dr Birkbeck Hill for the Oxford University Press.
Johnson'sPoems, together with the poetry of Goldsmith, Gray, and Collins, are published in a handy form, with introduction and notes by Colonel T. Methuen Ward, in theMuses' Libraryseries (Routledge, 1905).
A Bibliography of Samuel Johnson, by W. P. Courtney, was published by the Oxford University Press in 1915.
CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BYJ. B. PEACE, M.A.,AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Transcriber's NoteObvious punctuation errors were corrected.In the list of illustrations, one is entitled: "Boswell standing firm to his post" BUT the caption under the illustration in the text is "Boswell holding firm to his post"
Obvious punctuation errors were corrected.
In the list of illustrations, one is entitled: "Boswell standing firm to his post" BUT the caption under the illustration in the text is "Boswell holding firm to his post"