TEN CENT POCKET SERIES NO. 394
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
Boswell’s Life of
Johnson
Charles J. Finger
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1923,
Haldeman-Julius Company.
BOSWELL’S LIFE OF JOHNSON.
I.
BOSWELL AND JOHNSON.
It is quite common for people to say that we owe our knowledge of
Doctor Johnson entirely to the fact that James Boswell devoted his
life to a close study of his model. The statement is generally made
by those who have taken Boswell’s Life of Johnson as read; perhaps,
indeed, have gone a step further and placed it on a shelf where it will
be read in that indefinite time “some day,” when ephemeral literature
shall be no more. The statement sounds well but is quite untrue. To
be sure, James Boswell wrote the finest biography that the world
has seen thus far, for he had the ambition to produce a book which
the world would want. Few biographies reach its excellence and none
surpass it. Frank Harris, with his Life of Oscar Wilde, comes nearest.
Of other works of a like character, Leigh Hunt achieved immortality
with his Autobiography, and, being the intimate associate of Shelley,
Byron, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and Carlyle, produced a picture of
contemporary life very valuable indeed. Lockhart’s Memoirs of Sir
Walter Scott must also be mentioned. Nor should there be overlooked as
worthy of a place on the book shelf with Boswell’s masterpiece, Horace
Walpole’s Letters, Pepys’ Diary, Froude’s Carlyle and Isaac Walton’s
Lives. But Boswell has a supremacy which none can deny, and, because
of that supremacy, there are not wanting those who assert that Boswell
made Johnson, rescued Johnson from oblivion, gave Johnson a place to
which his literary efforts do not entitle him, and so on, while others
have talked about self-abnegation, self-surrender and all that kind
of thing, until the conception has arisen among those who talk of
Boswell’s Life of Johnson without having read it, and they are as the
sands of the seashore in number, that Johnson and Boswell went through
life like twin stars bound in the same orbit, while others look upon
Johnson as a kind of Sindbad carrying an Old Man of the Sea.
We know Johnson, not alone because Boswell knew him, but because many
others knew him, just as many articulate men knew and wrote about
Oscar Wilde. In the case of Wilde, besides Frank Harris, there were
friends, publishers, enemies, and some who were all three. In the case
of Johnson, we have Burke, Langton, Garrick, Levett, Miss Burney, Miss
Seward and the inimitable Mrs. Thrale with her chatty “Anecdotes of the
Late Samuel Johnson, LL. D., During the Last Twenty Years of His Life.”
She was no ordinary woman and the worthy Doctor was in love with her
for many years we suppose, for it is a matter of record that he not
only quarreled with her, scolded her and constantly visited her, but he
also wrote to her more than three hundred letters. As for the common
suspicion that Boswell spent his life at Dr. Johnson’s heels, a careful
count will show that Boswell met Johnson on two hundred and seventy-six
days. Still, in that time, Boswell did excellent work. As a biographer
he was free from timidity, painting his model as he actually was. Fear
of unfriendly criticism did not daunt him and he was quite unmoral
in his methods when it came to gathering data. We sometimes suspect
eavesdropping and key-hole activities. At any rate, he was not above
appropriating little things associated with the Doctor’s work, and, as
we shall see, propriety did not prevent him from leaving his place at
a dinner table to hear what the sage was whispering to a young lady.
A story that bears the impress of truth is to be found in Holcroft’s
Life, edited by Hazlitt. Mary Lamb called it “the Life Everlasting”
because Hazlitt was so long seeing it through the press. Here is the
story:
Lowe, (mentioned by Boswell in his life of Johnson) once gave me a
humorous picture of him. Lowe had requested Johnson to write him a
letter, which Johnson did, and Boswell came in while it was writing.
His attention was immediately fixed; Lowe took the letter, retired,
and was followed by Boswell. “Nothing,” said Lowe, “could surprise
me more. Till that moment he had so entirely overlooked me that I
did not imagine he knew there was such a creature in existence;
and he now accosted me with the most overstrained and insinuating
compliments possible. ‘How do you do, Mr. Lowe? I hope you are well
Mr. Lowe. Pardon my freedom, Mr. Lowe, but I think I saw my dear
friend, Dr. Johnson, writing a letter for you.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘I hope
you will not think me rude, but if it would not be too great a
favor, you would infinitely oblige me if you would just let me have a
sight of it. Everything from that hand, you know, is so inestimable.’
‘Sir, it is on my own private affairs, but----’ ‘I would not pry into
a person’s affairs my dear Mr. Lowe, by any means. I am sure you
would not accuse me of such a thing; only, if it were no particular
secret----’ ‘Sir, you are welcome to read the letter.’ ‘I thank you,
my dear Mr. Lowe; you are very obliging; I take it exceedingly kind.’
(Having read) ‘It is nothing, I believe, Mr. Lowe, that you would
be ashamed of?’ ‘Certainly not!’ ‘Why, then, my dear sir, if you
would do me another favor, you would make the obligation eternal. If
you would but step to Peele’s Coffee House with me and just suffer
me to take a copy of it, I would do anything in my power to oblige
you.’” “I was overcome,” said Lowe, “by this sudden familiarity and
condescension, accompanied with bows and grimaces. I had no power
to refuse; we went to the Coffee House, my letter was presently
transcribed, and as soon as he had put his document in his pocket Mr.
