Too much intelligence is often as pernicious to biography as too little;
the mind remains perplexed by contradiction of probabilities, and finds
difficulty in separating report from truth. If Johnson then lamented
that so little had ever been said about Butler, I might with more reason
be led to complain that so much has been said about himself; for
numberless informers but distract or cloud information, as glasses which
multiply will for the most part be found also to obscure. Of a life,
too, which for the last twenty years was passed in the very front of
literature, every leader of a literary company, whether officer or
subaltern, naturally becomes either author or critic, so that little less
than the recollection that it was _once_ the request of the deceased, and
_twice_ the desire of those whose will I ever delighted to comply with,
should have engaged me to add my little book to the number of those
already written on the subject. I used to urge another reason for
forbearance, and say, that all the readers would, on this singular
occasion, be the writers of his life: like the first representation of
the _Masque of Comus_, which, by changing their characters from
spectators to performers, was _acted_ by the lords and ladies it was
_written_ to entertain. This objection is, however, now at an end, as I
have found friends, far remote indeed from literary questions, who may
yet be diverted from melancholy by my description of Johnson's manners,
warmed to virtue even by the distant reflection of his glowing
excellence, and encouraged by the relation of his animated zeal to
persist in the profession as well as practice of Christianity.
Samuel Johnson was the son of Michael Johnson, a bookseller at Lichfield,
in Staffordshire; a very pious and worthy man, but wrong-headed,
positive, and afflicted with melancholy, as his son, from whom alone I
had the information, once told me: his business, however, leading him to
be much on horseback, contributed to the preservation of his bodily
health and mental sanity, which, when he stayed long at home, would
sometimes be about to give way; and Mr. Johnson said, that when his
workshop, a detached building, had fallen half down for want of money to
repair it, his father was not less diligent to lock the door every night,
though he saw that anybody might walk in at the back part, and knew that
there was no security obtained by barring the front door. "_This_," says
his son, "was madness, you may see, and would have been discoverable in
other instances of the prevalence of imagination, but that poverty
prevented it from playing such tricks as riches and leisure encourage."
Michael was a man of still larger size and greater strength than his son,
who was reckoned very like him, but did not delight in talking much of
his family: "One has," says he, "_so_ little pleasure in reciting the
anecdotes of beggary." One day, however, hearing me praise a favourite
friend with partial tenderness as well as true esteem: "Why do you like
that man's acquaintance so?" said he. "Because," replied I, "he is open
and confiding, and tells me stories of his uncles and cousins; I love the
light parts of a solid character." "Nay, if you are for family history,"
says Mr. Johnson, good-humouredly, "_I_ can fit you: I had an uncle,
Cornelius Ford, who, upon a journey, stopped and read an inscription
written on a stone he saw standing by the wayside, set up, as it proved,
in honour of a man who had leaped a certain leap thereabouts, the extent
of which was specified upon the stone: 'Why now,' says my uncle, 'I could
leap it in my boots;' and he did leap it in his boots. I had likewise
another uncle, Andrew," continued he, "my father's brother, who kept the
ring in Smithfield (where they wrestled and boxed) for a whole year, and
never was thrown or conquered. Here now are uncles for you, Mistress, if
that's the way to your heart." Mr. Johnson was very conversant in the
art of attack and defence by boxing, which science he had learned from
this uncle Andrew, I believe; and I have heard him descant upon the age
when people were received, and when rejected, in the schools once held
for that brutal amusement, much to the admiration of those who had no
expectation of his skill in such matters, from the sight of a figure
which precluded all possibility of personal prowess; though, because he
saw Mr. Thrale one day leap over a cabriolet stool, to show that he was
not tired after a chase of fifty miles or more, _he_ suddenly jumped over
it too, but in a way so strange and so unwieldy, that our terror lest he
should break his bones took from us even the power of laughing.
