FOOTNOTE:

[1] The charges centred in the president's removal of Secretary

Stanton, his _ad interim_ appointment of Lorenzo Thomas, his campaign

speeches in 1866, and the relation of these three things to the

Tenure of Office Act. Of the eleven charges of impeachment the first

was that Stanton's removal was contrary to the Tenure of Office Act;

the second, that the appointment of Thomas was a violation of the

same law; the third, that the appointment violated the Constitution;

the fourth, that Johnson conspired with Thomas "to hinder and prevent

Edwin M. Stanton ... from holding ... office of secretary for the

department of war"; the fifth, that Johnson had conspired with Thomas

to "prevent and hinder the execution" of the Tenure of Office Act;

the sixth, that he had conspired with Thomas "to seize, take and

possess the property of the United States in the department of war,"

in violation of the Tenure of Office Act; the seventh, that this

action was "a high misdemeanour"; the eighth, that the appointment of

Thomas was "with intent unlawfully to control the disbursements of

the moneys appropriated for the military service and for the

department of war"; the ninth, that he had instructed Major-General

Emory, in command of the department of Washington, that an act of

1867 appropriating money for the army was unconstitutional; the

tenth, that his speeches in 1866 constituted "a high misdemeanour in

office"; and the eleventh, the "omnibus" article, that he had

committed high misdemeanours in saying that the 39th Congress was not

an authorized Congress, that its legislation was not binding upon

him, and that it was incapable of proposing amendments. The actual

trial began on the 30th of March (from the 5th of March it was

adjourned to the 23rd, and on the 24th of March to the 30th). On the

16th of May, after sessions in which the Senate repeatedly reversed

the rulings of the chief justice as to the admission of evidence, in

which the president's counsel showed that their case was excellently

prepared and the prosecuting counsel appealed in general to political

passions rather than to judicial impartiality, the eleventh article

was voted on and impeachment failed by a single vote (35 to 19; 7

republicans and 12 democrats voting "Not guilty") of the necessary

two-thirds. After ten days' interval, during which B. F. Butler of

the prosecuting counsel attempted to prove that corruption had been

practised on some of those voting "Not guilty," on the 26th of May a

vote was taken on the second and third articles with the same result

as on the eleventh article. There was no vote on the other articles.

JOHNSON, BENJAMIN (c. 1665-1742), English actor, was first a scene

painter, then acted in the provinces, and appeared in London in 1695 at

Drury Lane after Betterton's defection. He was the original Captain

Driver in _Oronooko_ (1696), Captain Fireball in Farquhar's _Sir Harry

Wildair_ (1701), Sable in Steele's _Funeral_ (1702), &c.; as the First

Gravedigger in _Hamlet_ and in several characters in the plays of Ben

Jonson he was particularly good. He succeeded, also, to Thomas Doggett's

rôles.

JOHNSON, EASTMAN (1824-1906), American artist, was born at Lovell,

Maine, on the 29th of July 1824. He studied at Düsseldorf, Paris, Rome

and The Hague, the last city being his home for four years. In 1860 he

was elected to the National Academy of Design, New York. A distinguished

portrait and genre painter, he made distinctively American themes his

own, depicting the negro, fisherfolk and farm life with unusual

interest. Such pictures as "Old Kentucky Home" (1867), "Husking Bee"

(1876), "Cranberry Harvest, Nantucket" (1880), and his portrait group

"The Funding Bill" (1881) achieved a national reputation. Among his

sitters were many prominent men, including Daniel Webster; Presidents

Hayes, Arthur, Cleveland and Harrison; William M. Evarts, Charles J.

Folger; Emerson, Longfellow, Hawthorne, James McCosh, Noah Porter and

Sir Edward Archbald. He died in New York City on the 5th of April 1906.

JOHNSON, REVERDY (1796-1876), American political leader and jurist, was

born at Annapolis, Maryland, on the 21st of May 1796. His father, John

Johnson (1770-1824), was a distinguished lawyer, who served in both

houses of the Maryland General Assembly, as attorney-general of the

state (1806-1811), as a judge of the court of appeals (1811-1821), and

as a chancellor of his state (1821-1824). Reverdy graduated from St

John's college in 1812. He then studied law in his father's office, was

admitted to the bar in 1815 and began to practise in Upper Marlborough,

Prince George's county. In 1817 he removed to Baltimore, where he became

the professional associate of Luther Martin, William Pinkney and Roger

B. Taney; with Thomas Harris he reported the decisions of the court of

appeals in _Harris and Johnson's Reports_ (1820-1827); and in 1818 he

was appointed chief commissioner of insolvent debtors. From 1821 to 1825

he was a state senator; from 1825 to 1845 he devoted himself to his

practice; from 1845 to 1849, as a Whig, he was a member of the United

States Senate; and from March 1849 to July 1850 he was attorney-general

of the United States. In 1856 he became identified with the conservative

wing of the Democratic party, and four years later supported Stephen A.

Douglas for the presidency. In 1861 he was a delegate from Maryland to

the peace convention at Washington; in 1861-1862 he was a member of the

Maryland House of Delegates. After the capture of New Orleans he was

commissioned by Lincoln to revise the decisions of the military

commandant, General B. F. Butler, in regard to foreign governments, and

reversed all those decisions to the entire satisfaction of the

administration. In 1863 he again took his seat in the United States

Senate. In 1868 he was appointed minister to Great Britain and soon

after his arrival in England negotiated the Johnson-Clarendon treaty for

the settlement of disputes arising out of the Civil War; this, however,

the Senate refused to ratify, and he returned home on the accession of

General U. S. Grant to the presidency. Again resuming his practice he

was engaged by the government in the prosecution of Ku-Klux cases. He

died on the 10th of February 1876 at Annapolis. He repudiated the

doctrine of secession, and pleaded for compromise and conciliation.

Opposed to the Reconstruction measures, he voted for them on the ground

that it was better to accept than reject them, since they were probably

the best that could be obtained. As a lawyer he was engaged during his

later years in most of the especially important cases in the Supreme

Court of the United States and in the courts of Maryland.

JOHNSON, RICHARD (1573-1659?), English romance writer, was baptized in

London on the 24th of May 1573. His most famous romance is The _Famous

Historie of the Seaven Champions of Christendom_ (1596?). The success of

this book was so great that the author added a second and a third part

in 1608 and 1616. His other stories include: _The Nine Worthies of

London_ (1592); _The Pleasant Walks of Moorefields_ (1607); _The

Pleasant Conceites of Old Hobson_ (1607), the hero being a well-known

haberdasher in the Poultry; _The Most Pleasant History of Tom a

Lincolne_ (1607); _A Remembrance of ... Robert Earle of Salisbury_

(1612); _Looke on Me, London_ (1613); _The History of Tom Thumbe_

(1621). _The Crown Garland of Golden Roses ... set forth in Many

Pleasant new Songs and Sonnets_ (1612) was reprinted for the Percy

Society (1842 and 1845).

JOHNSON, RICHARD MENTOR (1781-1850), ninth vice-president of the

United States, was born at Bryant's Station, Kentucky, on the 17th of

October 1781. He was admitted to the bar in 1800, and became prominent

as a lawyer and Democratic politician, serving in the Federal House of

Representatives and in the Senate for many years. From 1837 to 1841 he

was vice-president of the United States, to which position he was

elected over Francis Granger, by the Senate, none of the four candidates

for the vice-presidency having received a majority of the electoral

votes. The opposition to Johnson within the party greatly increased

during his term, and the Democratic national convention of 1840 adopted

the unprecedented course of refusing to nominate anyone for the

vice-presidency. In the ensuing election Johnson received most of the

Democratic electoral votes, but was defeated by the Whig candidate, John

Tyler. He died in Frankfort, Kentucky, on the 19th of November 1850.

JOHNSON, SAMUEL (1709-1784), English writer and lexicographer, was the

son of Michael Johnson (1656-1731), bookseller and magistrate of

Lichfield, who married in 1706 Sarah Ford (1669-1759). Michael's

abilities and attainments seem to have been considerable. He was so well

acquainted with the contents of the volumes which he exposed for sale

that the country rectors of Staffordshire and Worcestershire thought him

an oracle on points of learning. Between him and the clergy, indeed,

there was a strong religious and political sympathy. He was a zealous

churchman, and, though he had qualified himself for municipal office by

taking the oaths to the sovereigns in possession, was to the last a

Jacobite in heart. The social position of Samuel's paternal grandfather,

William Johnson, remains obscure; his mother was the daughter of

Cornelius Ford, "a little Warwickshire Gent."

