grateful to the senses must be their lavish shade, in that valley,
eternally fresh and green, from the springs that gush around their
roots, and whose very branch finds a mirror in the shining waters!
Then the orchestra of the Italian cities!--their celebrated orchestra!
But, beneath my expectations of its graces, no very warm enthusiasm
kindles in my bosom. As to the powers of execution, both in the vocal
and instrumental line, unprejudiced judges assure me, the best Italian
performers find their way to England; and what spirit that has melted,
chilled, and glowed beneath the influence of Handel’s strains of those
different and contrasting passions, awakened to so much energy by his
lofty harmonies, and angelic airs, can be more than transiently pleased
with the cloying sweetness of one eternal love-song, varied only by the
fury of a jealous rant? I speak of the serious opera. The burlesque, or
even convivial music of any country, is not much to my taste; and, in
the graver line, can the most perfect tones of voice and instrument, the
silver heights of the clear soprano, the trill, the shake, the brilliant
execution, the artful and “long-drawn cadence,” make amends for the
sameness of their melodies, and the poverty respecting air, that renders
their drumming basses contemptible?
After all, to what numbers do the Italian delicacies, as they are
called, more than recompence the want of Handelian variety, pathos, and
sublimity! Our polite people, it seems, desert the oratorios, and swarm
in the opera-house.
It is a national disgrace; but I think it will not be a lasting one.
Nature, and the generous perceptions, must awaken from this musical
frivolity into which the sorcery of fashion, and the cunning of the
Italian masters, have plunged them. The eclat of sublime genius, in
almost every science, seems doomed to suffer a long suppression, ere it
rises to its just level. Shakespeare’s plays were, in a great measure,
banished our stage, and, consequently, were familiar only to the few,
from the time of Charles II., till Mr Garrick recalled them; and Milton
had no general attention till Addison brought him forward.
Surely those who do really prefer an opera to an oratorio, must be more
pleased with the modern tragedies than with those of Shakespeare! A
trivial and effeminate taste will prevail alike in every science.
* * * * *
LICHFIELD, JAN. 1764.
* * * * *
And so, my gentle Emma, you stood rebuked in the presence of two
divines, for your preference of the Ramblers to the Spectators, which,
it seems, they told you was little to be expected from the delicacy of
female taste. Had I been present, they would have found me saucy enough
to observe to them, that, if Johnson had, instead of being now alive,
been dead as many years as Addison, they would themselves, with the
whole literary world, have joined you in this preference.
Let us examine the subject still farther; and, as my last letter hovered
with you over a little blossoming myrtle, an ornament of the Lichfield
groves, we will, if you please, wander beneath the shade of that
majestic oak which took its first root in this valley, was transplanted
while yet a sapling, and now spreads wide its ample arms in the forests
of literature. But, to drop the metaphor, which, by the way, does not
run very well on all four, the words valley and forest forming an
imperfect sentence; the first being literally the birth-place of
Johnson, the second figuratively shadowing forth his present situation
in the learned world; but whip such pedants, even if this letter were to
be read to scholars, who shall demand precision in the allusions of an
imagination which has but just imbibed the warmth of twenty summers.
Alas! of the soft and musically-sounding teens, I took an eternal
farewell the 12th of last December.
It was the unpleasantest birth-day I ever experienced; a sort of
funereal sadness hung about my heart, and reflection tolled the knell of
departed girlhood. But you will reproach me, that, after having promised
to lead you amidst the branches of the great literary oak, I yet linger
beneath the willows of egotism.
We will hasten from under their shade, and unite in pondering at the
strange inaccuracy of general opinion, concerning the writings of our
illustrious Lichfieldian. They are allowed to abound in matter, and to
have great force, but are deemed rough and inharmonious. We hear much of
the elegance and mellifluent construction of Addison’s language, and of
the hard, unmanageable style of Samuel Johnson.