Michael Johnson was past fifty years old when he married his wife, who
was upwards of forty, yet I think her son told me she remained three
years childless before he was born into the world, who so greatly
contributed to improve it. In three years more she brought another son,
Nathaniel, who lived to be twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, and of
whose manly spirit I have heard his brother speak with pride and
pleasure, mentioning one circumstance, particular enough, that when the
company were one day lamenting the badness of the roads, he inquired
where they could be, as he travelled the country more than most people,
and had never seen a bad road in his life. The two brothers did not,
however, much delight in each other's company, being always rivals for
the mother's fondness; and many of the severe reflections on domestic
life in Rasselas took their source from its author's keen recollections
of the time passed in his early years. Their father, Michael, died of an
inflammatory fever at the age of seventy-six, as Mr. Johnson told me,
their mother at eighty-nine, of a gradual decay. She was slight in her
person, he said, and rather below than above the common size. So
excellent was her character, and so blameless her life, that when an
oppressive neighbour once endeavoured to take from her a little field she
possessed, he could persuade no attorney to undertake the cause against a
woman so beloved in her narrow circle: and it is this incident he alludes
to in the line of his "Vanity of Human Wishes," calling her
"The general favourite as the general friend."
Nor could any one pay more willing homage to such a character, though she
had not been related to him, than did Dr. Johnson on every occasion that
offered: his disquisition on Pope's epitaph placed over Mrs. Corbet is a
proof of that preference always given by him to a noiseless life over a
bustling one; but however taste begins, we almost always see that it ends
in simplicity; the glutton finishes by losing his relish for anything
highly sauced, and calls for his boiled chicken at the close of many
years spent in the search of dainties; the connoisseurs are soon weary of
Rubens, and the critics of Lucan; and the refinements of every kind
heaped upon civil life always sicken their possessors before the close of
it.
At the age of two years Mr. Johnson was brought up to London by his
mother, to be touched by Queen Anne for the scrofulous evil, which
terribly afflicted his childhood, and left such marks as greatly
disfigured a countenance naturally harsh and rugged, beside doing
irreparable damage to the auricular organs, which never could perform
their functions since I knew him; and it was owing to that horrible
disorder, too, that one eye was perfectly useless to him; that defect,
however, was not observable, the eyes looked both alike. As Mr. Johnson
had an astonishing memory, I asked him if he could remember Queen Anne at
all? "He had," he said, "a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn,
recollection of a lady in diamonds, and a long black hood."
The christening of his brother he remembered with all its circumstances,
and said his mother taught him to spell and pronounce the words 'little
Natty,' syllable by syllable, making him say it over in the evening to
her husband and his guests. The trick which most parents play with their
children, that of showing off their newly-acquired accomplishments,
disgusted Mr. Johnson beyond expression. He had been treated so himself,
he said, till he absolutely loathed his father's caresses, because he
knew they were sure to precede some unpleasing display of his early
abilities; and he used, when neighbours came o' visiting, to run up a
tree that he might not be found and exhibited, such, as no doubt he was,
a prodigy of early understanding. His epitaph upon the duck he killed by
treading on it at five years old--
"Here lies poor duck
That Samuel Johnson trod on;
If it had liv'd it had been good luck,
For it would have been an odd one"--
is a striking example of early expansion of mind and knowledge of
language; yet he always seemed more mortified at the recollection of the
bustle his parents made with his wit than pleased with the thoughts of
possessing it. "That," said he to me one day, "is the great misery of
late marriages; the unhappy produce of them becomes the plaything of
dotage. An old man's child," continued he, "leads much such a life. I
think, as a little boy's dog, teased with awkward fondness, and forced,
perhaps, to sit up and beg, as we call it, to divert a company, who at
last go away complaining of their disagreeable entertainment." In
consequence of these maxims, and full of indignation against such parents
as delight to produce their young ones early into the talking world, I
have known Mr. Johnson give a good deal of pain by refusing to hear the
verses the children could recite, or the songs they could sing,
particularly one friend who told him that his two sons should repeat
Gray's "Elegy" to him alternately, that he might judge who had the
happiest cadence. "No, pray, sir," said he, "let the dears both speak it
at once; more noise will by that means be made, and the noise will be
sooner over." He told me the story himself, but I have forgot who the
father was.