At a house (now the Johnson Museum) in the Market Square, Lichfield,

Samuel Johnson was born on the 18th of September 1709 and baptized on

the same day at St Mary's, Lichfield. In the child the physical,

intellectual and moral peculiarities which afterwards distinguished the

man were plainly discernible: great muscular strength accompanied by

much awkwardness and many infirmities; great quickness of parts, with a

morbid propensity to sloth and procrastination; a kind and generous

heart, with a gloomy and irritable temper. He had inherited from his

ancestors a scrofulous taint, and his parents were weak enough to

believe that the royal touch would cure him. In his third year he was

taken up to London, inspected by the court surgeon, prayed over by the

court chaplains and stroked and presented with a piece of gold by Queen

Anne. Her hand was applied in vain. The boy's features, which were

originally noble and not irregular, were distorted by his malady. His

cheeks were deeply scarred. He lost for a time the sight of one eye; and

he saw but very imperfectly with the other. But the force of his mind

overcame every impediment. Indolent as he was, he acquired knowledge

with such ease and rapidity that at every school (such as those at

Lichfield and Stourbridge) to which he was sent he was soon the best

scholar. From sixteen to eighteen he resided at home, and was left to

his own devices. He learned much at this time, though his studies were

without guidance and without plan. He ransacked his father's shelves,

dipped into a multitude of books, read what was interesting, and passed

over what was dull. An ordinary lad would have acquired little or no

useful knowledge in such a way; but much that was dull to ordinary lads

was interesting to Samuel. He read little Greek; for his proficiency in

that language was not such that he could take much pleasure in the

masters of Attic poetry and eloquence. But he had left school a good

Latinist, and he soon acquired an extensive knowledge of Latin

literature. He was peculiarly attracted by the works of the great

restorers of learning. Once, while searching for some apples, he found a

huge folio volume of Petrarch's works. The name excited his curiosity,

and he eagerly devoured hundreds of pages. Indeed, the diction and

versification of his own Latin compositions show that he had paid at

least as much attention to modern copies from the antique as to the

original models.

While he was thus irregularly educating himself, his family was sinking

into hopeless poverty. Old Michael Johnson was much better qualified to

pore over books, and to talk about them, than to trade in them. His

business declined; his debts increased; it was with difficulty that the

daily expenses of his household were defrayed. It was out of his power

to support his son at either university; but a wealthy neighbour offered

assistance; and, in reliance on promises which proved to be of very

little value, Samuel was entered at Pembroke College, Oxford. When the

young scholar presented himself to the rulers of that society, they were

amazed not more by his ungainly figure and eccentric manners than by the

quantity of extensive and curious information which he had picked up

during many months of desultory but not unprofitable study. On the first

day of his residence he surprised his teachers by quoting Macrobius; and

one of the most learned among them declared that he had never known a

freshman of equal attainments.

At Oxford Johnson resided barely over two years, possibly less. He was

poor, even to raggedness; and his appearance excited a mirth and a pity

which were equally intolerable to his haughty spirit. He was driven from

the quadrangle of Christ Church by the sneering looks which the members

of that aristocratical society cast at the holes in his shoes. Some

charitable person placed a new pair at his door; but he spurned them

away in a fury. Distress made him, not servile, but reckless and

ungovernable. No opulent gentleman commoner, panting for one-and-twenty,

could have treated the academical authorities with more gross

disrespect. The needy scholar was generally to be seen under the gate of

Pembroke, a gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing a circle of

lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and dirty linen, his wit

and audacity gave him an undisputed ascendancy. In every mutiny against

the discipline of the college he was the ringleader. Much was pardoned,

however, to a youth so highly distinguished by abilities and

acquirements. He had early made himself known by turning Pope's

"Messiah" into Latin verse. The style and rhythm, indeed, were not

exactly Virgilian; but the translation found many admirers, and was read

with pleasure by Pope himself.

The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the ordinary course of

things, have become a Bachelor of Arts; but he was at the end of his

resources. Those promises of support on which he had relied had not been

kept. His family could do nothing for him. His debts to Oxford tradesmen

were small indeed, yet larger than he could pay. In the autumn of 1731

he was under the necessity of quitting the university without a degree.

In the following winter his father died. The old man left but a

pittance; and of that pittance almost the whole was appropriated to the

support of his widow. The property to which Samuel succeeded amounted to

no more than twenty pounds.

His life, during the thirty years which followed, was one hard struggle

with poverty. The misery of that struggle needed no aggravation, but was

aggravated by the sufferings of an unsound body and an unsound mind.

Before the young man left the university, his hereditary malady had

broken forth in a singularly cruel form. He had become an incurable

hypochondriac. He said long after that he had been mad all his life, or

at least not perfectly sane; and, in truth, eccentricities less strange

than his have often been thought ground sufficient for absolving felons

and for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his gestures, his mutterings,

sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified people who did not know him.

At a dinner table he would, in a fit of absence, stoop down and twitch

off a lady's shoe. He would amaze a drawing-room by suddenly ejaculating

a clause of the Lord's Prayer. He would conceive an unintelligible

aversion to a particular alley, and perform a great circuit rather than

see the hateful place. He would set his heart on touching every post in

the streets through which he walked. If by any chance he missed a post,

he would go back a hundred yards and repair the omission. Under the

influence of his disease, his senses became morbidly torpid, and his

imagination morbidly active. At one time he would stand poring on the

town clock without being able to tell the hour. At another he would

distinctly hear his mother, who was many miles off, calling him by his

name. But this was not the worst. A deep melancholy took possession of

him, and gave a dark tinge to all his views of human nature and of human

destiny. Such wretchedness as he endured has driven many men to shoot

themselves or drown themselves. But he was under no temptation to commit

suicide. He was sick of life; but he was afraid of death; and he

shuddered at every sight or sound which reminded him of the inevitable

hour. In religion he found but little comfort during his long and

frequent fits of dejection; for his religion partook of his own

character. The light from heaven shone on him indeed, but not in a

direct line, or with its own pure splendour. The rays had to struggle

through a disturbing medium; they reached him refracted, dulled and

discoloured by the thick gloom which had settled on his soul, and,

though they might be sufficiently clear to guide him, were too dim to

cheer him.

With such infirmities of body and of mind, he was left, at

two-and-twenty, to fight his way through the world. He remained during

about five years in the midland counties. At Lichfield, his birthplace

and his early home, he had inherited some friends and acquired others.

He was kindly noticed by Henry Hervey, a gay officer of noble family,

who happened to be quartered there. Gilbert Walmesley, registrar of the

ecclesiastical court of the diocese, a man of distinguished parts,

learning and knowledge of the world, did himself honour by patronizing

the young adventurer, whose repulsive person, unpolished manners and

squalid garb moved many of the petty aristocracy of the neighbourhood to

laughter or disgust. At Lichfield, however, Johnson could find no way of

earning a livelihood. He became usher of a grammar school in

Leicestershire; he resided as a humble companion in the house of a

country gentleman; but a life of dependence was insupportable to his

haughty spirit. He repaired to Birmingham, and there earned a few

guineas by literary drudgery. In that town he printed a translation,

little noticed at the time, and long forgotten, of a Latin book about

Abyssinia. He then put forth proposals for publishing by subscription

the poems of Politian, with notes containing a history of modern Latin

verse; but subscriptions did not come in, and the volume never appeared.

While leading this vagrant and miserable life, Johnson fell in love. The

object of his passion was Mrs Elizabeth Porter (1688-1752), widow of

Harry Porter (d. 1734), whose daughter Lucy was born only six years

after Johnson himself. To ordinary spectators the lady appeared to be a

short, fat, coarse woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed in gaudy

colours, and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graces which were

not exactly those of the Queensberrys and Lepels. To Johnson, however,

whose passions were strong, whose eyesight was too weak to distinguish

rouge from natural bloom, and who had seldom or never been in the same

room with a woman of real fashion, his Tetty, as he called her, was the

most beautiful, graceful and accomplished of her sex. That his

admiration was unfeigned cannot be doubted; she had, however, a jointure

of £600 and perhaps a little more; she came of a good family, and her

son Jervis (d. 1763) commanded H.M.S. "Hercules." The marriage, in spite

of occasional wranglings, proved happier than might have been expected.

The lover continued to be under the illusions of the wedding-day (July

9, 1735) till the lady died in her sixty-fourth year. On her monument at

Bromley he placed an inscription extolling the charms of her person and

of her manners; and when, long after her decease, he had occasion to

mention her, he exclaimed with a tenderness half ludicrous, half

pathetic, "Pretty creature!"