Boswell walked away as erect and proud as he was half an hour before,
and I, ever afterwards, was unnoticed. Nay, I am not sure,” he added
sarcastically, “whether the Scotchman did not leave me, poor as he
knew I was, to pay for my own dish of coffee.”
It was the Boswell method. The good Mr. Lowe was extremely fortunate in
that Boswell took with him the copy of the letter and not the original,
for, of all men, this biographer seems to illustrate the Nietzschean
requirement that he who intends to know, shall be hard, severe, narrow,
cruel, inexorable. However, Boswell applied his method on Johnson
for just one-hundredth part of Johnson’s life, and, loving both
Johnson and himself, and being richly endowed with the rare faculty
of observation, made his man live as no character in literature or
history has lived.
Macaulay quite unjustly called Boswell “one of the smallest men that
ever lived,” and pictures him as a snob and a sycophant, and many
have repeated Macaulay’s words. Any one who will take the trouble to
read Boswell’s book with attention, will be persuaded that the man
himself had great conversational gifts, much good nature and tact, and
prodigious powers of memory. As a record of the manners and customs of
the period, Boswell’s Life of Johnson is as valuable as Pepys’ Diary.
There is one recorded incident which, more than any other, goes to show
that Boswell’s path, even with Johnson himself, was not one of roses.
Boswell had been questioning Johnson until the catechism had become a
torture, and he turned upon his tormenter. “Sir, I will not be put to
the question!” he roared. “Don’t you consider, sir, that these are not
the manners of a gentleman? I will not be baited with _what_ and _why_:
What is this? What is that? Why is a cow’s tail long? Why is a fox’s
tail bushy?” “Why, sir, you are so good that I venture to trouble you,”
answered Boswell. “Sir,” replied the irritated doctor, “my being good
is no reason why you should be so ill.”
On another occasion he turned angrily upon Boswell with this: “You have
but two topics, sir, yourself and me, and I am sick of both.”
II.
THE MAN JOHNSON HIMSELF.
It is both amusing and interesting to look through the index to
Boswell’s Life of Johnson and mark the minuteness with which that most
extraordinary of Scotsmen studied his master. All was fish that came
to his net. No detail was too small to be recorded if it offered the
faintest fragment of evidence as to the sage’s private life, and no
remark was too light to be missed if it seemed to reveal an intimate
thought. James Boswell, like Laurence Sterne, and, in our own day,
James Joyce, perceived the infinitely little and described the almost
imperceptible. The least of things he brings to the light, just as
the microscopist will bring to light the nervous system of a worm or
a feather on a butterfly’s wing, and, consequently, the finished book
is a most marvelous storehouse of information, not only of the man
Johnson, but of all those with whom he came into contact.
Straight to the mark went Boswell. He had but one object in view, and
from that nothing would turn him. Doubtless about him there were those
who accused him of sycophancy, of toadyism; for that he cared nothing.
He had set himself the task of telling posterity about a great man and
there was an end to it. “When in that presence,” says Miss Burney, “he
was unobservant, if not contemptuous, of everyone else. In truth, when
he met with Dr. Johnson, he commonly forbore even answering anything
that was said, or attending to anything that went forward, lest he
should miss the smallest sound from that voice, to which he paid such
exclusive, though merited, homage. But the moment that voice burst
forth, the attention which it excited on Mr. Boswell amounted almost
to pain. His eyes goggled with eagerness; he leaned his ear almost on
the shoulder of the doctor; and his mouth dropped open to catch every
syllable that might be uttered; nay, he seemed not only to dread losing
a word, but to be anxious not to miss a breathing; as if hoping from it
latently, or mystically, some Information.”
Miss Burney spoke from actual observation. Indeed, she was witness of
one extraordinary scene when dining at Mr. Thrale’s and seated next
to Dr. Johnson. The doctor was saying something to Miss Burney, when,
chancing to glance sideways, he saw that Boswell was eavesdropping,
having left his own partner at the other end of the table. “What are
you doing there, sir?” cried the indignant doctor, angrily slapping his
knee. “Go to the table, sir.”
Boswell obeyed, and the doctor resumed his talk. But the restless
Boswell was ill at ease. Soon he rose from his seat again, but the
doctor detected him. Across the table boomed his heavy bass voice.
“What are you thinking of, sir? Why do you get up before the cloth is
removed? Back to your place, sir.” Down sat Boswell then, his eyes
on his master, to receive a last thunderous blow accompanied by the
shaking of an accusing forefinger: “Running about in the middle of
meals!”
Obviously, so faithful a follower might well be expected to do
extraordinary things, and the result of his fidelity has been a
perfect biography. Boswell tells us everything. He tells us about the
inscription on Johnson’s watch and the why and the wherefore of it: the
manner of his laugh which was “a kind of good humored growl”; that he
had the habit of talking to himself; that he did not like clean linen;
that he never got entirely rid of his provincial pronunciation; that
“while talking, or even musing, as he sat in his chair he commonly held
his head to one side towards his right shoulder, and shook it in a
tremulous manner, moving his body backwards and forwards, and rubbing
his left knee in the same direction with the palm of his hand.”