Now, that his long and uncommon words, derived from the dead languages,
and so lavishly interwoven with his own, have sometimes an unhappy, and
even ridiculous effect upon the flow of his periods, must be granted;
but that they, in general, give them added grace and sweetness, is no
less true. Greek and Latin being so much higher voweled than English, a
liberal intermixture of words, springing from their roots, must surely
render the style more graceful and sonorous.
“The tongues, united, sweeter sounds produce,
“Like Chian mixed with the Falernian juice.”
ADDISON, from Horace.
The language of Addison appears to me as only possessing distinguished
excellence from comparing it with that of his contemporary writers; and
even then we should except some of them, Bolingbroke and Swift for
instance, who wrote prose at least as well; that, compared with the
style of our present best essayists, it is neither remarkably
perspicuous nor remarkably musical. He often uses more words than are
necessary to express his sense, and that habit has always a
tendency to confuse and enfeeble his diction. Then he frequently
finishes his sentence with insignificant words, such as,
_with_,--_it_,--_upon_,--_against_, &c., which produce the same effect
upon the ear, as the eye perceives from a jerk, or sudden stop in
motion. Such a paltry termination cuts the sentence off in a sharp
angle, and utterly precludes that roundness, that majestic sweep of
sound, in which the Johnsonian periods so generally close: periods that
my ear finds of such full and satisfying harmony, as not to need either
rhyme or measure to add more sweetness. In truth, rhyme and measure are
but the body of poetry, not its spirit, and its spirit breathes through
all the pages of the Rambler.
I am tempted to cite a passage from each of these celebrated writers, as
specimens of their different style, still farther to confirm your
conviction how strange the prejudice which induces people to fancy that
the superiority, in point of elegance, remains with Addison. I shall
draw my quotation from him, out of the twenty-third number of the
Spectator, Addison’s signature; its subject, the mischiefs occasioned by
a malicious character. From Johnson, on the pleasures which result from
the influence of good humour. Rambler, vol. III. No. 72.
You will find the words in Italics which strike me as forming the
inelegance of Addison’s style; and you will perceive that the words
within hooks constitute its redundance.
ADDISON.
“[There is] nothing [that] more betrays a base, ungenerous spirit, than
[the] giving [of] secret stabs to a man’s reputation. Lampoons and
satires, [that are] written with wit and spirit, are like poisoned
darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable. For this
reason, I am very much troubled when I see the talents of humour and
ridicule in the possession of an ill-natured man. There cannot be a
greater gratification to a barbarous [and inhuman] wit, than to _stir
up_ sorrow in the heart of a private person; to raise uneasiness among
near relations, and to expose whole families to derision _at the same
time_ that he remains unseen and undiscovered. If, besides the
accomplishments of being witty and ill-natured, a man is vicious _into
the bargain_, he is one of the most mischievous creatures that can enter
into a civil society. His satire will then chiefly fall upon those who
ought to be most exempt _from it_.”
JOHNSON.
“Good humour may properly be termed the balm of being, the quality to
which all that adorns or elevates life must owe its power of pleasing.
Without good humour, learning and bravery can be only formidable, and
confer that superiority which swells the heart of the lion in the
desert, where he roars without reply, and ravages without resistance.
Without good humour, virtue may indeed awe by its dignity, and amaze by
its brightness, but must always be viewed at a distance, and will
scarcely gain a friend, or attract an imitator.
“Good humour may be defined an _habit_ of being pleased, a constant and
perennial softness of manners, easiness of approach, and suavity of
disposition; like that which every man perceives in himself, when the
first transports of new felicity have subsided, and his thoughts are
only kept in motion by a slow succession of soft impulses. Good humour
is a state between gaiety and unconcern; the act or emanation of a mind
at leisure to regard the gratification of another.
“It is imagined by many, that, whenever they aspire to please, they are
required to be merry, to shew the gladness of their souls by flights of
pleasantry and sudden bursts of laughter, and to lose all reflection in
overflowing jollity. But, though these men may be courted for a time,
and heard with admiration and applause, they seldom delight us long. We
enjoy them a little, and then retire to easiness and good humour; as the
eye gazes a while on eminences glittering with the sun, but soon turns
aching away to verdure and to flowers.”