His marriage made it necessary for him to exert himself more strenuously

than he had hitherto done. He took a house at Edial near Lichfield and

advertised for pupils. But eighteen months passed away, and only three

pupils came to his academy. The "faces" that Johnson habitually made

(probably nervous contortions due to his disorder) may well have alarmed

parents. Good scholar though he was, these twitchings had lost him

usherships in 1735 and 1736. David Garrick, who was one of the pupils,

used, many years later, to throw the best company of London into

convulsions of laughter by mimicking the master and his lady.

At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, determined to

seek his fortune in London as a literary adventurer. He set out with a

few guineas, three acts of his tragedy of _Irene_ in manuscript, and two

or three letters of introduction from his friend Walmesley. Never since

literature became a calling in England had it been a less gainful

calling than at the time when Johnson took up his residence in London.

In the preceding generation a writer of eminent merit was sure to be

munificently rewarded by the Government. The least that he could expect

was a pension or a sinecure place; and, if he showed any aptitude for

politics, he might hope to be a member of parliament, a lord of the

treasury, an ambassador, a secretary of state. But literature had ceased

to flourish under the patronage of the great, and had not yet begun to

flourish under the patronage of the public. One man of letters, indeed,

Pope, had acquired by his pen what was then considered as a handsome

fortune, and lived on a footing of equality with nobles and ministers of

state. But this was a solitary exception. Even an author whose

reputation was established, and whose works were popular--such an author

as Thomson, whose _Seasons_ was in every library, such an author as

Fielding, whose _Pasquin_ had had a greater run than any drama since

_The Beggar's Opera_--was sometimes glad to obtain, by pawning his best

coat, the means of dining on tripe at a cookshop underground, where he

could wipe his hands, after his greasy meal, on the back of a

Newfoundland dog. It is easy, therefore, to imagine what humiliations

and privations must have awaited the novice who had still to earn a

name. One of the publishers to whom Johnson applied for employment

measured with a scornful eye that athletic though uncouth frame, and

exclaimed, "You had better get a porter's knot and carry trunks." Nor

was the advice bad, for a porter was likely to be as plentifully fed,

and as comfortably lodged, as a poet.

Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson was able to form any

literary connexion from which he could expect more than bread for the

day which was passing over him. He never forgot the generosity with

which Hervey, who was now residing in London, relieved his wants during

this time of trial. "Harry Hervey," said Johnson many years later, "was

a vicious man; but he was very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey, I

shall love him." At Hervey's table Johnson sometimes enjoyed feasts

which were made more agreeable by contrast. But in general he dined, and

thought that he dined well, on sixpennyworth of meat and a pennyworth of

bread at an alehouse near Drury Lane.

The effect of the privations and sufferings which he endured at this

time was discernible to the last in his temper and his deportment. His

manners had never been courtly. They now became almost savage. Being

frequently under the necessity of wearing shabby coats and dirty shirts,

he became a confirmed sloven. Being often very hungry when he sat down

to his meals, he contracted a habit of eating with ravenous greediness.

Even to the end of his life, and even at the tables of the great, the

sight of food affected him as it affects wild beasts and birds of prey.

His taste in cookery, formed in subterranean ordinaries and _à la mode_

beef shops, was far from delicate. Whenever he was so fortunate as to

have near him a hare that had been kept too long, or a meat pie made

with rancid butter, he gorged himself with such violence that his veins

swelled and the moisture broke out on his forehead. The affronts which

his poverty emboldened stupid and low-minded men to offer to him would

have broken a mean spirit into sycophancy, but made him rude even to

ferocity. Unhappily the insolence which, while it was defensive, was

pardonable, and in some sense respectable, accompanied him into

societies where he was treated with courtesy and kindness. He was

repeatedly provoked into striking those who had taken liberties with

him. All the sufferers, however, were wise enough to abstain from

talking about their beatings, except Osborne, the most rapacious and

brutal of booksellers, who proclaimed everywhere that he had been

knocked down by the huge fellow whom he had hired to puff the Harleian

Library.

About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in London he was

fortunate enough to obtain regular employment from Edward Cave (q.v.) on

the _Gentleman's Magazine_. That periodical, just entering on the ninth

year of its long existence, was the only one in the kingdom which then

had what would now be called a large circulation. Johnson was engaged to

write the speeches in the "Reports of the Debates of the Senate of

Lilliput" (see REPORTING), under which thin disguise the proceedings of

parliament were published. He was generally furnished with notes, meagre

indeed and inaccurate, of what had been said; but sometimes he had to

find arguments and eloquence both for the ministry and for the

opposition. He was himself a Tory, not from rational conviction--for his

serious opinion was that one form of government was just as good or as

bad as another--but from mere passion, such as inflamed the Capulets

against the Montagues, or the Blues of the Roman circus against the

Greens. In his infancy he had heard so much talk about the villainies of

the Whigs, and the dangers of the Church, that he had become a furious

partisan when he could scarcely speak. Before he was three he had

insisted on being taken to hear Sacheverel preach at Lichfield

Cathedral, and had listened to the sermon with as much respect and

probably with as much intelligence, as any Staffordshire squire in the

congregation. The work which had been begun in the nursery had been

completed by the university. Oxford, when Johnson resided there, was the

most Jacobitical place in England; and Pembroke was one of the most

Jacobitical colleges in Oxford. The prejudices which he brought up to

London were scarcely less absurd than those of his own Tom Tempest.

Charles II. and James II. were two of the best kings that ever reigned.

Laud was a prodigy of parts and learning over whose tomb Art and Genius

still continued to weep. Hampden deserved no more honourable name than

that of the "zealot of rebellion." Even the ship-money Johnson would not

pronounce to have been an unconstitutional impost. Under a government

which allowed to the people an unprecedented liberty of speech and

action, he fancied that he was a slave. He hated Dissenters and

stock-jobbers, the excise and the army, septennial parliaments, and

Continental connexions. He long had an aversion to the Scots, an

aversion of which he could not remember the commencement, but which, he

owned, had probably originated in his abhorrence of the conduct of the

nation during the Great Rebellion. It is easy to guess in what manner

debates on great party questions were likely to be reported by a man

whose judgment was so much disordered by party spirit. A show of

fairness was indeed necessary to the prosperity of the _Magazine_. But

Johnson long afterwards owned that, though he had saved appearances, he

had taken care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it; and,

in fact, every passage which has lived, every passage which bears the

marks of his higher faculties, is put into the mouth of some member of

the opposition.

A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these obscure labours, he

published a work which at once placed him high among the writers of his

age. It is probable that what he had suffered during his first year in

London had often reminded him of some parts of the satire in which

Juvenal had described the misery and degradation of a needy man of

letters, lodged among the pigeons' nests in the tottering garrets which

overhung the streets of Rome. Pope's admirable imitations of Horace's

_Satires and Epistles_ had recently appeared, were in every hand, and

were by many readers thought superior to the originals. What Pope had

done for Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juvenal.

Johnson's _London_ appeared without his name in May 1738. He received

only ten guineas for this stately and vigorous poem; but the sale was

rapid and the success complete. A second edition was required within a

week. Those small critics who are always desirous to lower established

reputations ran about proclaiming that the anonymous satirist was

superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department of literature. It

ought to be remembered, to the honour of Pope, that he joined heartily

in the applause with which the appearance of a rival genius was

welcomed. He made inquiries about the author of _London_. Such a man, he

said, could not long be concealed. The name was soon discovered; and

Pope, with great kindness, exerted himself to obtain an academical

degree and the mastership of a grammar school for the poor young poet.

The attempt failed, and Johnson remained a bookseller's hack.

It does not appear that these two men, the most eminent writer of the

generation which was going out, and the most eminent writer of the

generation which was coming in, ever saw each other. They lived in very

different circles, one surrounded by dukes and earls, the other by

starving pamphleteers and index-makers. Among Johnson's associates at

this time may be mentioned Boyse, who, when his shirts were pledged,

scrawled Latin verses sitting up in bed with his arms through two holes

in his blanket, who composed very respectable sacred poetry when he was

sober, and who was at last run over by a hackney coach when he was

drunk; Hoole, surnamed the metaphysical tailor, who, instead of

attending to his measures, used to trace geometrical diagrams on the

board where he sat cross-legged; and the penitent impostor, George

Psalmanazar, who, after poring all day, in a humble lodging, on the

folios of Jewish rabbis and Christian fathers, indulged himself at night

with literary and theological conversation at an alehouse in the City.

But the most remarkable of the persons with whom at this time Johnson

consorted was Richard Savage, an earl's son, a shoemaker's apprentice,

who had seen life in all its forms, who had feasted among blue ribands

in St James's Square, and had lain with fifty pounds weight of irons on

his legs in the condemned ward of Newgate. This man had, after many

vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last into abject and hopeless poverty.