Boswell, we know, was not unaware of that “sneering jocularity” to
be expected from those who had no relish for an exact likeness.
Nevertheless, he kept at his task. Patiently he recorded all kinds
of things: good and bad: painful and pleasant: incidents that showed
pettiness as well as greatness. So well, indeed, was the task
performed, that we know Johnson as we know no other man in history.
Even those men of our own time who have achieved fame are less familiar
to us than is Dr. Johnson. We see him stout, round bodied, almost
“unwieldy from corpulency,” thick-lipped, near-sighted and blinking,
“countenance disfigured from the king’s evil,” often when in company,
“a good deal exhausted by violence and vociferation,” and, having said
something, “blowing out his breath like a whale.” Seeing the man thus,
and adding for good measure, an ill-fitting, ill-kempt wig more often
than not burnt in front from his habit of reading with head close to
the candle; suit of rusty brown with breeches unlaced at the knees; old
and ill-fitting shoes; month old linen--one marvels at the forbearance
of the cultured who overlooked appearance.
We get a brief glimpse, by accident as it were, of the regard with
which the doctor was held by some who entertained him. There is Mrs.
Boswell, for instance, annoyed that her husband should find pleasure in
the company of such a fellow. “I have seen,” she tells a friend, “many
a bear led by a man, but never before a man led by a bear.” In that you
detect a certain asperity. It is her husband who quotes the remark and
he explains that some of the habits of the sage were such that “they
could not but be disagreeable to a lady.” There is a mild hint that
Johnson’s unfortunate habit of turning the candles upside down so that
the hot wax running to the wick would make them burn the brighter, made
Mrs. Boswell very impatient, for melted wax on a carpet displeased her.
Other things were annoying. For instance, Johnson refused to assume
indifference to the pleasures of the table and even boasted of his
pleasure in eating. “I mind my belly very studiously,” said he, “for
I look upon it that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind
anything else.” So, at the homes of those who lionized him, he took
care to let it be known that certain kinds of foods pleased him, and
a certain and very liberal allowance was necessary for his comfort.
Seven or eight peaches before breakfast; twenty-five cups of tea at a
sitting; solid, satisfying dishes of boiled pork and veal pie stuffed
with plums and sugar; heavy pastry supported with roast joints of
meat--such things he called for. A very Gargantua, he. As for drink,
in his younger days he was a very Falstaff. When the mighty feat was
mentioned of a Dr. Campbell who could drink thirteen bottles of port
at a sitting, the sage spoke, saying: “If a man drinks very slowly and
lets one glass evaporate before he takes another, I know not how long
he may drink.” And this: “Claret is the drink for boys, and port for
men: but he who aspires to be a hero, must drink brandy.”
Obviously, so doughty a table knight would be very apt to cause
consternation in a well ordered household. But there were other things
to contend with besides his enormous appetite. No sooner was dinner
announced than he would find his way to the table, and, sans ceremony,
tackle the food. “His looks seemed riveted to his plate; nor would he,
except when in very high company, say one word, or even pay the least
attention to what was said by others.” So intent did he become upon his
meal, that “the veins on his forehead swelled, and generally a strong
perspiration was visible.”
All this, his ravenous eating, his grunting, his carelessness and
boorishness, people put up with for the sake of the inimitable powers
of conversation of the man. Of conversation he was a master and he was
the oracle of a literary circle. His naturally retentive memory was
stored with a vast variety of facts, odd things, little known things,
important trifles encountered while reading and consulting books
for the compilation of his dictionary. So, a dinner being finished,
the lion roared to the delight of the hearers; the colloquial giant
displayed his strength.
“I do not care,” said Orme, the historian of Hindustan, “on what
subject Johnson talks: but I love better to hear him talk than anybody.
He either gives you new thoughts or a new coloring.”
Said Boswell: “He had all his life habituated himself to consider
conversation as a trial of intellectual vigor and skill. He had
disciplined himself as a talker as well as a writer, making it a rule
to impart whatever he knew in the most forcible language he could put
it in, so that by constant practice and never suffering any careless
expression to escape him, he had attained an extraordinary accuracy and
command of language.”
It may well be that Johnson was spoiled by the homage of society.
Reading Boswell’s Life of Johnson it becomes clear that there were
times when the dictionary maker was overbearing, even if not actually
insulting. “Having recourse to some sudden mode of robust sophistry,”
Boswell terms it, and gives an instance, thus: “Once, when I was
pressing upon him with visible advantage, he stopped me thus, ‘My dear
Boswell, let’s have no more of this; you’ll make nothing of it. I’d
rather hear you whistle a Scotch tune.’” But Goldsmith summed up the
Johnson, when cornered, in far happier mode. “There is no arguing with
Johnson,” he said, “for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down
with the butt end of it.”
Goldsmith and Johnson were in the same literary circle and reading
between lines one is inclined to the conclusion that often Johnson
became heavily pontifical. The average man is so constituted that he
could not hear thunders from Mount Sinai for long without yawning.