Mr. Johnson's mother was daughter to a gentleman in the country, such as
there were many of in those days, who possessing, perhaps, one or two
hundred pounds a year in land, lived on the profits, and sought not to
increase their income. She was, therefore, inclined to think higher of
herself than of her husband, whose conduct in money matters being but
indifferent, she had a trick of teasing him about it, and was, by her
son's account, very importunate with regard to her fears of spending more
than they could afford, though she never arrived at knowing how much that
was, a fault common, as he said, to most women who pride themselves on
their economy. They did not, however, as I could understand, live ill
together on the whole. "My father," says he, "could always take his
horse and ride away for orders when things went badly." The lady's
maiden name was Ford; and the parson who sits next to the punch-bowl in
Hogarth's "Modern Midnight Conversation" was her brother's son. This
Ford was a man who chose to be eminent only for vice, with talents that
might have made him conspicuous in literature, and respectable in any
profession he could have chosen. His cousin has mentioned him in the
lives of Fenton and of Broome; and when he spoke of him to me it was
always with tenderness, praising his acquaintance with life and manners,
and recollecting one piece of advice that no man surely ever followed
more exactly: "Obtain," says Ford, "some general principles of every
science; he who can talk only on one subject, or act only in one
department, is seldom wanted, and perhaps never wished for, while the man
of general knowledge can often benefit, and always please." He used to
relate, however, another story less to the credit of his cousin's
penetration, how Ford on some occasion said to him, "You will make your
way the more easily in the world, I see, as you are contented to dispute
no man's claim to conversation excellence; they will, therefore, more
willingly allow your pretensions as a writer." Can one, on such an
occasion, forbear recollecting the predictions of Boileau's father, when
stroking the head of the young satirist?--"_Ce petit bon homme_," says
he, "_n'a point trop d'esprit_, mais il _ne dira jamais mal de
personne_." Such are the prognostics formed by men of wit and sense, as
these two certainly were, concerning the future character and conduct of
those for whose welfare they were honestly and deeply concerned; and so
late do those features of peculiarity come to their growth, which mark a
character to all succeeding generations.
Dr. Johnson first learned to read of his mother and her old maid
Catharine, in whose lap he well remembered sitting while she explained to
him the story of St. George and the Dragon. I know not whether this is
the proper place to add that such was his tenderness, and such his
gratitude, that he took a journey to Lichfield fifty-seven years
afterwards to support and comfort her in her last illness; he had
inquired for his nurse, and she was dead. The recollection of such
reading as had delighted him in his infancy made him always persist in
fancying that it was the only reading which could please an infant; and
he used to condemn me for putting Newbery's books into their hands as too
trifling to engage their attention. "Babies do not want," said he, "to
hear about babies; they like to be told of giants and castles, and of
somewhat which can stretch and stimulate their little minds." When in
answer I would urge the numerous editions and quick sale of "Tommy
Prudent" or "Goody Two-Shoes." "Remember always," said he, "that the
parents _buy_ the books, and that the children never read them." Mrs.
Barbauld, however, had his best praise, and deserved it; no man was more
struck than Mr. Johnson with voluntary descent from possible splendour to
painful duty.
At eight years old he went to school, for his health would not permit him
to be sent sooner; and at the age of ten years his mind was disturbed by
scruples of infidelity, which preyed upon his spirits and made him very
uneasy, the more so as he revealed his uneasiness to no one, being
naturally, as he said, "of a sullen temper and reserved disposition." He
searched, however, diligently but fruitlessly, for evidences of the truth
of revelation; and at length, recollecting a book he had once seen in his
father's shop, entitled "De Veritate Religionis," etc., he began to think
himself highly culpable for neglecting such a means of information, and
took himself severely to task for this sin, adding many acts of
voluntary, and to others unknown, penance. The first opportunity which
offered, of course, he seized the book with avidity, but on examination,
not finding himself scholar enough to peruse its contents, set his heart
at rest; and, not thinking to inquire whether there were any English
books written on the subject, followed his usual amusements, and
considered his conscience as lightened of a crime. He redoubled his
diligence to learn the language that contained the information he most
wished for, but from the pain which guilt had given him he now began to
deduce the soul's immortality, which was the point that belief first
stopped at; and from that moment, resolving to be a Christian, became one
of the most zealous and pious ones our nation ever produced. When he had
told me this odd anecdote of his childhood, "I cannot imagine," said he,