His pen had failed him. His patrons had been taken away by death, or

estranged by the riotous profusion with which he squandered their

bounty, and the ungrateful insolence with which he rejected their

advice. He now lived by begging. He dined on venison and champagne

whenever he had been so fortunate as to borrow a guinea. If his questing

had been unsuccessful, he appeased the rage of hunger with some scraps

of broken meat, and lay down to rest under the piazza of Covent Garden

in warm weather, and, in cold weather, as near as he could get to the

furnace of a glass house. Yet in his misery he was still an agreeable

companion. He had an inexhaustible store of anecdotes about that gay and

brilliant world from which he was now an outcast. He had observed the

great men of both parties in hours of careless relaxation, had seen the

leaders of opposition without the mask of patriotism, and had heard the

prime minister roar with laughter and tell stories not over-decent.

During some months Savage lived in the closest familiarity with Johnson;

and then the friends parted, not without tears. Johnson remained in

London to drudge for Cave. Savage went to the west of England, lived

there as he had lived everywhere, and in 1743 died, penniless and

heartbroken, in Bristol Gaol.

Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was strongly excited

about his extraordinary character and his not less extraordinary

adventures, a life of him appeared widely different from the catchpenny

lives of eminent men which were then a staple article of manufacture in

Grub Street. The style was indeed deficient in ease and variety; and the

writer was evidently too partial to the Latin element of our language.

But the little work, with all its faults, was a masterpiece. No finer

specimen of literary biography existed in any language, living or dead;

and a discerning critic might have confidently predicted that the author

was destined to be the founder of a new school of English eloquence.

The _Life of Savage_ was anonymous; but it was well known in literary

circles that Johnson was the writer. During the three years which

followed, he produced no important work; but he was not, and indeed

could not be, idle. The fame of his abilities and learning continued to

grow. Warburton pronounced him a man of parts and genius; and the praise

of Warburton was then no light thing. Such was Johnson's reputation

that, in 1747, several eminent booksellers combined to employ him in the

arduous work of preparing a _Dictionary of the English Language_, in two

folio volumes. The sum which they agreed to pay him was only fifteen

hundred guineas; and out of this sum he had to pay several poor men of

letters who assisted him in the humbler parts of his task.

The prospectus of the _Dictionary_ he addressed to the earl of

Chesterfield. Chesterfield had long been celebrated for the politeness

of his manners, the brilliancy of his wit, and the delicacy of his

taste. He was acknowledged to be the finest speaker in the House of

Lords. He had recently governed Ireland, at a momentous conjuncture,

with eminent firmness, wisdom and humanity; and he had since become

secretary of state. He received Johnson's homage with the most winning

affability, and requited it with a few guineas, bestowed doubtless in a

very graceful manner, but was by no means desirous to see all his

carpets blackened with the London mud, and his soups and wines thrown to

right and left over the gowns of fine ladies and the waistcoats of fine

gentlemen, by an absent, awkward scholar, who gave strange starts and

uttered strange growls, who dressed like a scarecrow and ate like a

cormorant. During some time Johnson continued to call on his patron,

but, after being repeatedly told by the porter that his lordship was not

at home, took the hint, and ceased to present himself at the

inhospitable door.

Johnson had flattered himself that he should have completed his

_Dictionary_ by the end of 1750; but it was not till 1755 that he at

length gave his huge volumes to the world. During the seven years which

he passed in the drudgery of penning definitions and marking quotations

for transcription, he sought for relaxation in literary labour of a more

agreeable kind. In January 1749 he published _The Vanity of Human

Wishes_, an excellent imitation of the tenth satire of Juvenal, for

which he received fifteen guineas.

A few days after the publication of this poem, his tragedy of _Irene_,

begun many years before, was brought on the stage by his old pupil,

David Garrick, now manager of Drury Lane Theatre. The relation between

him and his old preceptor was of a very singular kind. They repelled

each other strongly, and yet attracted each other strongly. Nature had

made them of very different clay; and circumstances had fully brought

out the natural peculiarities of both. Sudden prosperity had turned

Garrick's head. Continued adversity had soured Johnson's temper. Johnson

saw with more envy than became so great a man the villa, the plate, the

china, the Brussels carpet, which the little mimic had got by repeating,

with grimaces and gesticulations, what wiser men had written; and the

exquisitely sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled by the thought that,

while all the rest of the world was applauding him, he could obtain from

one morose cynic, whose opinion it was impossible to despise, scarcely

any compliment not acidulated with scorn. Yet the two Lichfield men had

so many early recollections in common, and sympathized with each other

on so many points on which they sympathized with nobody else in the vast

population of the capital, that, though the master was often provoked by

the monkey-like impertinence of the pupil, and the pupil by the bearish

rudeness of the master, they remained friends till they were parted by

death. Garrick now brought _Irene_ out, with alterations sufficient to

displease the author, yet not sufficient to make the piece pleasing to

the audience. After nine representations the play was withdrawn. The

poet however cleared by his benefit nights, and by the sale of the

copyright of his tragedy, about three hundred pounds, then a great sum

in his estimation.

About a year after the representation of _Irene_, he began to publish a

series of short essays on morals, manners and literature. This species

of composition had been brought into fashion by the success of the

_Tatler_, and by the still more brilliant success of the _Spectator_. A

crowd of small writers had vainly attempted to rival Addison. The _Lay

Monastery_, the _Censor_, the _Freethinker_, the _Plain Dealer_, the

_Champion_, and other works of the same kind had had their short day. At

length Johnson undertook the adventure in which so many aspirants had

failed. In the thirty-sixth year after the appearance of the last number

of the _Spectator_ appeared the first number of the _Rambler_. From

March 1750 to March 1752 this paper continued to come out every Tuesday

and Saturday.

From the first the _Rambler_ was enthusiastically admired by a few

eminent men. Richardson, when only five numbers had appeared, pronounced

it equal if not superior to the _Spectator_. Young and Hartley expressed

their approbation not less warmly. In consequence probably of the good

offices of Bubb Dodington, who was then the confidential adviser of

Prince Frederick, two of his royal highness's gentlemen carried a

gracious message to the printing office, and ordered seven copies for

Leicester House. But Johnson had had enough of the patronage of the

great to last him all his life, and was not disposed to haunt any other

door as he had haunted the door of Chesterfield.

By the public the _Rambler_ was at first very coldly received. Though

the price of a number was only twopence, the sale did not amount to five

hundred. The profits were therefore very small. But as soon as the

flying leaves were collected and reprinted they became popular. The

author lived to see thirteen thousand copies spread over England alone.

Separate editions were published for the Scotch and Irish markets. A

large party pronounced the style perfect, so absolutely perfect that in

some essays it would be impossible for the writer himself to alter a

single word for the better. Another party, not less numerous, vehemently

accused him of having corrupted the purity of the English tongue. The

best critics admitted that his diction was too monotonous, too obviously

artificial, and now and then turgid even to absurdity. But they did

justice to the acuteness of his observations on morals and manners, to

the constant precision and frequent brilliancy of his language, to the

weighty and magnificent eloquence of many serious passages, and to the

solemn yet pleasing humour of some of the lighter papers.

The last _Rambler_ was written in a sad and gloomy hour. Mrs Johnson had

been given over by the physicians. Three days later she died. She left

her husband almost broken-hearted. Many people had been surprised to see

a man of his genius and learning stooping to every drudgery, and denying

himself almost every comfort, for the purpose of supplying a silly,

affected old woman with superfluities, which she accepted with but

little gratitude. But all his affection had been concentrated on her. He

had neither brother nor sister, neither son nor daughter. Her opinion of

his writings was more important to him than the voice of the pit of

Drury Lane Theatre, or the judgment of the _Monthly Review_. The chief

support which had sustained him through the most arduous labour of his

life was the hope that she would enjoy the fame and the profit which he

anticipated from his _Dictionary_. She was gone; and in that vast

labyrinth of streets, peopled by eight hundred thousand human beings, he

was alone. Yet it was necessary for him to set himself, as he expressed

it, doggedly to work. After three more laborious years, the _Dictionary_

was at length complete.

It had been generally supposed that this great work would be dedicated

to the eloquent and accomplished nobleman to whom the prospectus had

been addressed. Lord Chesterfield well knew the value of such a

compliment; and therefore, when the day of publication drew near, he

exerted himself to soothe, by a show of zealous and at the same time of

delicate and judicious kindness, the pride which he had so cruelly

wounded. Since the _Rambler_ had ceased to appear, the town had been

entertained by a journal called the _World_, to which many men of high

rank and fashion contributed. In two successive numbers of the _World_,

the _Dictionary_ was, to use the modern phrase, puffed with wonderful

skill. The writings of Johnson were warmly praised. It was proposed that

he should be invested with the authority of a dictator, nay, of a pope,

over our language, and that his decisions about the meaning and the

spelling of words should be received as final. His two folios, it was

said, would of course be bought by everybody who could afford to buy

them. It was soon known that these papers were written by Chesterfield.