Goldsmith and Johnson were at times conversational rivals, Johnson slow
and huge like the magnificent ships of the Spanish Armada and Goldsmith
swift in attack, getting under the mighty one’s counter to harass him,
as it were. There leaps to mind the incident of the talk on fable
making, with Goldsmith holding that animals introduced into fables
rarely talked in character. “For instance,” said Goldsmith, “the fable
of the little fishes, who saw birds fly over their heads, and, envying
them, petitioned Jupiter to be changed into birds. The skill comes in
making them talk like little fishes.” That set Dr. Johnson off into
one of his fits of laughter, the laughter intended to overawe. Then
Goldsmith launched his shaft. “Why, Dr. Johnson, this is not so easy
as you seem to think; for if you were to make little fishes talk, they
would talk like whales.”
It is evident that Johnson resented the Goldsmith method of attack
and retreat. “Goldsmith,” said he, “should not be forever attempting
to shine in conversation; he has not temper for it, he is so much
mortified when he fails. Sir, a game of jokes is composed partly of
skill, partly of chance; a man may be beat at times by one who has not
the tenth part of his wit. Now, Goldsmith, putting himself against
another, is like a man laying a hundred to one, who cannot spare the
hundred. It is not worth a man’s while. A man should not lay a hundred
to one unless he can easily spare it, though he has a hundred chances
for him; he can get but a guinea, and he may lose a hundred. Goldsmith
is in this state. When he contends, if he gets the better, it is a very
little addition to a man of his literary reputation; if he does not get
the better, he is miserably vexed.” Again, Johnson, in the character
of a Sir Oracle, says: “The misfortune of Goldsmith in conversation is
this, he goes on without knowing how he is to get off. His genius is
great, but his knowledge is small. As they say of a generous man it is
a pity he is not rich, we may say of Goldsmith it is a pity he is not
knowing. He would not keep his knowledge to himself.”
Call Johnson a man of orthodox prejudice and we come near the truth.
He was conservative of the conservatives, a Tory of Tories. As a
straw will show which way the wind blows, so will a reference to his
dictionary reveal the unbending rigidity and granite immobility of
the man. Turn to his definition of the word Freethinker. You have his
answer in four words. _A contemner of religion; a libertine._ Follow a
little deeper and turn to Libertine. You read: _One who pays no regard
to the precepts of religion_, with an explanatory quotation which runs:
“They say this town is full of cozenage,
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,
And many such-like libertines of sin.”
In that you have a key to much. Like Stendhal, or H. L. Mencken of
our own day, Johnson had his prejudices and paraded them. He disliked
Scotland as the school boy disliked Dr. Fell and his antipathy was
sufficient. “Mr. Johnson,” said Boswell apologetically on the occasion
of their first meeting, “I do indeed come from Scotland; but I cannot
help it.” “That sir, is what a great many of your countrymen cannot
help,” was the reply. Again, when a fellow countryman and friend of
Boswell’s claimed for Scotland a great many “noble, wild prospects,”
the sage made reply: “I believe sir you have a great many. Norway,
too, has noble, wild prospects. But sir, let me tell you the noblest
prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him
to England.” His definition of the word Freethinker would be enough
to lead to the belief that he had but small love for the historian
Hume and all who, like him, did not hold fast to a belief in revealed
religion. That Hume had created a new era of thought, that he
profoundly influenced European thought, that he introduced a new and
higher method of writing history than had previously been practised
was as nothing to Johnson. Hume was of the black squad known as
Freethinkers and that out-weighed everything else. “Hume,” he said to
Boswell, “Hume, and other sceptical innovators, are vain men, and will
gratify themselves at any expense. Truth will not afford sufficient
food for their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to error. Truth,
sir, is a cow which will yield such people no milk and so they are gone
to milk the bull.”
On one occasion the discussion of Hume led into a talk of death, a
subject which always greatly annoyed Johnson. The passage that follows,
throws a strong sidelight on Johnson’s character, especially on his
testiness when cornered in an argument. I copy from the first volume of
Boswell’s Life of Johnson, page 401, J. M. Dent edition, London, MCMI,
used in all quotations here:
“When we were alone, I introduced the subject of death, and
endeavored to maintain that the fear of it might be got over. I told
him that David Hume said to me, he was no more uneasy to think he
should _not_ be after his life, than that he _had not been_ before he
began to exist.
“JOHNSON. ‘Sir, if he really thinks so, his perceptions are
disturbed; he is mad; if he does not think so, he lies. He may tell
you, he holds his finger in the flame of a candle, without feeling
pain; would you believe him? When he dies, he at least gives up all
he has.’
“BOSWELL. ‘Foote, sir, told me, that when he was very ill he was not
afraid to die.’
“JOHNSON. ‘It is not true sir. Hold a pistol to Foote’s breast, or to
Hume’s breast, and threaten to kill them and see how they behave.’
“BOSWELL. ‘But may we not fortify our minds for the approach of
death?’... He answered, in a passion, ‘No, sir, let it alone. It
matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying
is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.’ He added with an
earnest look, ‘A man knows it must be so, and submits. It will do him
no good to whine.’
“I attempted the conversation. He was so provoked, that he said:
‘Give us no more of this;’ and was thrown into such a state of
agitation, that he expressed himself in a way that alarmed and
distressed me; shewed an impatience that I should leave him, and when
I was going away, called to me sternly, ‘Don’t let us meet tomorrow.’