"what makes me talk of myself to you so, for I really never mentioned
this foolish story to anybody except Dr. Taylor, not even to my _dear_,
_dear_ Bathurst, whom I loved better than ever I loved any human
creature; but poor Bathurst is dead!" Here a long pause and a few tears
ensued. "Why, sir," said I, "how like is all this to Jean Jacques
Rousseau--as like, I mean, as the sensations of frost and fire, when my
child complained yesterday that the ice she was eating _burned_ her
mouth." Mr. Johnson laughed at the incongruous ideas, but the first
thing which presented itself to the mind of an ingenious and learned
friend whom I had the pleasure to pass some time with here at Florence
was the same resemblance, though I think the two characters had little in
common, further than an early attention to things beyond the capacity of
other babies, a keen sensibility of right and wrong, and a warmth of
imagination little consistent with sound and perfect health. I have
heard him relate another odd thing of himself too, but it is one which
everybody has heard as well as me: how, when he was about nine years old,
having got the play of Hamlet in his hand, and reading it quietly in his
father's kitchen, he kept on steadily enough till, coming to the Ghost
scene, he suddenly hurried upstairs to the street door that he might see
people about him. Such an incident, as he was not unwilling to relate
it, is probably in every one's possession now; he told it as a testimony
to the merits of Shakespeare. But one day, when my son was going to
school, and dear Dr. Johnson followed as far as the garden gate, praying
for his salvation in a voice which those who listened attentively could
hear plain enough, he said to me suddenly, "Make your boy tell you his
dreams: the first corruption that entered into my heart was communicated
in a dream." "What was it, sir?" said I. "Do not ask me," replied he,
with much violence, and walked away in apparent agitation. I never durst
make any further inquiries. He retained a strong aversion for the memory
of Hunter, one of his schoolmasters, who, he said, once was a brutal
fellow, "so brutal," added he, "that no man who had been educated by him
ever sent his son to the same school." I have, however, heard him
acknowledge his scholarship to be very great. His next master he
despised, as knowing less than himself, I found, but the name of that
gentleman has slipped my memory. Mr. Johnson was himself exceedingly
disposed to the general indulgence of children, and was even scrupulously
and ceremoniously attentive not to offend them; he had strongly persuaded
himself of the difficulty people always find to erase early impressions
either of kindness or resentment, and said "he should never have so loved
his mother when a man had she not given him coffee she could ill afford,
to gratify his appetite when a boy." "If you had had children, sir,"
said I, "would you have taught them anything?" "I hope," replied he,
"that I should have willingly lived on bread and water to obtain
instruction for them; but I would not have set their future friendship to
hazard for the sake of thrusting into their heads knowledge of things for
which they might not perhaps have either taste or necessity. You teach
your daughters the diameters of the planets, and wonder when you have
done that they do not delight in your company. No science can be
communicated by mortal creatures without attention from the scholar; no
attention can be obtained from children without the infliction of pain,
and pain is never remembered without resentment." That something should
be learned was, however, so certainly his opinion that I have heard him
say how education had been often compared to agriculture, yet that it
resembled it chiefly in this: "That if nothing is sown, no crop," says
he, "can be obtained." His contempt of the lady who fancied her son
could be eminent without study, because Shakespeare was found wanting in
scholastic learning, was expressed in terms so gross and so well known, I
will not repeat them here.
To recollect, however, and to repeat the sayings of Dr. Johnson, is
almost all that can be done by the writers of his life, as his life, at
least since my acquaintance with him, consisted in little else than
talking, when he was not absolutely employed in some serious piece of
work; and whatever work he did seemed so much below his powers of
performance that he appeared the idlest of all human beings, ever musing
till he was called out to converse, and conversing till the fatigue of
his friends, or the promptitude of his own temper to take offence,
consigned him back again to silent meditation.
The remembrance of what had passed in his own childhood made Mr. Johnson
very solicitous to preserve the felicity of children: and when he had
persuaded Dr. Sumner to remit the tasks usually given to fill up boys'
time during the holidays, he rejoiced exceedingly in the success of his
negotiation, and told me that he had never ceased representing to all the
eminent schoolmasters in England the absurd tyranny of poisoning the hour
of permitted pleasure by keeping future misery before the children's
eyes, and tempting them by bribery or falsehood to evade it. "Bob
Sumner," said he, "however, I have at length prevailed upon. I know not,
indeed, whether his tenderness was persuaded, or his reason convinced,
but the effect will always be the same. Poor Dr. Sumner died, however,
before the next vacation."