But the just resentment of Johnson was not to be so appeased. In a

letter written with singular energy and dignity of thought and language,

he repelled the tardy advances of his patron. The _Dictionary_ came

forth without a dedication. In the Preface the author truly declared

that he owed nothing to the great, and described the difficulties with

which he had been left to struggle so forcibly and pathetically that the

ablest and most malevolent of all the enemies of his fame, Horne Tooke,

never could read that passage without tears.

Johnson's _Dictionary_ was hailed with an enthusiasm such as no similar

work has ever excited. It was indeed the first dictionary which could be

read with pleasure. The definitions show so much acuteness of thought

and command of language, and the passages quoted from poets, divines and

philosophers are so skilfully selected, that a leisure hour may always

be very agreeably spent in turning over the pages. The faults of the

book resolve themselves, for the most part, into one great fault.

Johnson was a wretched etymologist. He knew little or nothing of any

Teutonic language except English, which indeed, as he wrote it, was

scarcely a Teutonic language; and thus he was absolutely at the mercy of

Junius and Skinner.

The _Dictionary_, though it raised Johnson's fame, added nothing to his

pecuniary means. The fifteen hundred guineas which the booksellers had

agreed to pay him had been advanced and spent before the last sheets

issued from the press. It is painful to relate that twice in the course

of the year which followed the publication of this great work he was

arrested and carried to sponging-houses, and that he was twice indebted

for his liberty to his excellent friend Richardson. It was still

necessary for the man who had been formerly saluted by the highest

authority as dictator of the English language to supply his wants by

constant toil. He abridged his _Dictionary_. He proposed to bring out an

edition of Shakespeare by subscription, and many subscribers sent in

their names and laid down their money; but he soon found the task so

little to his taste that he turned to more attractive employments. He

contributed many papers to a new monthly journal, which was called the

_Literary Magazine_. Few of these papers have much interest; but among

them was one of the best things that he ever wrote, a masterpiece both

of reasoning and of satirical pleasantry, the review of Jenyns' _Inquiry

into the Nature and Origin of Evil_.

In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of a series of essays,

entitled the _Idler_. During two years these essays continued to appear

weekly. They were eagerly read, widely circulated, and indeed impudently

pirated, while they were still in the original form, and had a large

sale when collected into volumes. The _Idler_ may be described as a

second part of the _Rambler_, somewhat livelier and somewhat weaker than

the first part.

While Johnson was busied with his _Idlers_, his mother, who had

accomplished her ninetieth year, died at Lichfield. It was long since he

had seen her, but he had not failed to contribute largely out of his

small means to her comfort. In order to defray the charges of her

funeral, and to pay some debts which she had left, he wrote a little

book in a single week, and sent off the sheets to the press without

reading them over. A hundred pounds were paid him for the copyright, and

the purchasers had great cause to be pleased with their bargain, for the

book was _Rasselas_, and it had a great success.

The plan of _Rasselas_ might, however, have seemed to invite severe

criticism. Johnson has frequently blamed Shakespeare for neglecting the

proprieties of time and place, and for ascribing to one age or nation

the manners and opinions of another. Yet Shakespeare has not sinned in

this way more grievously than Johnson. Rasselas and Imlac, Nekayah and

Pekuah, are evidently meant to be Abyssinians of the 18th century; for

the Europe which Imlac describes is the Europe of the 18th century, and

the inmates of the Happy Valley talk familiarly of that law of

gravitation which Newton discovered and which was not fully received

even at Cambridge till the 18th century. Johnson, not content with

turning filthy savages, ignorant of their letters, and gorged with raw

steaks cut from living cows, into philosophers as eloquent and

enlightened as himself or his friend Burke, and into ladies as highly

accomplished as Mrs Lennox or Mrs Sheridan, transferred the whole

domestic system of England to Egypt. Into a land of harems, a land of

polygamy, a land where women are married without ever being seen, he

introduced the flirtations and jealousies of our ball-rooms. In a land

where there is boundless liberty of divorce, wedlock is described as the

indissoluble compact. "A youth and maiden meeting by chance, or brought

together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home,

and dream of each other. Such," says Rasselas, "is the common process of

marriage." A writer who was guilty of such improprieties had little

right to blame the poet who made Hector quote Aristotle, and represented

Julio Romano as flourishing in the days of the Oracle of Delphi.

By such exertions as have been described Johnson supported himself till

the year 1762. In that year a great change in his circumstances took

place. He had from a child been an enemy of the reigning dynasty. His

Jacobite prejudices had been exhibited with little disguise both in his

works and in his conversation. Even in his massy and elaborate

_Dictionary_ he had, with a strange want of taste and judgment, inserted

bitter and contumelious reflexions on the Whig party. The excise, which

was a favourite resource of Whig financiers, he had designated as a

hateful tax. He had railed against the commissioners of excise in

language so coarse that they had seriously thought of prosecuting him.

He had with difficulty been prevented from holding up the lord privy

seal by name as an example of the meaning of the word "renegade." A

pension he had defined as pay given to a state hireling to betray his

country; a pensioner as a slave of state hired by a stipend to obey a

master. It seemed unlikely that the author of these definitions would

himself be pensioned. But that was a time of wonders. George III. had

ascended the throne, and had, in the course of a few months, disgusted

many of the old friends, and conciliated many of the old enemies of his

house. The city was becoming mutinous; Oxford was becoming loyal.

Cavendishes and Bentincks were murmuring; Somersets and Wyndhams were

hastening to kiss hands. The head of the treasury was now Lord Bute, who

was a Tory, and could have no objection to Johnson's Toryism. Bute

wished to be thought a patron of men of letters; and Johnson was one of

the most eminent and one of the most needy men of letters in Europe. A

pension of three hundred a year was graciously offered, and with very

little hesitation accepted.

This event produced a change in Johnson's whole way of life. For the

first time since his boyhood he no longer felt the daily goad urging him

to the daily toil. He was at liberty, after thirty years of anxiety and

drudgery, to indulge his constitutional indolence, to lie in bed till

two in the afternoon, and to sit up talking till four in the morning,

without fearing either the printer's devil or the sheriff's officer.

One laborious task indeed he had bound himself to perform. He had

received large subscriptions for his promised edition of Shakespeare; he

had lived on those subscriptions during some years; and he could not

without disgrace omit to perform his part of the contract. His friends

repeatedly exhorted him to make an effort, and he repeatedly resolved to

do so. But, notwithstanding their exhortations and his resolutions,

month followed month, year followed year, and nothing was done. He

prayed fervently against his idleness; he determined, as often as he

received the sacrament, that he would no longer doze away and trifle

away his time; but the spell under which he lay resisted prayer and

sacrament. Happily for his honour, the charm which held him captive was

at length broken by no gentle or friendly hand. He had been weak enough

to pay serious attention to a story about a ghost which haunted a house

in Cock Lane, and had actually gone himself, with some of his friends,

at one in the morning, to St John's Church, Clerkenwell, in the hope of

receiving a communication from the perturbed spirit. But the spirit,

though adjured with all solemnity, remained obstinately silent; and it

soon appeared that a naughty girl of eleven had been amusing herself by

making fools of so many philosophers. Churchill, who, confident in his

powers, drunk with popularity, and burning with party spirit, was

looking for some man of established fame and Tory politics to insult,

celebrated the Cock Lane ghost in three cantos, nicknamed Johnson

Pomposo, asked where the book was which had been so long promised and so

liberally paid for, and directly accused the great moralist of cheating.

This terrible word proved effectual, and in October 1765 appeared, after

a delay of nine years, the new edition of Shakespeare.

This publication saved Johnson's character for honesty, but added

nothing to the fame of his abilities and learning. The Preface, though

it contains some good passages, is not in his best manner. The most

valuable notes are those in which he had an opportunity of showing how

attentively he had during many years observed human life and human

nature. The best specimen is the note on the character of Polonius.

Nothing so good is to be found even in Wilhelm Meister's admirable

examination of _Hamlet_. But here praise must end. It would be difficult

to name a more slovenly, a more worthless edition of any great

classic.[1] Johnson had, in his prospectus, told the world that he was

peculiarly fitted for the task which he had undertaken, because he had,

as a lexicographer, been under the necessity of taking a wider view of

the English language than any of his predecessors. But, unfortunately,

he had altogether neglected that very part of our literature with which

it is especially desirable that an editor of Shakespeare should be

conversant. In the two folio volumes of the _English Dictionary_ there

is not a single passage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan age

except Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Even from Ben the quotations are few.