“I went home exceedingly uneasy. All the harsh observations which I
had ever heard made upon his character, crowded into my mind; and I
seemed to myself like the man who had put his head into the lion’s
mouth a great many times with perfect safety, but at last had it bit
off.”
A man of strangely susceptible nerves cowering under a deadly fear
was Johnson. Of strong, sturdy good sense, yet he seemed at times to
become paralyzed at the thought that all about him were dark demoniac
powers. He is disturbed when a question as to the future state of man
is pressed and he worries about the different degrees of happiness
in heaven. He is positive that the better the life a man leads, the
more he must fear death. He worries about predestination and infant
salvation, and breaks into a furious tirade against anyone who comes
under the ban as a philosophical innovator. Speaking of Rousseau
and Voltaire, he says: “It is difficult to settle the proportion of
iniquity between them.” Again of Rousseau:
“I think him one of the worst of men; a rascal who ought to be hunted
out of society, as he has been.... I would sooner sign a sentence for
his transportation, than that of any felon who has gone from the old
Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the
plantations....”
In short according to the Johnson creed, there was no health, no truth,
outside of the Established Church.
Naturally, a man thus constituted must break out in an unexpected
direction. Other great souls, learned scholars, benevolent hearts
have leaped into the gulf of strange superstition. So Johnson, the
hard-headed, hearing of a tormented spirit haunting the Church of St.
John, Clerkenwell, sets off at one in the morning to see what is to
be seen, for the disembodied one had promised to “give a token of her
presence there by a knock upon her coffin.” To give the Doctor due
credit he was not foolishly credulous, although some writers have made
him appear so. In the case of the Cock-Lane Ghost he himself wrote
an account for the Gentleman’s Magazine saying that there was not
sufficient ground to justify belief in the tale. But again:
“Talking of ghosts, he said, he knew one friend, who was an honest
man and a sensible man, who told him he had seen a ghost; old Mr.
Edward Cave, the printer at St. John’s Gate. He said, Mr. Cave did
not like to talk of it, and seemed to be in great horror whenever it
was mentioned.
“BOSWELL. ‘Pray, sir, what did he say was the appearance?’
“JOHNSON. ‘Why, sir, something of a shadowy being.’”
On the subject of the existence of witches he was dogmatic. “You have
not only the general report,” said he, “but you have many voluntary
confessions.”
Again as to ghosts:
“It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the
creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there
has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after
death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.”
When Charles Wesley examined a haunted house without what Johnson
thought sufficient care, the sage was solemnly vehement and again
adduced his 5,000-year-old world argument. He has his own curious
experience too, for when a young man at Oxford, as he was turning the
key of his chamber, he heard his mother distinctly call him by name,
although she was then miles away at Lichfield. But the man was too
sincere, too much given to independent verification to go wholly over
to the spiritualists. Yet, it can be clearly seen, the wish to believe
was in him. All kinds of wonderful things were possible, he held, so
why not the appearance of a departed spirit, and the thought worried
him throughout his long life. A man, as he saw it, might even have
attained heavenly bliss and yet not be safe. “We do not know that even
the angels are quite in a state of security; nay, we know that some of
them have fallen.”
Strange indeed it seems that this staunch Tory, this hide bound
conservative and supporter of things as they were should have been so
sound on the question of slavery and slave holding, in a time when the
vast majority of men of his acquaintance were firmly convinced that
slave holding was right and proper. The old man, aged 68, at a banquet
in Oxford, in which were “some very grave men,” rose up and gave the
toast: “Here’s to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West
Indies.” Then again, on another occasion, referring to the Americans in
1777, “How is it that we hear the greatest _yelps_ for liberty among
the drivers of negroes?” There are other gems, too. For instance: “No
man is by nature the property of another.” “The laws of Jamaica afford
a negro no redress. His color is considered a sufficient testimony
against him.” “It is to be lamented that moral right should ever give
way to political consideration.” “Inhabitants of this island can
neither gain riches nor power by taking away the liberty of any part of
the human species.”
There is one incident in Johnson’s life which reveals the doughty old
warrior determined to go the way he chooses, though it be a lone way.
It is the tale of Johnson’s fight for Dr. William Dodd, a criminal
under sentence of death. The man was not so great a criminal as we
consider things today, for his offence was only forgery, though it was
then considered a bold transgression of the moral law. Dr. Dodd had
been one of the most popular preachers of his day, a man of pleasing
form, genteel address and lively imagination. Discovering that the life
of a fashionable parson was a very expensive one he got into debt,
and, pressed by his creditors, forged the name of Lord Chesterfield
to a document. The slightest of chances brought the forgery to light
and Dr. Dodd was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. That
was in the year 1777 when Johnson was 68 years old, his fame secure
and his ability recognized, and when the greatest in the land were
thankful enough to be honored among his acquaintances. But wealth,
honor, name, counted for little. The heart of the old man beat strong
and the spirit of the fellow who had carried unfortunates to his
lodging from the streets was unchanged. The dogmatic old bear with
the cultured heart and gentlest, most sympathetic manners under all
his strange uncouthness, had his own notions of right and of wrong.