These passages, from Johnson’s Rambler, form, in my opinion, a perfect
example of a beautiful and faultless style, in which no syllable could
be transposed, to which not one could be added, and from which there
could not one be taken away, without a diminution either of conciseness,
perspicuity, or beauty. In one respect, and only one, the passages on
good humour differ from the generality of Johnson’s writings. Excepting
the word _suavity_, they do not contain, neither indeed does the whole
essay contain, one Latinism that is not in common use.
Observe with how much more grace and elegance the periods flow, than in
the quotation from Addison, with its _giving of stabs_, its _stirring
up_, and its _into the bargain_.
Alas! how much is it to be lamented that Johnson, who could so clearly
perceive, and so eloquently display, the influence of the pleasing
quality upon individual and upon general happiness, that, like mercy, it
is “twice blessed,” should himself indulge such an habitual, such a
malicious moroseness, as to make it impossible to place any confidence
in the duration of his smiles and approachability; that, like an
ill-conditioned mastiff, nobody can be sure, even in the instant when he
seems stroked into tameness and kind familiarity, that he will not seize
upon the self-esteem of his auditors, and worry it unmercifully, and
this without any provocation, or at least any adequate provocation!
I beg to be understood, that I confine my prediction of the inevitable
preference which Johnson’s best style will, in future, obtain over
Addison’s, to the essays on serious subjects which each has written. In
sly and humourously playful satire, Addison remains, and will perhaps,
for ever remain, unrivalled. Johnson seldom attempts that line of
composition, and when he attempts it, he fails. Neither has he any power
to assume the language and manner of writing that belong to country
esquires, coquettish misses, and saucy chamber-maids. Every thing
Johnson writes, bears the stamp and image of his own peculiar style,
By sentiments nor pert nor coarse concealed,
Too great to stoop, too splendid to be veiled.
LICHFIELD, JAN. 1764.
Since you compliment my criticisms with possessing some power of
discrimination, I feel disposed to lose my attention to the loud storms
and gloomy horizon of this cheerless evening, by imparting the
reflections which arose last night in my mind, as I read another of
Addison’s Spectators to my sister and Honora. We had searched for one on
the subject, so beautifully discussed in the Rambler, from which my last
letter gave you extracts, and found it in the second volume, No. 169.
The language of this elder-born essay is not only less elegant, but some
of the observations, and those the most material, did not appear to my
sister, or myself, at all just; yet the remarks in the three first
sentences are equally true with those I quoted from the Rambler. They
are, however, by no means equally ingenious.
The observation in the fourth paragraph is of a more discriminating
nature than those that precede it, which are very much on the surface;
and which the commonest understanding, if it reflects at all on the
advantages of good nature, must make for itself. Johnson’s definition
displays the latent essence and happy effects of this pleasing quality,
by an investigation which genius only could make, but which, when made,
good sense will instantly perceive and acknowledge to be just.
There is, however, ingenuity, as I observed above, in the fourth
paragraph of Addison’s definition; in the observation, that “good
breeding is a kind of artificial humanity, or, in other words, (Addison
is mighty fond of expressing the same thing several different ways) an
imitation and mimickry of good nature.” “It is affability,
complaisance, and easiness of temper, reduced into an art.”
With his usual verbal redundance, he proceeds to tell us, “that these
exterior shews and appearances of humanity render a man wonderfully
popular and beloved, when they are founded upon real good nature; but,
without it, are like hypocrisy in religion, or a bare form of holiness,
which, when it is discovered, makes a man more detestable than professed
impiety.”
Now, this last appears to us a very mistaken assertion, astonishing from
a writer who had lived in the gay and busy world, and must have had
perpetual opportunities of perceiving, that politeness, so far from
making an ill-natured man more detestable, is the only thing which can
render him supportable. It is a silver cord, whose firmness we may
trust; secure that, in the social hour, it will bind the malevolent
passions at the bottom of the polite man’s heart, and prevent them from
darting out upon our self-esteem, and upon the pleasures of
conversation.