Johnson might easily in a few months have made himself well acquainted

with every old play that was extant. But it never seems to have occurred

to him that this was a necessary preparation for the work which he had

undertaken. He would doubtless have admitted that it would be the height

of absurdity in a man who was not familiar with the works of Aeschylus

and Euripides to publish an edition of Sophocles. Yet he ventured to

publish an edition of Shakespeare, without having ever in his life, as

far as can be discovered, read a single scene of Massinger, Ford,

Dekker, Webster, Marlow, Beaumont or Fletcher. His detractors were noisy

and scurrilous. He had, however, acquitted himself of a debt which had

long lain heavy on his conscience and he sank back into the repose from

which the sting of satire had roused him. He long continued to live upon

the fame which he had already won. He was honoured by the university of

Oxford with a doctor's degree, by the Royal Academy with a

professorship, and by the king with an interview, in which his majesty

most graciously expressed a hope that so excellent a writer would not

cease to write. In the interval between 1765 and 1775 Johnson published

only two or three political tracts.

But, though his pen was now idle, his tongue was active. The influence

exercised by his conversation, directly upon those with whom he lived,

and indirectly on the whole literary world, was altogether without a

parallel. His colloquial talents were indeed of the highest order. He

had strong sense, quick discernment, wit, humour, immense knowledge of

literature and of life, and an infinite store of curious anecdotes. As

respected style, he spoke far better than he wrote. Every sentence which

dropped from his lips was as correct in structure as the most nicely

balanced period of the _Rambler_. But in his talk there were no pompous

triads, and little more than a fair proportion of words in -_osity_ and

-_ation_. All was simplicity, ease and vigour. He uttered his short,

weighty, and pointed sentences with a power of voice, and a justness and

energy of emphasis, of which the effect was rather increased than

diminished by the rollings of his huge form, and by the asthmatic

gaspings and puffings in which the peals of his eloquence generally

ended. Nor did the laziness which made him unwilling to sit down to his

desk prevent him from giving instruction or entertainment orally. To

discuss questions of taste, of learning, of casuistry, in language so

exact and so forcible that it might have been printed without the

alteration of a word, was to him no exertion, but a pleasure. He loved,

as he said, to fold his legs and have his talk out. He was ready to

bestow the overflowings of his full mind on anybody who would start a

subject: on a fellow-passenger in a stage coach, or on the person who

sat at the same table with him in an eating-house. But his conversation

was nowhere so brilliant and striking as when he was surrounded by a few

friends, whose abilities and knowledge enabled them, as he once

expressed it, to send him back every ball that he threw. Some of these,

in 1764, formed themselves into a club, which gradually became a

formidable power in the commonwealth of letters. The verdicts pronounced

by this conclave on new books were speedily known over all London, and

were sufficient to sell off a whole edition in a day, or to condemn the

sheets to the service of the trunkmaker and the pastrycook. Goldsmith

was the representative of poetry and light literature, Reynolds of the

arts, Burke of political eloquence and political philosophy. There, too,

were Gibbon the greatest historian and Sir William Jones the greatest

linguist of the age. Garrick brought to the meetings his inexhaustible

pleasantry, his incomparable mimicry, and his consummate knowledge of

stage effect. Among the most constant attendants were two high-born and

high-bred gentlemen, closely bound together by friendship, but of widely

different characters and habits--Bennet Langton, distinguished by his

skill in Greek literature, by the orthodoxy of his opinions, and by the

sanctity of his life, and Topham Beauclerk, renowned for his amours, his

knowledge of the gay world, his fastidious taste and his sarcastic wit.

Among the members of this celebrated body was one to whom it has owed

the greater part of its celebrity, yet who was regarded with little

respect by his brethren, and had not without difficulty obtained a seat

among them. This was James Boswell (q.v.), a young Scots lawyer, heir to

an honourable name and a fair estate. That he was a coxcomb and a bore,

weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous, was obvious to all who were

acquainted with him.

To a man of Johnson's strong understanding and irritable temper, the

silly egotism and adulation of Boswell must have been as teasing as the

constant buzz of a fly. Johnson hated to be questioned; and Boswell was

eternally catechizing him on all kinds of subjects, and sometimes

propounded such questions as, "What would you do, sir, if you were

locked up in a tower with a baby?" Johnson was a water-drinker and

Boswell was a wine-bibber, and indeed little better than an habitual

sot. It was impossible that there should be perfect harmony between two

such companions. Indeed, the great man was sometimes provoked into fits

of passion, in which he said things which the small man, during a few

hours, seriously resented. Every quarrel, however, was soon made up.

During twenty years the disciple continued to worship the master; the

master continued to scold the disciple, to sneer at him, and to love

him. The two friends ordinarily resided at a great distance from each

other. Boswell practised in the Parliament House of Edinburgh, and could

pay only occasional visits to London. During those visits his chief

business was to watch Johnson, to discover all Johnson's habits, to turn

the conversation to subjects about which Johnson was likely to say

something remarkable, and to fill quarto notebooks with minutes of what

Johnson had said. In this way were gathered the materials out of which

was afterwards constructed the most interesting biographical work in the

world.

Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson formed a connexion less

important indeed to his fame, but much more important to his happiness,

than his connexion with Boswell. Henry Thrale, one of the most opulent

brewers in the kingdom, a man of sound and cultivated understanding,

rigid principles, and liberal spirit, was married to one of those

clever, kind-hearted, engaging, vain, pert young women who are

perpetually doing or saying what is not exactly right, but who, do or

say what they may, are always agreeable. In 1765 the Thrales became

acquainted with Johnson, and the acquaintance ripened fast into

friendship. They were astonished and delighted by the brilliancy of his

conversation. They were flattered by finding that a man so widely

celebrated preferred their house to any other in London. Johnson soon

had an apartment at the brewery in Southwark, and a still more pleasant

apartment at the villa of his friends on Streatham Common. A large part

of every year he passed in those abodes, which must have seemed

magnificent and luxurious indeed, when compared with the dens in which

he had generally been lodged. But his chief pleasures were derived from

what the astronomer of his Abyssinian tale called "the endearing

elegance of female friendship." Mrs Thrale rallied him, soothed him,

coaxed him, and if she sometimes provoked him by her flippancy, made

ample amends by listening to his reproofs with angelic sweetness of

temper. When he was diseased in body and in mind, she was the most

tender of nurses. No comfort that wealth could purchase, no contrivance

that womanly ingenuity, set to work by womanly compassion, could devise,

was wanting to his sick room. It would seem that a full half of

Johnson's life during about sixteen years was passed under the roof of

the Thrales. He accompanied the family sometimes to Bath, and sometimes

to Brighton, once to Wales and once to Paris. But he had at the same

time a house in one of the narrow and gloomy courts on the north of

Fleet Street. In the garrets was his library, a large and miscellaneous

collection of books, falling to pieces and begrimed with dust. On a

lower floor he sometimes, but very rarely, regaled a friend with a plain

dinner--a veal pie, or a leg of lamb and spinach, and a rice pudding.

Nor was the dwelling uninhabited during his long absences. It was the

home of the most extraordinary assemblage of inmates that ever was

brought together. At the head of the establishment Johnson had placed an

old lady named Williams, whose chief recommendations were her blindness

and her poverty. But, in spite of her murmurs and reproaches, he gave an

asylum to another lady who was as poor as herself, Mrs Desmoulins, whose

family he had known many years before in Staffordshire. Room was found

for the daughter of Mrs Desmoulins, and for another destitute damsel,

who was generally addressed as Miss Carmichael, but whom her generous

host called Polly. An old quack doctor named Levett, who had a wide

practice, but among the very poorest class, poured out Johnson's tea in

the morning and completed this strange menagerie. All these poor

creatures were at constant war with each other, and with Johnson's negro

servant Frank. Sometimes, indeed, they transferred their hostilities

from the servant to the master, complained that a better table was not

kept for them, and railed or maundered till their benefactor was glad to

make his escape to Streatham or to the Mitre Tavern. And yet he, who was

generally the haughtiest and most irritable of mankind, who was but too

prompt to resent anything which looked like a slight on the part of a

purse-proud bookseller, or of a noble and powerful patron, bore

patiently from mendicants, who, but for his bounty, must have gone to

the workhouse, insults more provoking than those for which he had

knocked down Osborne and bidden defiance to Chesterfield. Year after

year Mrs Williams and Mrs Desmoulins, Polly and Levett, continued to

torment him and to live upon him.