Learning of the unfortunate Dr. Dodd’s predicament, Johnson fell into
an extraordinary state of agitation. He walked up and down the room
rumbling and grumbling. “I will do what I can,” he said, over and over
again. Then followed days of vast activities. He wrote a petition to
the Court of Common Council and another to the Humane Society, an
organization Dr. Dodd himself had founded. He urged those in power to
consider “whether it would not be more for the interest of religion to
bury such an offender in the obscurity of a perpetual exile than to
expose him in a cart and on the gallows to all who, for any reason,
are enemies to the clergy.” He went further, composing a speech which
the prisoner delivered at the Old Bailey when sentence of death was
about to be imposed upon him. The stout old Tory seemed bent on playing
a part similar to that played a century later by Bakounin and Roekel
who put themselves in jeopardy to aid a law breaker. There were no
half hearted measures. He composed the sermon which the condemned man
preached to his fellow prisoners at Newgate on the Sunday before his
execution. That we have on the authority of Boswell who tells us that
“Dr. Johnson was so good as to mark for me with his own hand on a copy
of this sermon which is now in my possession, such passages as were
added by Dr. Dodd,” and a glance will show that it is quite in the
Johnsonian style:
“I have fallen from reputation, which ought to have made me cautious;
and from a former fortune, which ought to have given me content. I
am sunk at once into poverty and scorn; my name and my crime fill
the ballads in the streets; the sport of the thoughtless and the
triumph of the wicked. It may seem strange that, remembering what
I have lately been, I should still wish to continue what I am.
But contempt of death, how speciously soever it might mingle with
Christian virtues, has nothing in it suitable to Christian penitence.
Many motives compel me to beg earnestly for life. I feel the natural
horror of a violent death, and the universal dread of untimely
dissolution. I am desirous to recompense the injury I have done to
the clergy, to the world, and to religion, and to efface the scandal
of my crime by the example of my penitence.”
Whether Dr. Johnson was privy to the forlorn hope or not, is not known.
Certainly, secrets traveled fast in London in those days. However that
may be, it can safely be asserted that no more romantic plan was ever
conceived to cheat the gallows. The hangman was bribed to tie the knot
in a certain way and it was arranged that after the hanging, the body
should be rushed with all possible speed to a nearby house, where
the famous Dr. John Hunter, author of a book in which was explained
the method of resuscitating the apparently drowned, was to operate on
the body of Dodd. All went well, but the unforseen intervened, for
the crowd about the gallows was so great that it was two hours before
the body reached Dr. Hunter, by which time all hope was gone. Whether
Johnson was interested in that or not cannot be definitely asserted,
but he certainly knew of other efforts that were being made on behalf
of the luckless clergyman. Boswell records a conversation on the
subject which runs as follows:
“He (Johnson) told us that Dodd’s city friends stood by him so that
a thousand pounds were ready to be given to the gaoler if he would
let him escape. He added, that he knew a friend of Dodd’s who walked
about Newgate for some time on the evening before the execution with
some five hundred pounds in his pockets, ready to be paid to any of
the turnkeys who could get him out; but it was too late; for he was
watched with much circumspection. He said Dodd’s friends had an image
of him made of wax, which was to have been left in his place; and he
believed it was carried into the prison.”
Were I asked to sum up Dr. Johnson’s character, avoiding all
sentimentality and hero-worship, I should say that he was a man of
strong inflexible will, satisfied to be a scholar and a thinker,
utterly careless of notoriety, honors and wealth. He was by no means
free from the small weaknesses of humanity, but he had the inestimable
boon of patience and he was free from cant, pretense and hypocrisy. In
spite of all his shortcomings, habits and tricks that would certainly
annoy those of more delicate sensibilities, he had the redeeming merit
of immense social ardor and the charity that covers a multitude of
sins. For him was the deed rather than the word. Sympathy, he thought,
was all very well, but “you will find these very feeling people are not
very ready to do you good. They pay you by feeling.” Work, he held,
was the great anodyne for human ills. Being told that Lady Tavistock’s
death had been caused by her grief for her husband’s loss, he retorted
that had she had something definite to do, the sting would have been
drawn from her bereavement. Sentimentality annoyed him. When his
friend, Mrs. Thrale, observed that a certain lady would be grieved
because her friend had lost the chance of a fortune, Johnson growled:
“She will suffer as much, perhaps, as your horse did when your cow
miscarried.” Again, there is much of good in this: “Why whine about
metaphysical distresses when there is so much want and hunger in the
world.”
Johnson had a morbid fear of death. As shown in the conversation above
repeated, he singularly failed to see that Hume might have strongly
objected to die a violent death at the hands of another, and yet have
no wish to exist after death. That immortality is not universally
desired, and that five hundred millions of believers in Buddhism regard
the extinction of personal consciousness as a high reward for a life
well lived was not within the sphere of his knowledge.
The following quoted viewpoint of Seneca, as set forth in his letter
to Marcia, Johnson could not understand. “Think this, that the dead
are afflicted with no evils. Those things that make the grave terrible
are no fables. We know that the dead are not enfolded in darkness.
We believe not those floods flaming with fire, neither the lake of
forgetfulness, nor the Judgment Seat. These are poetical, and thus
have they tormented us with vain terrors. _Death reposeth us in that
tranquility wherein we lay before we were born._ Death is neither
good nor evil. That may be either good or evil which is something;
but that which is of itself nothing, and reduceth all things to
nothing, betrayeth us to no fortune.” Johnson, at the age of 69
solemnly declares that “I have made no approaches to a state which
can look on it (death) as not terrible.” As for the extinction of
personal consciousness, in arguing with a Miss Seward who had said
that annihilation was “a pleasing sleep without a dream,” the doctor
solemnly declared, “It is neither pleasing, nor sleep. It is nothing.