We think this author no less mistaken when he supposes, upon the same
ground, that hypocrisy in religion makes people more detested than
professed impiety.
That such hypocrisy is more criminal than avowed disbelief, will be
granted, because it adds falsehood to the ingratitude of irreligion; but
surely, however odious, it is in the eyes of men less offensive than
avowed impiety, which defies every law, both human and divine, which
insults the understanding, and shocks the sensibility of the better part
of mankind.
Religious hypocrisy, at least, evinces respect for the institution it
takes the trouble of seeming to venerate, and spares the always implied
stigma of weak credulity, which the scoff of the infidel throws upon
such as avow faith in their religion, and trust in its promises.
So it is with the politeness of an ill-natured man. We are conscious
that he is likely enough to satirize our words, and misrepresent our
actions. But, as his character is known, the good will probably despise
his malice, and not think worse of us for its effusions in our
disfavour, and we shall not be insulted with the visible marks of his
contempt. We shall mingle with him in society without terror lest our
delicacy should be brutally lacerated. We have, therefore, internal
evidence that the decision of this writer is erroneous, and that good
breeding is an admirable substitute for good nature, where the genuine
virtue cannot be found.
After reprobating this substitute, our author, instead of exhorting us
to acquire the reality, while we scorn the seeming, declares, that
“nothing is capable of forcing up this good quality in the mind where
it does not grow of itself; that it is one of the blessings of an happy
constitution, which education may improve, but not produce.”
How impolitic, how strange is this assertion, proceeding from the pen of
a professed moralist! since it totally does away the virtue of good
nature, reducing it to a mere involuntary propensity, and teaching the
naturally fierce and implacable to despair of being able to humanize
their temper; nay, even persuading them to scorn the adoption of those
manners, by which it might be restrained from disturbing the peace of
the company in which they mix.
I trust Mr Addison is wholly mistaken on this subject; that, though it
proves a much more arduous task to destroy the malignant passions than
to restrain their imperious sallies in public, yet that reason and
religion may, in time, render a disposition naturally morose, gentle,
forbearing, and benevolent.
It is disclaiming the free agency of man, it is fatalism, to urge that
any vice, however inherent in our natures, is unconquerable. It would be
thought no excuse for debauchery, that a man should tell us he is
naturally lascivious, gluttonous, and greedy of wine; for injustice,
that he has an innate covetousness; and, for murder, that he is
constitutionally cruel. And yet, if native ill propensities of every
kind are not to be subdued, he is more unfortunate than criminal.
Addison is declaiming very superficially through this paper, strangely
inattentive to the deduction which necessarily proceeds from his
assertion. Nobody will suspect him of being intentionally an enemy to
the interests of morality. Certainly he would have been one of the first
to controvert the doctrine, that nothing is capable of forcing up
chastity, temperance, justice, and mercy, in any human bosom, where they
are not natives of the soil; and yet every evil propensity must be alike
conquerable, though some may, with more difficulty than others, be
overcome.
Good nature, as defined, and justly defined, by this author, is but
another word for that charity which the gospel so strongly inculcates,
since he tells us, that “a being, whose best actions must be seen (as he
oddly expresses it) with some grains of allowance, cannot be too mild,
moderate, and forgiving; that, amongst all the monstrous characters in
human nature, there is none so odious, so exquisitely ridiculous, as
that of a severe and rigid temper in a worthless man.”
Mildness and sweetness of manners, under the name of charity, are, by
the gospel, considered of so much importance, that, without them, every
other virtue is declared unavailing; and it is there more frequently and
more fervently inculcated than any other duty. For what purpose
inculcated, if, where it is not inherent, it cannot be obtained? And
why does a moral philosopher praise and teach us to admire a good
quality, which he tells us either exists constitutionally, or does not
exist at all? Since, if that assertion be true, our admiration cannot
edify or avail us any thing.
But let us, judging in this instance better for ourselves, hope and
believe, that an originally ill-natured being may, by the force of
reason, and by the consciousness how much it is his duty as a Christian,
and his interest as a member of society, soften and illuminate these
rigid and dark propensities, till he changes their nature into mildness
and universal good will.