The course of life which has been described was interrupted in Johnson's

sixty-fourth year by an important event. He had early read an account of

the Hebrides, and had been much interested by learning that there was so

near him a land peopled by a race which was still as rude and simple as

in the Middle Ages. A wish to become intimately acquainted with a state

of society so utterly unlike all that he had ever seen frequently

crossed his mind. But it is not probable that his curiosity would have

overcome his habitual sluggishness, and his love of the smoke, the mud,

and the cries of London, had not Boswell importuned him to attempt the

adventure, and offered to be his squire. At length, in August 1773,

Johnson crossed the Highland line, and plunged courageously into what

was then considered, by most Englishmen, as a dreary and perilous

wilderness. After wandering about two months through the Celtic region,

sometimes in rude boats which did not protect him from the rain, and

sometimes on small shaggy ponies which could hardly bear his weight, he

returned to his old haunts with a mind full of new images and new

theories. During the following year he employed himself in recording his

adventures. About the beginning of 1775 his _Journey to the Hebrides_

was published, and was, during some weeks, the chief subject of

conversation in all circles in which any attention was paid to

literature. His prejudice against the Scots had at length become little

more than matter of jest; and whatever remained of the old feeling had

been effectually removed by the kind and respectful hospitality with

which he had been received in every part of Scotland. It was, of course,

not to be expected that an Oxonian Tory should praise the Presbyterian

polity and ritual, or that an eye accustomed to the hedgerows and parks

of England should not be struck by the bareness of Berwickshire and East

Lothian. But even in censure Johnson's tone is not unfriendly. The most

enlightened Scotsmen, with Lord Mansfield at their head, were well

pleased. But some foolish and ignorant Scotsmen were moved to anger by a

little unpalatable truth which was mingled with much eulogy, and

assailed him whom they chose to consider as the enemy of their country

with libels much more dishonourable to their country than anything that

he had ever said or written. They published paragraphs in the

newspapers, articles in the magazines, sixpenny pamphlets, five-shilling

books. One scribbler abused Johnson for being blear-eyed, another for

being a pensioner; a third informed the world that one of the doctor's

uncles had been convicted of felony in Scotland, and had found that

there was in that country one tree capable of supporting the weight of

an Englishman. Macpherson, whose _Fingal_ had been treated in the

_Journey_ as an impudent forgery, threatened to take vengeance with a

cane. The only effect of this threat was that Johnson reiterated the

charge of forgery in the most contemptuous terms, and walked about,

during some time, with a cudgel.

Of other assailants Johnson took no notice whatever. He had early

resolved never to be drawn into controversy; and he adhered to his

resolution with a steadfastness which is the more extraordinary because

he was, both intellectually and morally, of the stuff of which

controversialists are made. In conversation he was a singularly eager,

acute and pertinacious disputant. When at a loss for good reasons, he

had recourse to sophistry; and when heated by altercation, he made

unsparing use of sarcasm and invective. But when he took his pen in his

hand, his whole character seemed to be changed. A hundred bad writers

misrepresented him and reviled him; but not one of the hundred could

boast of having been thought by him worthy of a refutation, or even of a

retort. One Scotsman, bent on vindicating the fame of Scots learning,

defied him to the combat in a detestable Latin hexameter:--

"Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum."

But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He always maintained that

fame was a shuttlecock which could be kept up only by being beaten back

as well as beaten forward, and which would soon fall if there were only

one battledore. No saying was oftener in his mouth than that fine

apophthegm of Bentley, that no man was ever written down but by himself.

Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of the _Journey to the

Hebrides_, Johnson did what none of his envious assailants could have

done, and to a certain extent succeeded in writing himself down. The

disputes between England and her American colonies had reached a point

at which no amicable adjustment was possible. War was evidently

impending; and the ministers seem to have thought that the eloquence of

Johnson might with advantage be employed to inflame the nation against

the opposition at home, and against the rebels beyond the Atlantic. He

had already written two or three tracts in defence of the foreign and

domestic policy of the government; and those tracts, though hardly

worthy of him, were much superior to the crowd of pamphlets which lay on

the counters of Almon and Stockdale. But his _Taxation no Tyranny_ was a

pitiable failure. Even Boswell was forced to own that in this

unfortunate piece he could detect no trace of his master's powers. The

general opinion was that the strong faculties which had produced the

_Dictionary_ and the _Rambler_ were beginning to feel the effect of time

and of disease, and that the old man would best consult his credit by

writing no more. But this was a great mistake. Johnson had failed, not

because his mind was less vigorous than when he wrote _Rasselas_ in the

evenings of a week, but because he had foolishly chosen, or suffered

others to choose for him, a subject such as he would at no time have

been competent to treat. He was in no sense a statesman. He never

willingly read or thought or talked about affairs of state. He loved

biography, literary history, the history of manners; but political

history was positively distasteful to him. The question at issue between

the colonies and the mother country was a question about which he had

really nothing to say. Happily, Johnson soon had an opportunity of

proving most signally that his failure was not to be ascribed to

intellectual decay.

On Easter Eve 1777 some persons, deputed by a meeting which consisted of

forty of the first booksellers in London, called upon him. Though he had

some scruples about doing business at that season, he received his

visitors with much civility. They came to inform him that a new edition

of the English poets, from Cowley downwards, was in contemplation, and

to ask him to furnish short biographical prefaces. He readily undertook

the task for which he was pre-eminently qualified. His knowledge of the

literary history of England since the Restoration was unrivalled. That

knowledge he had derived partly from books, and partly from sources

which had long been closed: from old Grub Street traditions; from the

talk of forgotten poetasters and pamphleteers, who had long been lying

in parish vaults; from the recollections of such men as Gilbert

Walmesley, who had conversed with the wits of Button, Cibber, who had

mutilated the plays of two generations of dramatists, Orrery, who had

been admitted to the society of Swift and Savage, who had rendered

services of no very honourable kind to Pope. The biographer therefore

sat down to his task with a mind full of matter. He had at first

intended to give only a paragraph to every minor poet, and only four or

five pages to the greatest name. But the flood of anecdote and criticism

overflowed the narrow channel. The work, which was originally meant to

consist only of a few sheets, swelled into ten volumes--small volumes,

it is true, and not closely printed. The first four appeared in 1779,

the remaining six in 1781.

The _Lives of the Poets_ are, on the whole, the best of Johnson's works.

The narratives are as entertaining as any novel. The remarks on life and

on human nature are eminently shrewd and profound. The criticisms are

often excellent, and, even when grossly and provokingly unjust, well

deserve to be studied. _Savage's Life_ Johnson reprinted nearly as it

had appeared in 1744. Whoever, after reading that life, will turn to the

other lives will be struck by the difference of style. Since Johnson had

been at ease in his circumstances he had written little and had talked

much. When therefore he, after the lapse of years, resumed his pen, the

mannerism which he had contracted while he was in the constant habit of

elaborate composition was less perceptible than formerly, and his

diction frequently had a colloquial ease which it had formerly wanted.

The improvement may be discerned by a skilful critic in the _Journey to

the Hebrides_, and in the _Lives of the Poets_ is so obvious that it

cannot escape the notice of the most careless reader. Among the _Lives_

the best are perhaps those of Cowley, Dryden and Pope. The very worst

is, beyond all doubt, that of Gray; the most controverted that of

Milton.

This great work at once became popular. There was, indeed, much just and

much unjust censure; but even those who were loudest in blame were

attracted by the book in spite of themselves. Malone computed the gains

of the publishers at five or six thousand pounds. But the writer was

very poorly remunerated. Intending at first to write very short

prefaces, he had stipulated for only two hundred guineas. The

booksellers, when they saw how far his performance had surpassed his

promise, added only another hundred. Indeed Johnson, though he did not

despise or affect to despise money, and though his strong sense and long

experience ought to have qualified him to protect his own interests,

seems to have been singularly unskilful and unlucky in his literary

bargains. He was generally reputed the first English writer of his time.

Yet several writers of his time sold their copyrights for sums such as

he never ventured to ask. To give a single instance, Robertson received

£4500 for the _History of Charles V._

Johnson was now in his seventy-second year. The infirmities of age were

coming fast upon him. That inevitable event of which he never thought

without horror was brought near to him; and his whole life was darkened

by the shadow of death. The strange dependants to whom he had given

shelter, and to whom, in spite of their faults, he was strongly attached

by habit, dropped off one by one; and, in the silence of his home, he

regretted even the noise of their scolding matches. The kind and

generous Thrale was no more; and it was soon plain that the old

Streatham intimacy could not be maintained upon the same footing. Mrs

Thrale herself confessed that without her husband's assistance she did

not feel able to entertain Johnson as a constant inmate of her house.

Free from the yoke of the brewer, she fell in love with a music master,

high in his profession, from Brescia, named Gabriel Piozzi, in whom

nobody but herself could discover anything to admire. The secret of this

attachment was soon discovered by Fanny Burney, but Johnson at most only

suspected it.

