"Criticism," writes Johnson in the 60th Idler, "is a study by which men
grow important and formidable at a very small expense. The power of
invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labor of
learning those sciences which may by mere labor be obtained, is too
great to be willingly endured: but every man can exert such judgment as
he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and
idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of
a critick."
To proceed with our task by the method of comparison is to pursue a
course open to grave objection; yet it is forced upon us when we find,
as we lately did, a writer in the Times newspaper, in the course of a
not very discriminating review of Mr. Froude's recent volumes, casually
remarking, as if it admitted of no more doubt than the day's price of
consols, that Carlyle was a greater man than Johnson. It is a good thing
to be positive. To be positive in your opinions and selfish in your
habits is the best recipe, if not for happiness, at all events for that
far more attainable commodity, comfort, with which we are acquainted. "A
noisy man," sang poor Cowper, who could not bear anything louder than
the hissing of a tea-urn, "a noisy man is always in the right," and a
positive man can seldom be proved wrong. Still, in literature it is very
desirable to preserve a moderate measure of independence, and we
therefore make bold to ask whether it is as plain as the "old hill of
Howth" that Carlyle was a greater man than Johnson? Is not the precise
contrary the truth? No abuse of Carlyle need be looked for, here or from
me. When a man of genius and of letters happens to have any striking
virtues, such as purity, temperance, honesty, the novel task of dwelling
on them has such attraction for us that we are content to leave the
elucidation of his faults to his personal friends, and to stern,
unbending moralists like Mr. Edmund Yates and the World newspaper. To
love Carlyle is, thanks to Mr. Froude's superhuman ideal of friendship,
a task of much heroism, almost meriting a pension; still it is quite
possible for the candid and truth-loving soul. But a greater than
Johnson he most certainly was not.
There is a story in Boswell of an ancient beggar-woman who, whilst
asking an alms of the Doctor, described herself to him, in a lucky
moment for her pocket, as "an old struggler." Johnson, his biographer
tells us, was visibly affected. The phrase stuck to his memory, and was
frequently applied to himself. "I too," so he would say, "am an old
struggler." So too, in all conscience, was Carlyle. The struggles of
Johnson have long been historical; those of Carlyle have just become so.
We are interested in both. To be indifferent would be inhuman. Both men
had great endowments, tempestuous natures, hard lots. They were not
amongst Dame Fortune's favorites. They had to fight their way. What they
took they took by storm. But--and here is a difference indeed--Johnson
came off victorious, Carlyle did not.
Boswell's book is an arch of triumph, through which, as we read, we see
his hero passing into eternal fame, to take up his place with those--
"Dead but sceptred sovereigns who still rule
Our spirits from their urns."
Froude's book is a tomb over which the lovers of Carlyle's genius will
never cease to shed tender but regretful tears.
We doubt whether there is in English literature a more triumphant book
than Boswell's. What materials for tragedy are wanting? Johnson was a
man of strong passions, unbending spirit, violent temper, as poor as a
church-mouse, and as proud as the proudest of Church dignitaries;
endowed with the strength of a coal-heaver, the courage of a lion, and
the tongue of Dean Swift, he could knock down booksellers and silence
bargees; he was melancholy almost to madness, "radically wretched,"
indolent, blinded, diseased. Poverty was long his portion; not that
genteel poverty that is sometimes behindhand with its rent, but that
hungry poverty that does not know where to look for its dinner. Against
all these things had this "old struggler" to contend; over all these
things did this "old struggler" prevail. Over even the fear of death,
the giving up of "this intellectual being," which had haunted his gloomy
fancy for a lifetime, he seems finally to have prevailed, and to have
met his end as a brave man should.