Mr. Johnson was of opinion, too, that young people should have
_positive_, not _general_, rules given for their direction. "My mother,"
said he, "was always telling me that I did not _behave_ myself properly,
that I should endeavour to learn _behaviour_, and such cant; but when I
replied that she ought to tell me what to do, and what to avoid, her
admonitions were commonly, for that time at least, at an end."
This I fear was, however, at best a momentary refuge found out by
perverseness. No man knew better than Johnson in how many nameless and
numberless actions _behaviour_ consists--actions which can scarcely be
reduced to rule, and which come under no description. Of these he
retained so many very strange ones, that I suppose no one who saw his odd
manner of gesticulating much blamed or wondered at the good lady's
solicitude concerning her son's _behaviour_.
Though he was attentive to the peace of children in general, no man had a
stronger contempt than he for such parents as openly profess that they
cannot govern their children. "How," says he, "is an army governed? Such
people, for the most part, multiply prohibitions till obedience becomes
impossible, and authority appears absurd, and never suspect that they
tease their family, their friends, and themselves, only because
conversation runs low, and something must be said."
Of parental authority, indeed, few people thought with a lower degree of
estimation. I one day mentioned the resignation of Cyrus to his father's
will, as related by Xenophon, when, after all his conquests, he requested
the consent of Cambyses to his marriage with a neighbouring princess, and
I added Rollin's applause and recommendation of the example. "Do you not
perceive, then," says Johnson, "that Xenophon on this occasion commends
like a pedant, and Pere Rollin applauds like a slave? If Cyrus by his
conquests had not purchased emancipation, he had conquered to little
purpose indeed. Can you forbear to see the folly of a fellow who has in
his care the lives of thousands, when he begs his papa permission to be
married, and confesses his inability to decide in a matter which concerns
no man's happiness but his own?" Mr. Johnson caught me another time
reprimanding the daughter of my housekeeper for having sat down
unpermitted in her mother's presence. "Why, she gets her living, does
she not," said he, "without her mother's help? Let the wench alone,"
continued he. And when we were again out of the women's sight who were
concerned in the dispute: "Poor people's children, dear lady," said he,
"never respect them. I did not respect my own mother, though I loved
her. And one day, when in anger she called me a puppy, I asked her if
she knew what they called a puppy's mother." We were talking of a young
fellow who used to come often to the house; he was about fifteen years
old, or less, if I remember right, and had a manner at once sullen and
sheepish. "That lad," says Mr. Johnson, "looks like the son of a
schoolmaster, which," added he, "is one of the very worst conditions of
childhood. Such a boy has no father, or worse than none; he never can
reflect on his parent but the reflection brings to his mind some idea of
pain inflicted, or of sorrow suffered."
I will relate one thing more that Dr. Johnson said about babyhood before
I quit the subject; it was this: "That little people should be encouraged
always to tell whatever they hear particularly striking to some brother,
sister, or servant immediately, before the impression is erased by the
intervention of newer occurrences. He perfectly remembered the first
time he ever heard of Heaven and Hell," he said, "because when his mother
had made out such a description of both places as she thought likely to
seize the attention of her infant auditor, who was then in bed with her,
she got up, and dressing him before the usual time, sent him directly to
call a favourite workman in the house, to whom he knew he would
communicate the conversation while it was yet impressed upon his mind.
The event was what she wished, and it was to that method chiefly that he
owed his uncommon felicity of remembering distant occurrences and long
past conversations."