Addison allows the possibility of an ill-natured man being polite.
Surely he should have reflected that we are creatures of habit, and that
it is a great step gained to become capable of restraining a bad
disposition, from any motive whatever:
“For, seeming blest, we grow to what we seem.”
Why should this celebrated moralist deny to reason and religion the
power of influencing the ill-natured to become genuinely benevolent,
since he allows that the force of education, and of social policy, are
sufficient to induce them to assume those manners which imitate
benevolence? and surely an higher degree of self-interest, the interest
of their eternal welfare, might still more forcibly lead them to acquire
the real virtue.
In this same essay, the author makes an enthusiastic eulogium on a trait
of parading benevolence, instanced by Xenophon, in his imaginary
character of an excellent monarch. It is here produced by Addison, as an
illustration of the beauty of that generous virtue; the merit of which
virtue, the immediately preceding sentence, in that Spectator, had
wholly done away. Behold the sublime instance of refined humanity!
A great prince desires, on his death-bed, that, instead of being, after
the custom of the ancients, enshrined in gold and silver, his body may
be buried in the ground; that, while his soul was returned to him who
gave it, his corporeal part, mingling with the earth, might become
beneficial to mankind.
In my opinion, this request disgraces, by its frivolity, the greatness
of genuine benevolence. A sumptuous monument for him, whose life had
been polluted by vice, is monstrous; and it is ridiculous when it covers
the remains of one whose existence had passed away without exertion,
however unstained by flagrant vices. But a splendid tomb, when it keeps
alive the remembrance of the virtuous, has a tendency to induce men to
imitate that excellence, which their curiosity had led them to
contemplate. The seeing its memory thus honourably perpetuated, is
likely to be of much more benefit to mankind than the remote, the
trivial, the ludicrous advantage procured by a single carcass producing,
after a long process of putrefaction, a few paltry vegetables.
I apprehend that the request is not only ridiculous, when alleged as “an
instance of that overflowing humanity which could not have entered into
the imagination of any writer who had not a soul filled with great
ideas,” but that the idea itself is unphilosophic. The human frame in a
putrescent state, mingling with the earth, is, I have heard, more likely
to become a nuisance than a benefit to the living; and the consumption
of dead bodies on the funeral pile is alleged to have been a custom
highly advantageous to the health of the ancients. So we will take our
leave of this panegyric on carrot and turnip generosity, which was not,
after all, likely to produce good carrots and turnips.
It is too late to discuss other subjects. Good night!
LICHFIELD, FEB. 1764.
I enter my protest totally, yes totally, against the decision at your
late conversation respecting Shakespeare’s supposed deficiency in
tenderness and fire, when he speaks in the character of a lover, and
concerning his want of intimacy with the nature of the most prevalent of
all the passions.
Surely his advocate in your circle ought not to have given up an inch of
ground on this subject; not allowed that Shakespeare’s lovers were an
atom less natural, less animated, than his kings, his princes, his
heroes, or his statesmen.
That, in the enamoured character, he is often seduced into jingling a
rhyme, and playing with a verbal conceit, is true; but I think it is not
true that his lovers, more frequently than his other personages, turn
out of the path of nature and passion, to follow those will-a-wisps of
the fancy.
It appears to me, that Shakespeare often conveys more truly impassioned
affection in a very few words, or in a short sentence, than are
contained in most of the florid harangues of our modern dramatists, and
this even where the passion between the sexes is not meant to be the
master-tint of the portrait.
To give an instance,--Coriolanus comes not forward in Shakespeare’s
play, any more than in history, as an impassioned lover or husband, but
as the insulted hero, who violently, though not ignobly, revenges
himself upon his ungrateful country; and yet the author makes us feel,
in four lines, that, however patrician haughtiness and jealous honour
might be the leading traits in the character of Coriolanus, yet that
love, love of the most fervent kind, struggled with them for dominion in
that proud heart, and obtained a final triumph.