Carlyle, writing to his wife, says, and truthfully enough, "The more the
devil worries me the more I wring him by the nose;" but then if the
devil's was the only nose that was wrung in the transaction, why need
Carlyle cry out so loud? After buffeting one's way through the
storm-tossed pages of Froude's (Carlyle,)--in which the universe is
stretched upon the rack because food disagrees with man and cocks
crow,--with what thankfulness and reverence do we read once again the
letter in which Johnson tells Mrs. Thrale how he has been called to
endure, not dyspepsia or sleeplessness, but paralysis itself:--
"On Monday I sat for my picture, and walked a considerable way with
little inconvenience. In the afternoon and evening I felt myself light
and easy, and began to plan schemes of life. Thus I went to bed, and in
a short time waked and sat up, as has long been my custom; when I felt a
confusion in my head which lasted, I suppose, about half a minute; I was
alarmed, and prayed God that however much He might afflict my body He
would spate my understanding.... Soon after I perceived that I had
suffered a paralytic stroke, and that my speech was taken from me. I had
no pain, and so little dejection in this dreadful state that I wondered
at my own apathy, and considered that perhaps death itself, when it
should come, would excite less horror than seems now to attend it. In
order to rouse the vocal organs I took two drams.... I then went to bed,
and strange as it may seem I think slept. When I saw light it was time I
should contrive what I should do. Though God stopped my speech, He left
me my hand. I enjoyed a mercy which was not granted to my dear friend
Lawrence, who now perhaps overlooks me as I am writing, and rejoices
that I have what he wanted. My first note was necessarily to my servant,
who came in talking, and could not immediately comprehend why he should
read what I put into his hands.... How this will be received by you I
know not. I hope you will sympathize with me; but perhaps
"'My mistress, gracious, mild, and good,
Cries--Is he dumb? 'Tis time he should.'
"I suppose you may wish to know how my disease is treated by the
physicians. They put a blister upon my back, and two from my ear to my
throat, one on a side. The blister on the back has done little, and
those on the throat have not risen. I bullied and bounced (it sticks to
our last sand), and compelled the apothecary to make his salve according
to the Edinburgh dispensatory, that it might adhere better. I have now
two on my own prescription. They likewise give me salt of hartshorn,
which I take with no great confidence; but I am satisfied that what can
be done is done for me. I am almost ashamed of this querulous letter,
but now it is written let it go."
This is indeed tonic and bark for the mind.
If, irritated by a comparison that ought never to have been thrust upon
us, we ask why it is that the reader of Boswell finds it as hard to help
loving Johnson as the reader of Froude finds it hard to avoid disliking
Carlyle, the answer must be that whilst the elder man of letters was
full to overflowing with the milk of human kindness, the younger one was
full to overflowing with something not nearly so nice; and that whilst
Johnson was pre-eminently a reasonable man, reasonable in all his
demands and expectations, Carlyle was the most unreasonable mortal that
ever exhausted the patience of nurse, mother, or wife.
Of Dr. Johnson's affectionate nature nobody has written with nobler
appreciation than Carlyle himself. "Perhaps it is this Divine feeling of
affection, throughout manifested, that principally attracts us to
Johnson. A true brother of men is he, and filial lover of the earth."
The day will come when it will be recognized that Carlyle, as a critic,
is to be judged by what he himself corrected for the press, and not by
splenetic entries in diaries, or whimsical extravagances in private
conversation.
Of Johnson's reasonableness nothing need be said, except that it is
patent everywhere. His wife's judgment was a sound one--"He is the most
sensible man I ever met."
As for his brutality, of which at one time we used to hear a great
deal, we cannot say of it what Hookham Frere said of Lander's
immorality, that it was--
"Mere imaginary classicality
Wholly devoid of criminal reality."