At the age of eighteen Dr. Johnson quitted school, and escaped from the
tuition of those he hated or those he despised. I have heard him relate
very few college adventures. He used to say that our best accounts of
his behaviour there would be gathered from Dr. Adams and Dr. Taylor, and
that he was sure they would always tell the truth. He told me, however,
one day how, when he was first entered at the University, he passed a
morning, in compliance with the customs of the place, at his tutor's
chambers; but, finding him no scholar, went no more. In about ten days
after, meeting the same gentleman, Mr. Jordan, in the street, he offered
to pass by without saluting him; but the tutor stopped, and inquired, not
roughly neither, what he had been doing? "Sliding on the ice," was the
reply, and so turned away with disdain. He laughed very heartily at the
recollection of his own insolence, and said they endured it from him with
wonderful acquiescence, and a gentleness that, whenever he thought of it,
astonished himself. He told me, too, that when he made his first
declamation, he wrote over but one copy, and that coarsely; and having
given it into the hand of the tutor, who stood to receive it as he
passed, was obliged to begin by chance and continue on how he could, for
he had got but little of it by heart; so fairly trusting to his present
powers for immediate supply, he finished by adding astonishment to the
applause of all who knew how little was owing to study. A prodigious
risk, however, said some one. "Not at all!" exclaims Johnson. "No man,
I suppose, leaps at once into deep water who does not know how to swim."
I doubt not but this story will be told by many of his biographers, and
said so to him when he told it me on the 18th of July, 1773. "And who
will be my biographer," said he, "do you think?" "Goldsmith, no doubt,"
replied I, "and he will do it the best among us." "The dog would write
it best, to be sure," replied he; "but his particular malice towards me,
and general disregard for truth, would make the book useless to all, and
injurious to my character." "Oh! as to that," said I, "we should all
fasten upon him, and force him to do you justice; but the worst is, the
Doctor does not _know_ your life; nor can I tell indeed who does, except
Dr. Taylor of Ashbourne." "Why, Taylor," said he, "is better acquainted
with my _heart_ than any man or woman now alive; and the history of my
Oxford exploits lies all between him and Adams; but Dr. James knows my
very early days better than he. After my coming to London to drive the
world about a little, you must all go to Jack Hawkesworth for anecdotes.
I lived in great familiarity with him (though I think there was not much
affection) from the year 1753 till the time Mr. Thrale and you took me
up. I intend, however, to disappoint the rogues, and either make you
write the life, with Taylor's intelligence, or, which is better, do it
myself, after outliving you all. I am now," added he, "keeping a diary,
in hopes of using it for that purpose some time." Here the conversation
stopped, from my accidentally looking in an old magazine of the year
1768, where I saw the following lines with his name to them, and asked if
they were his:--
_Verses said to be written by Dr. Samuel Johnson_, _at the request of
a gentleman to whom a lady had given a sprig of myrtle_.
"What hopes, what terrors, does thy gift create,
Ambiguous emblem of uncertain fate;
The myrtle, ensign of supreme command,
Consigned by Venus to Melissa's hand:
Not less capricious than a reigning fair,
Now grants, and now rejects a lover's prayer.
In myrtle shades oft sings the happy swain,
In myrtle shades despairing ghosts complain:
The myrtle crowns the happy lovers' heads,
The unhappy lover's grave the myrtle spreads:
Oh, then, the meaning of thy gift impart,
And ease the throbbings of an anxious heart!
Soon must this bough, as you shall fix his doom,
Adorn Philander's head, or grace his tomb."
"Why, now, do but see how the world is gaping for a wonder!" cries Mr.
Johnson. "I think it is now just forty years ago that a young fellow had
a sprig of myrtle given him by a girl he courted, and asked me to write
him some verses that he might present her in return. I promised, but
forgot; and when he called for his lines at the time agreed on--'Sit
still a moment,' says I, 'dear Mund, and I'll fetch them thee,' so
stepped aside for five minutes, and wrote the nonsense you now keep such
a stir about."
Upon revising these anecdotes, it is impossible not to be struck with
shame and regret that one treasured no more of them up; but no experience
is sufficient to cure the vice of negligence. Whatever one sees
constantly, or might see constantly, becomes uninteresting; and we suffer
every trivial occupation, every slight amusement, to hinder us from
writing down what, indeed, we cannot choose but remember, but what we
should wish to recollect with pleasure, unpoisoned by remorse for not
remembering more. While I write this, I neglect impressing my mind with
the wonders of art and beauties of nature that now surround me; and shall
one day, perhaps, think on the hours I might have profitably passed in
the Florentine Gallery, and reflecting on Raphael's St. John at that
time, as upon Johnson's conversation in this moment, may justly exclaim
of the months spent by me most delightfully in Italy--
"That I prized every hour that passed by,
Beyond all that had pleased me before;
But now they are past, and I sigh
And I grieve that I prized them no more."