Now mere existence is so much better than nothing, that one would
rather exist even in pain than not exist.”
III.
HIS EARLY LIFE.
Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield, England, in 1709, and lived in a
bookish atmosphere. His father, Michael Johnson, was a bookseller and
something of an original character who tended his bookstall on market
days in Lichfield as well as in surrounding towns. There is quite a
Johnsonian ring about the wording of Michael Johnson’s Catalogue of
Choice Books, dated 1717, and addressed to the booklovers of Worcester.
The old gentleman takes people into his confidence and explains matters
in friendly way, in a day when printed lists of books to be sold were
rare. Says he:
“I have had several auctions in your neighborhood--as Gloucester,
Tewkesbury, Evesham, etc.--with success, and am now about to address
myself, and try my fortune with you. You must not wonder that I
begin every day’s sale with small and common books; the reason is,
a room is some time a-filling, and persons of address and business
seldom coming fast, they are entertained till we are full.... (There
follows a summarized account of the books to be offered, and he adds
that they are the best of that kind) ... and to please the ladies, I
have added store of fine pictures and paper-hangings; and by the way
I would desire them to take notice that the pictures shall always
be put up by noon of that day they are to be sold, that they may
be viewed by daylight. I have no more but to wish you pleased, and
myself a good sale, who am,
Your humble servant,
M. JOHNSON.”
Once, the son was asked to take his place at the bookstall, the father
being sick. This young Samuel refused to do. Fifty years later the
memory of his snobbishness came to Johnson and, being at Lichfield, the
town in which he had been unfilial, he left his friend’s house after
breakfast and did not return until evening. Then, penance according to
his own notion being done, he worried no more. He tells the story thus:
“To do away with this sin of disobedience, I this day went in a
post-chaise to Uttoxeter, and going into the market at the time of
high business, uncovered my head and stood with it bare an hour
before the stall which my father had formerly used, exposed to the
sneers of the standers-by and the inclemency of the weather; a
penance by which I trust I have propitiated Heaven for this only
instance, I believe, of contumacy for my father.”
Samuel Johnson inherited hypochondriacal tendencies from his father
and, as a child, was taken by his mother to London to be touched by
the Queen to be cured of the “king’s evil.” So there was a queer
twist in him for which he was in no wise responsible, a certain lack
of co-ordination because of which he sometimes did strange things.
Sometimes it would seem that the man was fighting against himself,
as when he would stop in the middle of a room or in a street, then,
presently continue his course correctly. At other times, as if off his
guard, the hidden impulse had the better of him and there were strange
gesticulations, queer acts. For instance, at dinner, in company, _a
propos_ of nothing at all, he dived under the table and twisted off the
shoe of the lady who sat next him. Then there was the peculiar affair
at Twickenham when he imitated the movements of a jockey riding a
race. His disease too had scarred and distorted his face and destroyed
the sight of one eye. Altogether, the lad was terribly handicapped.
Physically he was a tall, stout fellow. His uncle, who kept a kind of
boxing school at Smithfield, had taught him boxing, wrestling and the
trick of the quarter staff. At times he was a Berserker. Hawkins has
told of the famous quarter staff, six feet in length and tapering from
three inches diameter to one, which he had ready for the reception of
one McPherson. Again there is the tale of a bookseller Osborne who
refused to sell a huge folio to Johnson and who, for his refusal, was
knocked down, the doctor using the book clubwise. Another tale tells of
a scene in the Lichfield theater. Johnson, finding his favorite seat in
the side scenes occupied by a man from Birmingham, pitched both chair
and occupant into the pit.
The boy’s education was a patchwork affair. He attended the Lichfield
schools, first a dame’s school and then a grammar school, but he
was forever reading. It would be quite just to say that he educated
himself. By chance he found his direction, for, looking on the book
shelves for an apple, he took down a volume of Petrarch, became
interested, and from that read outward, as it were, following up this
and that and the other. At nineteen he went to Oxford as a servitor,
working his way, as we would put it, poor indeed but full of personal
independence and self respect, and certainly not the man to be
patronized. When some wealthier, well-meaning fellow student put a new
pair of shoes at Johnson’s door, the man finding them, pitched them
out of the window. The stout hearted Johnson took no man’s pity. There
were other times when he seemed to be wild and scornful of authority.
In later years that being mentioned, he said: “Ah! sir, I was mad
and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolic. I was
miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my
wit; so I disregarded all power and authority.” The words imply quite
enough. He left the University in 1731 without taking a degree; his
father died at the end of the same year, and young Johnson found the
family fortunes amounted to no more than twenty pounds all told. So
there were dark days with a mother to keep.