It was nothing of the sort. Dialectically the great Doctor was a great
brute. The fact is, he had so accustomed himself to wordy warfare that
he lost all sense of moral responsibility, and cared as little for men's
feelings as a Napoleon did for their lives. When the battle was over,
the Doctor frequently did what no soldier ever did that I have heard
tell of,--apologized to his victims and drank wine or lemonade with
them. It must also be remembered that for the most part his victims
sought him out. They came to be tossed and gored. And after all, are
they so much to be pitied? They have our sympathy, and the Doctor has
our applause. I am not prepared to say, with the simpering fellow with
weak legs whom David Copperfield met at Mr. Waterbrook's dinner-table,
that I would sooner be knocked down by a man with blood than picked up
by a man without any; but, argumentatively speaking, I think it would be
better for a man's reputation to be knocked down by Dr. Johnson than
picked up by Mr. Froude.
Johnson's claim to be the best of our talkers cannot, on our present
materials, be contested. For the most part we have only talk about other
talkers. Johnson's is matter of record. Carlyle no doubt was a great
talker--no man talked against talk or broke silence to praise it more
eloquently than he, but unfortunately none of it is in evidence. All
that is given us is a sort of Commination Service writ large. We soon
weary of it. Man does not live by curses alone.
An unhappier prediction of a boy's future was surely never made than
that of Johnson's by his cousin, Mr. Cornelius Ford, who said to the
infant Samuel, "You will make your way the more easily in the world as
you are content to dispute no man's claim to conversation excellence,
and they will, therefore, more willingly allow your pretensions as a
writer." Unfortunate Mr. Ford! The man never breathed whose claim to
conversation excellence Dr. Johnson did not dispute on every possible
occasion; whilst, just because he was admittedly so good a talker, his
pretensions as a writer have been occasionally slighted.
Johnson's personal character has generally been allowed to stand high.
It, however, has not been submitted to recent tests. To be the first to
"smell a fault" is the pride of the modern biographer. Boswell's artless
pages afford useful hints not lightly to be disregarded. During some
portion of Johnson's married life he had lodgings, first at Greenwich,
afterwards at Hampstead. But he did not always go home o' nights;
sometimes preferring to roam the streets with that vulgar ruffian
Savage, who was certainly no fit company for him. He once actually
quarreled with Tetty, who, despite her ridiculous name, was a very
sensible woman with a very sharp tongue, and for a season, like stars,
they dwelt apart. Of the real merits of this dispute we must resign
ourselves to ignorance. The materials for its discussion do not exist;
even Croker could not find them. Neither was our great moralist as sound
as one would have liked to see him in the matter of the payment of small
debts. When he came to die, he remembered several of these outstanding
accounts; but what assurance have we that he remembered them all? One
sum of £10 he sent across to the honest fellow from whom he had borrowed
it, with an apology for his delay; which, since it had extended over a
period of twenty years, was not superfluous. I wonder whether he ever
repaid Mr. Dilly the guinea he once borrowed of him to give to a very
small boy who had just been apprenticed to a printer. If he did not, it
was a great shame. That he was indebted to Sir Joshua in a small loan is
apparent from the fact that it was one of his three dying requests to
that great man that he should release him from it, as, of course, the
most amiable of painters did. The other two requests, it will be
remembered, were to read his Bible, and not to use his brush on Sundays.
The good Sir Joshua gave the desired promises with a full heart, for
these two great men loved one another; but subsequently discovered the
Sabbatical restriction not a little irksome, and after a while resumed
his former practice, arguing with himself that the Doctor really had no
business to extract any such promise. The point is a nice one, and
perhaps ere this the two friends have met and discussed it in the
Elysian fields. If so, I hope the Doctor, grown "angelical," kept his
temper with the mild shade of Reynolds better than on the historical
occasion when he discussed with him the question of "strong drinks."
Against Garrick, Johnson undoubtedly cherished a smoldering grudge,
which, however, he never allowed any one but himself to fan into flame.
