I have somewhere heard or read that the preface before a book, like the
portico before a house, should be contrived so as to catch, but not
detain, the attention of those who desire admission to the family within,
or leave to look over the collection of pictures made by one whose
opportunities of obtaining them we know to have been not unfrequent. I
wish not to keep my readers long from such intimacy with the manners of
Dr. Johnson, or such knowledge of his sentiments as these pages can
convey. To urge my distance from England as an excuse for the book's
being ill-written would be ridiculous; it might indeed serve as a just
reason for my having written it at all; because, though others may print
the same aphorisms and stories, I cannot _here_ be sure that they have
done so. As the Duke says, however, to the Weaver, in _A Midsummer
Night's Dream_, "Never excuse; if your play be a bad one, keep at least
the excuses to yourself."
I am aware that many will say I have not spoken highly enough of Dr.
Johnson; but it will be difficult for those who say so to speak more
highly. If I have described his manners as they were, I have been
careful to show his superiority to the common forms of common life. It
is surely no dispraise to an oak that it does not bear jessamine; and he
who should plant honeysuckle round Trajan's column would not be thought
to adorn, but to disgrace it.
When I have said that he was more a man of genius than of learning, I
mean not to take from the one part of his character that which I
willingly give to the other. The erudition of Mr. Johnson proved his
genius; for he had not acquired it by long or profound study: nor can I
think those characters the greatest which have most learning driven into
their heads, any more than I can persuade myself to consider the River
Jenisca as superior to the Nile, because the first receives near seventy
tributary streams in the course of its unmarked progress to the sea,
while the great parent of African plenty, flowing from an almost
invisible source, and unenriched by any extraneous waters, except eleven
nameless rivers, pours his majestic torrent into the ocean by seven
celebrated mouths.
But I must conclude my preface, and begin my book, the first I ever
presented before the public; from whose awful appearance in some measure
to defend and conceal myself, I have thought fit to retire behind the
Telamonian shield, and show as little of myself as possible, well aware
of the exceeding difference there is between fencing in the school and
fighting in the field. Studious, however, to avoid offending, and
careless of that offence which can be taken without a cause, I here not
unwillingly submit my slight performance to the decision of that glorious
country, which I have the daily delight to hear applauded in others, as
eminently just, generous, and humane.