I have come now to Dr. Johnson, and it is almost a test of a true man
of letters that he should love him.
He was rugged and prejudiced, but magnanimous; impatient with the
presumptuous, tender to modest ignorance, proudly independent of the
patronage of the great, and was often doing deeds of noble
self-sacrifice by stealth.
Through long years of hard, unremitting toil for his daily bread he lived
bravely and sturdily, with no extraneous help but his stout oak stick--an
unconquerable man.
His prose rises on occasion to a measured and stately grandeur above
the reach of any of his contemporaries.
It was not often that he unveiled to the public gaze the beatings of his
own noble heart, or invited the world to contemplate the depression
and suffering amid which his unending labours were accomplished.
The concluding page of the preface to the first edition of the great
_Dictionary_ is, therefore, the more precious and moving. I know not
why this majestic utterance came to be deleted in later editions;
certainly it sanctifies, and as it were crowns with a crown of sorrow, the
greatest work of his life; and with reverent sympathy and unstinted
admiration I reproduce it here:--
"Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot ultimately be
defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to
degeneration: we have long preserved our constitution, let us make
some struggles for our language.
"In hope of giving longevity to that which its own nature forbids
to be immortal, I have devoted this book, the labour of years, to
the honour of my country, that we may no longer yield the palm of
philology to the nations of the continent. The chief glory of
every people arises from its authors; whether I shall add anything
by my own writings to the reputation of English literature, must
be left to time: much of my life has been lost under the pressure
of disease; much has been trifled away; and much has always been
spent in provision for the day that was passing over me; but I
shall not think my employment useless or ignoble, if by my
assistance foreign nations, and distant ages, gain access to the
propagators of knowledge, and understand the teachers of truth;
if my labours afford light to the repositories of science, and add
celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and to Boyle.
"When I am animated by this wish, I look with pleasure on my book,
however defective, and deliver it to the world with the spirit of
a man that has endeavoured well. That it will immediately become
popular I have not promised to myself: a few wild blunders and
risible absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was
ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter, and harden
ignorance in contempt; but useful diligence will at last prevail,
and there never can be wanting some, who distinguish desert, who
will consider that no dictionary of a living tongue can ever be
perfect, since while it is hastening to publication, some words
are budding, and some falling away; that a whole life cannot be
spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole life would
not be sufficient; that he whose design includes whatever language
can express must often speak of what he does not understand; that
a writer will sometimes be hurried by eagerness to the end, and
sometimes faint with weariness under a task which Scaliger
compares to the labours of the anvil and the mine; that what is
obvious is not always known, and what is known is not always
present; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance,
slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of
the mind will darken learning; and that the writer shall often in
vain trace his memory at the moment of need for that which
yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come
uncalled into his thoughts to-morrow.
"In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it
not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no
book was ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and the
world is little solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of
that which it condemns, yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it
that the _English Dictionary_ was written with little assistance
of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the
soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic
bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and
in sorrow; and it may repress the triumph of malignant criticism
to observe, that if our language is not here fully displayed, I
have only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto
completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed
and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of
successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the aggregated
knowledge and co-operating diligence of the Italian academicians
did not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the embodied
critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their
work, were obliged to change its economy, and give their second
editions another form, I may surely be contented without the
praise of perfection which, if I could obtain, in this gloom of
solitude what would it avail me?
"I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to
please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are
empty sounds; I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity,
having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise."
This seems to me to be the noblest passage that Johnson ever wrote.
Almost all the most magnificent utterances of man are tinged with
sadness. In this they possess a quality that is almost inseparable from
grandeur wherever displayed. No man of sensibility and taste feels it
possible to make jokes himself, or to tolerate them from others when in
the presence of the Falls of Niagara, or a tempest at sea, or when he
views from a peak in the Andes--as I have done--the sun descent into
the Pacific. The greatest pictures painted by man touch the heart rather
than elate it; and genius finds its highest expression not in comedy, but
in tragedy.
And this need cause us no surprise when we consider how much of the
great work in letters and in art is directly due to the writer possessing
in full measure the gift of sympathy.
People with this gift, even if they are without the faculty of expression,
are beloved by those about them, which must bring them happiness.
Till he was over fifty Dr. Johnson's life was a weary struggle with
poverty. He wrote _Rasselas_ under the pressure of an urgent need of
money to send to his dying mother. His wife died some few years
earlier. I have always thought that the sad reflections he put into the
mouth of an old philosopher towards the end of the story were indeed
the true expressions of his own tired heart:--
"Praise," said the sage with a sigh, "is to an old man an empty
sound. I have neither mother to be delighted with the reputation
of her son, nor wife to partake the honours of her husband.
"I have outlived my friends and my rivals. Nothing is now of much
importance; for I cannot extend my interest beyond myself. Youth
is delighted with applause, because it is considered as the
earnest of some future good, and because the prospect of life is
far extended; but to me, who am now declining to decrepitude,
there is little to be feared from the malevolence of men, and yet
less to be hoped from their affection or esteem. Something they
may take away, but they can give me nothing. Riches would now be
useless, and high employment would be pain. My retrospect of life
recalls to my view many opportunities of good neglected, much time
squandered upon trifles, and more lost in idleness and vacancy. I
leave many great designs unattempted, and many great attempts
unfinished.
"My mind is burdened with no heavy crime, and therefore I compose
myself to tranquillity; endeavour to abstract my thoughts from
hopes and cares, which, though reason knows them to be vain, still
try to keep their old possession of the heart; expect, with serene
humility, that hour which nature cannot long delay; and hope to
possess, in a better state, that happiness which here I could not
find, and that virtue which here I have not attained."
From the results of _Rasselas_ he sent his mother money, but she had
expired before it reached her.
Down to the time of Dr. Johnson it was the custom for writers of books
and poems to seek and enjoy the patronage of some great nobleman,
to whom they generally dedicated their works.
And in pursuance of that custom Dr. Johnson, when he first issued the
plan or prospectus of his great _Dictionary_ in 1747, addressed it to
Lord Chesterfield, who was regarded as the most brilliant and cultivated
nobleman of his time. Lord Chesterfield, however, took no notice of the
matter till the _Dictionary_ was on the point of coming out in 1755, and
then wrote some flippant remarks about it in a publication called _The
World_.
At this Dr. Johnson wrote a letter to the condescending peer, which
became celebrated throughout England and practically put an end to
writers seeking the patronage of the great.