For a time he tried school teaching, in one case losing a promising
position on the ground that his infirmities would excite the ridicule
of the scholars. There was a little literary work on local papers and,
in 1735, he received five guineas for a translation of Lobo’s Voyage
to Abyssinia, and married Elizabeth, the widow of a mercer who brought
him as dowry some seven or eight hundred pounds with which he set up
a private academy at Edial, in Staffordshire, with David Garrick as
one of his pupils. The wife of his choice was more than twice his age,
very fat and red of complexion, gaudy as to dress and affected as to
manners. She drank and she painted and was lacking in education, but
somehow the pair got on fairly well until she died in 1752. During
their married life, Johnson had on hand a flirtation or two, as is
the manner of men, but it caused no trouble. She on the other hand,
according to Boswell, who quotes Mrs. Desmoulins, “indulged herself
in country air and nice living, at an unsuitable expense, while her
husband was drudging in the smoke of London, and that she by no means
treated him with that complacency which is the most engaging quality in
a wife.” So, taking it all in all, honors were even and by dint of the
exercise of a mutual forbearance, the pair of them got along very well.
The year 1737 saw the Edial private academy on financial rocks and
Johnson and his pupil Garrick setting out together to try their
fortunes in London, the pupil with a tragedy in his pocket and Johnson
with a letter of introduction from a Gilbert Walmsley which set forth
the fact that the bearer was “a very good scholar and poet” and further
added that the writer had great hopes that Johnson would “turn out a
fine tragedy writer.”
IV.
IN GRUB STREET.
Today we call Grub Street by the name Bohemia. There, as in college,
Johnson “fought his way by his literature and his wit.” There were
days of destitution and nights when he and his new-found friend Savage
walked the streets, too poor to pay for a night’s lodging yet both full
of poetry and patriotism. In 1738, Johnson was “enlisted by Mr. Cave
(proprietor of the Gentleman’s Magazine) as a regular coadjutor in his
magazine,” yet, for a time no problem was solved. Indeed, being invited
to dine at Cave’s house one day when there was prosperous company,
Johnson was in such woful case as to raiment, that he could not make
his appearance at table, so sat in the dining room behind a screen
where he had his meal handed to him.
There were other dark days, many of them, and Johnson shared many
queer lodgings. His chief companion for some time was the poet Richard
Savage, already mentioned, who claimed to be the illegitimate son
of the Countess of Macclesfield. To Johnson, Savage was a hero and
he shared part at least of his hero’s miseries: “on a bulk, in a
cellar, or in a glass house, among thieves and beggars.” Savage at
last died in a debtor’s prison. In 1744 Johnson published his Life of
Savage, not only a labor of love, but a work of intrinsic merit and
autobiographical interest.
From November, 1740, to February, 1742, Johnson did much hack work
and actually wrote many of the speeches attributed to the statesman
Pitt and others. The publisher Cave employed men to attend the debates
in the House of Lords and the House of Commons who took notes of the
speeches. These notes were then put into shape by Johnson, and the
putting into shape was in reality composing them. It was a deception
which Johnson regretted to the end of his days, though it would seem
that at first he wrote from a mere delight in authorship. As soon as
he found that the speeches as printed were taken as genuine, he ceased
to write saying that he “would not be accessory to the propagation of
falsehood.” At a dinner, years afterwards, Francis, father of Junius,
mentioned a speech of Pitt’s, saying that it was the most eloquent he
had ever read, and superior to anything in Demosthenes. “I wrote that
speech, in a garret in Exeter Street,” said Johnson. Someone in the
company then praised Johnson for his impartiality. “That is not true,”
said he. “I saved appearances tolerably well, but I took care that the
Whig dogs should not have the best of it.”
Leaping over the years until Johnson began work on his Dictionary, his
literary activities may be thus summarized:
1738. London--an imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal.
1741. Composition of the Parliamentary Debates in the Gentleman’s
Magazine.
1744. Life of Savage.
1747. Plan for a Dictionary of the English Language, addressed to
Lord Chesterfield.
1749. The Vanity of Human Wishes. Irene--a Tragedy.
1750. The periodical, The Rambler, first published.
1752. The Rambler ceased publication.
1753. Contributed to Hawkesworth’s Adventurer.
For London, a poem, he received ten guineas and for the Vanity of Human
Wishes fifteen guineas. His tragedy Irene brought him a hundred pounds
and when his old pupil, Garrick, who had become manager of the Drury
Lane theater, produced it for nine nights, he handed Johnson a hundred
and ninety-seven pounds and seventeen shillings as the author’s share
of the profits. Johnson, if not entirely free from the fear of poverty,
was at least in a way to give his attention to matters close to his
heart.
V.
THE DICTIONARY.
This making of the first English dictionary was an incredible feat.
There is a story told by Boswell, which shows that the stout hearted
Johnson was well aware of the fact that he had undertaken a giant’s
task. Dr. Adams entered the room one day and found Johnson hard at
work. Said Adams: “This is a great work, sir. How are you to get all
the etymologies?”
“Why, sir,” answered Johnson, “there is a shelf with Junius and
Skinner, and others; and there is a Welsh gentleman who has published
a collection of Welsh proverbs, who will help me with the Welsh.”
“But, sir,” protested Dr. Adams, “how can you do this in three years?”
“I have no doubt I can do it in three years,” asserted the sage.
“But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty
years to compile their dictionary.”
“Sir, thus it is,” explained Johnson. “This is the proportion. Let
us see: forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three is to sixteen
hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.”