His pique was natural. Garrick had been his pupil at Edial, near
Lichfield; they had come up to town together with an easy united fortune
of fourpence--"current coin o' the realm." Garrick soon had the world at
his feet and garnered golden grain. Johnson became famous too, but
remained poor and dingy. Garrick surrounded himself with what only money
can buy, good pictures and rare books. Johnson cared nothing for
pictures--how should he? he could not see them; but he did care a great
deal about books, and the pernickety little player was chary about
lending his splendidly bound rarities to his quondam preceptor. Our
sympathies in this matter are entirely with Garrick; Johnson was one of
the best men that ever lived, but not to lend books to. Like Lady
Slattern, he had a "most observant thumb." But Garrick had no real cause
for complaint. Johnson may have soiled his folios and sneered at his
trade, but in life Johnson loved Garrick, and in death embalmed his
memory in a sentence which can only die with the English language:--"I
am disappointed by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the gayety of
nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure."
Will it be believed that puny critics have been found to quarrel with
this colossal compliment on the poor pretext of its falsehood? Garrick's
death, urge these dullards, could not possibly have eclipsed the gayety
of nations, since he had retired from the stage months previous to his
demise. When will mankind learn that literature is one thing, and sworn
testimony another? ...
Johnson the author is not always fairly treated. Phrases are convenient
things to hand about, and it is as little the custom to inquire into
their truth as it is to read the letterpress on bank-notes. We are
content to count bank-notes and to repeat phrases. One of these phrases
is, that whilst everybody reads Boswell, nobody reads Johnson. The facts
are otherwise. Everybody does not read Boswell, and a great many people
do read Johnson. If it be asked, What do the general public know of
Johnson's nine volumes octavo? I reply, Beshrew the general public! What
in the name of the Bodleian has the general public got to do with
literature? The general public subscribes to Mudie, and has its
intellectual, like its lacteal sustenance, sent round to it in carts. On
Saturdays these carts, laden with "recent works in circulation,"
traverse the Uxbridge Road; on Wednesdays they toil up Highgate Hill,
and if we may believe the reports of travelers, are occasionally seen
rushing through the wilds of Camberwell and bumping over Blackheath. It
is not a question of the general public, but of the lover of letters. Do
Mr. Browning, Mr. Arnold, Mr. Lowell, Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Stephen, Mr.
Morley, know their Johnson? "To doubt would be disloyalty." And what
these big men know in their big way, hundreds of little men know in
their little way. We have no writer with a more genuine literary flavor
about him than the great Cham of literature. No man of letters loved
letters better than he. He knew literature in all its branches--he had
read books, he had written books, he had sold books, he had bought
books, and he had borrowed them. Sluggish and inert in all other
directions, he pranced through libraries. He loved a catalogue; he
delighted in an index. He was, to employ a happy phrase of Dr. Holmes,
at home amongst books as a stable-boy is amongst horses. He cared
intensely about the future of literature and the fate of literary men.
"I respect Millar," he once exclaimed; "he has raised the price of
literature." Now Millar was a Scotchman. Even Horne Tooke was not to
stand in the pillory: "No, no, the dog has too much literature for
that." The only time the author of 'Rasselas' met the author of the
'Wealth of Nations' witnessed a painful scene. The English moralist gave
the Scotch one the lie direct, and the Scotch moralist applied to the
English one a phrase which would have done discredit to the lips of a
costermonger; but this notwithstanding, when Boswell reported that Adam
Smith preferred rhyme to blank verse, Johnson hailed the news as
enthusiastically as did Cedric the Saxon the English origin of the
bravest knights in the retinue of the Norman king. "Did Adam say that?"
he shouted: "I love him for it. I could hug him!" Johnson no doubt
honestly believed he held George III. in reverence, but really he did
not care a pin's fee for all the crowned heads of Europe. All his
reverence was reserved for "poor scholars." When a small boy in a
wherry, on whom had devolved the arduous task of rowing Johnson and his
biographer across the Thames, said he would give all he had to know
about the Argonauts, the Doctor was much pleased, and gave him, or got
Boswell to give him, a double fare. He was ever an advocate of the
spread of knowledge amongst all classes and both sexes. His devotion to
letters has received its fitting reward, the love and respect of all
"lettered hearts."