In September 1782 the place at Streatham was from motives of economy let

to Lord Shelburne, and Mrs Thrale took a house at Brighton, whither

Johnson accompanied her; they remained for six weeks on the old familiar

footing. In March 1783 Boswell was glad to discover Johnson well looked

after and staying with Mrs Thrale in Argyll Street, but in a bad state

of health. Impatience of Johnson's criticisms and infirmities had been

steadily growing with Mrs Thrale since 1774. She now went to Bath with

her daughters, partly to escape his supervision. Johnson was very ill in

his lodgings during the summer, but he still corresponded affectionately

with his "mistress" and received many favours from her. He retained the

full use of his senses during the paralytic attack, and in July he was

sufficiently recovered to renew his old club life and to meditate

further journeys. In June 1784 he went with Boswell to Oxford for the

last time. In September he was in Lichfield. On his return his health

was rather worse; but he would submit to no dietary régime. His asthma

tormented him day and night, and dropsical symptoms made their

appearance. His wrath was excited in no measured terms against the

re-marriage of his old friend Mrs Thrale, the news of which he heard

this summer. The whole dispute seems, to-day, entirely uncalled-for, but

the marriage aroused some of Johnson's strongest prejudices. He wrote

inconsiderately on the subject, but we must remember that he was at the

time afflicted in body and mentally haunted by dread of impending

change. Throughout all his troubles he had clung vehemently to life. The

feeling described in that fine but gloomy paper which closes the series

of his _Idlers_ seemed to grow stronger in him as his last hour drew

near. He fancied that he should be able to draw his breath more easily

in a southern climate, and would probably have set out for Rome and

Naples but for his fear of the expense of the journey. That expense,

indeed, he had the means of defraying; for he had laid up about two

thousand pounds, the fruit of labours which had made the fortune of

several publishers. But he was unwilling to break in upon this hoard,

and he seems to have wished even to keep its existence a secret. Some of

his friends hoped that the Government might be induced to increase his

pension to six hundred pounds a year, but this hope was disappointed,

and he resolved to stand one English winter more.

That winter was his last. His legs grew weaker; his breath grew shorter;

the fatal water gathered fast, in spite of incisions which he,

courageous against pain but timid against death, urged his surgeons to

make deeper and deeper. Though the tender care which had mitigated his

sufferings during months of sickness at Streatham was withdrawn, and

though Boswell was absent, he was not left desolate. The ablest

physicians and surgeons attended him, and refused to accept fees from

him. Burke parted from him with deep emotion. Windham sat much in the

sick-room. Frances Burney, whom the old man had cherished with fatherly

kindness, stood weeping at the door; while Langton, whose piety

eminently qualified him to be an adviser and comforter at such a time,

received the last pressure of his friend's hand within. When at length

the moment, dreaded through so many years, came close, the dark cloud

passed away from Johnson's mind. Windham's servant, who sat up with him

during his last night, declared that "no man could appear more

collected, more devout or less terrified at the thoughts of the

approaching minute." At hour intervals, often of much pain, he was moved

in bed and addressed himself vehemently to prayer. In the morning he was

still able to give his blessing, but in the afternoon he became drowsy,

and at a quarter past seven in the evening on the 13th of December 1784,

in his seventy-sixth year, he passed away. He was laid, a week later, in

Westminster Abbey, among the eminent men of whom he had been the

historian--Cowley and Denham, Dryden and Congreve, Gay, Prior and

Addison. (M.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The splendid example of his style which Macaulay

contributed in the article on Johnson to the 8th edition of this

encyclopaedia has become classic, and has therefore been retained

above with a few trifling modifications in those places in which his

invincible love of the picturesque has drawn him demonstrably aside

from the dull line of veracity. Macaulay, it must be noted,

exaggerated persistently the poverty of Johnson's pedigree, the

squalor of his early married life, the grotesqueness of his entourage

in Fleet Street, the decline and fall from complete virtue of Mrs

Thrale, the novelty and success of the _Dictionary_, the complete

failure of the Shakespeare and the political tracts. Yet this

contribution is far more mellow than the article contributed on

Johnson twenty-five years before to the _Edinburgh Review_ in

correction of Croker. Matthew Arnold, who edited six selected _Lives_

of the poets, regarded it as one of Macaulay's happiest and ripest

efforts. It was written out of friendship for Adam Black, and "payment

was not so much as mentioned." The big reviews, especially the

quarterlies, have always been the natural home of Johnsonian study.

Sir Walter Scott, Croker, Hayward, Macaulay, Thomas Carlyle (whose

famous Fraser article was reprinted in 1853) and Whitwell Elwin have

done as much as anybody perhaps to sustain the zest for Johnsonian

studies. Macaulay's prediction that the interest in the man would

supersede that in his "Works" seemed and seems likely enough to

justify itself; but his theory that the man alone mattered and that a

portrait painted by the hand of an inspired idiot was a true measure

of the man has not worn better than the common run of literary

propositions. Johnson's prose is not extensively read. But the same is

true of nearly all the great prose masters of the 18th century. As in

the case of all great men, Johnson has suffered a good deal at the

hands of his imitators and admirers. His prose, though not nearly so

uniformly monotonous or polysyllabic as the parodists would have us

believe, was at one time greatly overpraised. From the "Life of

Savage" to the "Life of Pope" it developed a great deal, and in the

main improved. To the last he sacrificed expression rather too much to

style, and he was perhaps over conscious of the balanced epithet. But

he contributed both dignity and dialectical force to the prose

movement of his period.

The best edition of his works is still the Oxford edition of 1825 in 9

vols. At the present day, however, his periodical writings are

neglected, and all that can be said to excite interest are, first the

_Lives of the Poets_ (best edition by Birkbeck Hill and H. S. Scott, 3

vols., 1905), and then the _Letters_, the _Prayers_ and _Meditations_,

and the _Poems_, to which may doubtfully be added the once idolized

_Rasselas_. The _Poems_ and _Rasselas_ have been reprinted times

without number. The others have been re-edited with scrupulous care

for the Oxford University Press by the pious diligence of that most

enthusiastic of all Johnsonians, Dr Birkbeck Hill. But the tendency at

the present day is undoubtedly to prize Johnson's personality and

sayings more than any of his works. These are preserved to us in a

body of biographical writing, the efficiency of which is unequalled in

the whole range of literature. The chief constituents are Johnson's

own _Letters_ and _Account of his Life from his Birth to his Eleventh

Year_ (1805), a fragment saved from papers burned in 1784 and not seen

by Boswell; the life by his old but not very sympathetic friend and

club-fellow, Sir John Hawkins (1787); Mrs Thrale-Piozzi's _Anecdotes_

(1785) and _Letters_; the _Diary_ and _Letters_ of Fanny Burney

(D'Arblay) (1841); the shorter Lives of Arthur Murphy, T. Tyers, &c.;

far above all, of course, the unique Life by James Boswell, first

published in 1791, and subsequently encrusted with vast masses of

Johnsoniana in the successive editions of Malone, Croker, Napier,

Fitzgerald, Mowbray Morris (Globe), Birrell, Ingpen (copiously

illustrated) and Dr Birkbeck Hill (the most exhaustive).

The sayings and Johnsoniana have been reprinted in very many and

various forms. Valuable work has been done in Johnsonian genealogy and

topography by Aleyn Lyell Reade in his _Johnsonian Gleanings_, &c.,

and in the _Memorials of Old Staffordshire_ (ed. W. Beresford). The

most excellent short Lives are those by F. Grant (Eng. Writers) and

Sir Leslie Stephen (Eng. Men of Letters). Professor W. Raleigh's essay

(Stephen Lecture), Lord Rosebery's estimate (1909), and Sir Leslie

Stephen's article in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, with

bibliography and list of portraits, should be consulted. Johnson's

"Club" ("The Club") still exists, and has contained ever since his

time a large proportion of the public celebrities of its day. A

"Johnson Club," which has included many Johnson scholars and has

published papers, was founded in 1885. Lichfield has taken an active

part in the commemoration of Johnson since 1887, when Johnson's

birthplace was secured as a municipal museum, and Lichfield was the

chief scene of the Bicentenary Celebrations of September 1909 (fully

described in A. M. Broadley's _Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale_, 1909),

containing, together with new materials and portraits, an essay

dealing with Macaulay's treatment of the Johnson-Thrale episodes by T.

Seccombe). Statues both of Johnson and Boswell are in the market-place

at Lichfield. A statue was erected in St Paul's in 1825, and there are

commemorative tablets in Lichfield Cathedral, St Nicholas (Brighton),

Uttoxeter, St Clement Danes (London), Gwaynynog and elsewhere.

(T. Se.)