LITERARY CAREER.
"No man but a blockhead," said Johnson, "ever wrote except for money."
The doctrine is, of course, perfectly outrageous, and specially
calculated to shock people who like to keep it for their private use,
instead of proclaiming it in public. But it is a good expression of that
huge contempt for the foppery of high-flown sentiment which, as is not
uncommon with Johnson, passes into something which would be cynical if
it were not half-humorous. In this case it implies also the contempt of
the professional for the amateur. Johnson despised gentlemen who dabbled
in his craft, as a man whose life is devoted to music or painting
despises the ladies and gentlemen who treat those arts as fashionable
accomplishments. An author was, according to him, a man who turned out
books as a bricklayer turns out houses or a tailor coats. So long as he
supplied a good article and got a fair price, he was a fool to grumble,
and a humbug to affect loftier motives.
Johnson was not the first professional author, in this sense, but
perhaps the first man who made the profession respectable. The principal
habitat of authors, in his age, was Grub Street--a region which, in
later years, has ceased to be ashamed of itself, and has adopted the
more pretentious name Bohemia. The original Grub Street, it is said,
first became associated with authorship during the increase of pamphlet
literature, produced by the civil wars. Fox, the martyrologist, was one
of its original inhabitants. Another of its heroes was a certain Mr.
Welby, of whom the sole record is, that he "lived there forty years
without being seen of any." In fact, it was a region of holes and
corners, calculated to illustrate that great advantage of London life,
which a friend of Boswell's described by saying, that a man could there
be always "close to his burrow." The "burrow" which received the
luckless wight, was indeed no pleasant refuge. Since poor Green, in the
earliest generation of dramatists, bought his "groat'sworth of wit with
a million of repentance," too many of his brethren had trodden the path
which led to hopeless misery or death in a tavern brawl. The history of
men who had to support themselves by their pens, is a record of almost
universal gloom. The names of Spenser, of Butler, and of Otway, are
enough to remind us that even warm contemporary recognition was not
enough to raise an author above the fear of dying in want of
necessaries. The two great dictators of literature, Ben Jonson in the
earlier and Dryden in the later part of the century, only kept their
heads above water by help of the laureate's pittance, though reckless
imprudence, encouraged by the precarious life, was the cause of much of
their sufferings. Patronage gave but a fitful resource, and the author
could hope at most but an occasional crust, flung to him from better
provided tables.
In the happy days of Queen Anne, it is true, there had been a gleam of
prosperity. Many authors, Addison, Congreve, Swift, and others of less
name, had won by their pens not only temporary profits but permanent
places. The class which came into power at the Revolution was willing
for a time, to share some of the public patronage with men distinguished
for intellectual eminence. Patronage was liberal when the funds came out
of other men's pockets. But, as the system of party government
developed, it soon became evident that this involved a waste of power.
There were enough political partisans to absorb all the comfortable
sinecures to be had; and such money as was still spent upon literature,
was given in return for services equally degrading to giver and
receiver. Nor did the patronage of literature reach the poor inhabitants
of Grub Street. Addison's poetical power might suggest or justify the
gift of a place from his elegant friends; but a man like De Foe, who
really looked to his pen for great part of his daily subsistence, was
below the region of such prizes, and was obliged in later years not only
to write inferior books for money, but to sell himself and act as a spy
upon his fellows. One great man, it is true, made an independence by
literature. Pope received some £8000 for his translation of Homer, by
the then popular mode of subscription--a kind of compromise between the
systems of patronage and public support. But his success caused little
pleasure in Grub Street. No love was lost between the poet and the
dwellers in this dismal region. Pope was its deadliest enemy, and
carried on an internecine warfare with its inmates, which has enriched
our language with a great satire, but which wasted his powers upon low
objects, and tempted him into disgraceful artifices. The life of the
unfortunate victims, pilloried in the _Dunciad_ and accused of the
unpardonable sins of poverty and dependence, was too often one which
might have extorted sympathy even from a thin-skinned poet and critic.
Illustrations of the manners and customs of that Grub Street of which
Johnson was to become an inmate are only too abundant. The best writers
of the day could tell of hardships endured in that dismal region.
Richardson went on the sound principle of keeping his shop that his shop
might keep him. But the other great novelists of the century have
painted from life the miseries of an author's existence. Fielding,
Smollett, and Goldsmith have described the poor wretches with a vivid
force which gives sadness to the reflection that each of those great men
was drawing upon his own experience, and that they each died in
distress. The _Case of Authors by Profession_ to quote the title of a
pamphlet by Ralph, was indeed a wretched one, when the greatest of their
number had an incessant struggle to keep the wolf from the door. The
life of an author resembled the proverbial existence of the flying-fish,
chased by enemies in sea and in air; he only escaped from the slavery of
the bookseller's garret, to fly from the bailiff or rot in the debtor's
ward or the spunging-house. Many strange half-pathetic and
half-ludicrous anecdotes survive to recall the sorrows and the
recklessness of the luckless scribblers who, like one of Johnson's
acquaintance, "lived in London and hung loose upon society."
There was Samuel Boyse, for example, whose poem on the _Deity_ is quoted
with high praise by Fielding. Once Johnson had generously exerted
himself for his comrade in misery, and collected enough money by
sixpences to get the poet's clothes out of pawn. Two days afterwards,
Boyse had spent the money and was found in bed, covered only with a
blanket, through two holes in which he passed his arms to write. Boyse,
it appears, when still in this position would lay out his last
half-guinea to buy truffles and mushrooms for his last scrap of beef. Of
another scribbler Johnson said, "I honour Derrick for his strength of
mind. One night when Floyd (another poor author) was wandering about
the streets at night, he found Derrick fast asleep upon a bulk. Upon
being suddenly awaked, Derrick started up; 'My dear Floyd, I am sorry to
see you in this destitute state; will you go home with me to my
_lodgings_?'" Authors in such circumstances might be forced into such a
wonderful contract as that which is reported to have been drawn up by
one Gardner with Rolt and Christopher Smart. They were to write a
monthly miscellany, sold at sixpence, and to have a third of the
profits; but they were to write nothing else, and the contract was to
last for ninety-nine years. Johnson himself summed up the trade upon
earth by the lines in which Virgil describes the entrance to hell; thus
translated by Dryden:--
Just in the gate and in the jaws of hell,
Revengeful cares and sullen sorrows dwell.
And pale diseases and repining age,
Want, fear, and famine's unresisted rage:
Here toils and Death and Death's half-brother, Sleep--
Forms, terrible to view, their sentry keep.
"Now," said Johnson, "almost all these apply exactly to an author; these
are the concomitants of a printing-house."
Judicious authors, indeed, were learning how to make literature pay.
Some of them belonged to the class who understood the great truth that
the scissors are a very superior implement to the pen considered as a
tool of literary trade. Such, for example, was that respectable Dr. John
Campbell, whose parties Johnson ceased to frequent lest Scotchmen should
say of any good bits of work, "Ay, ay, he has learnt this of Cawmell."
Campbell, he said quaintly, was a good man, a pious man. "I am afraid he
has not been in the inside of a church for many years; but he never
passes a church without pulling off his hat. This shows he has good
principles,"--of which in fact there seems to be some less questionable
evidence. Campbell supported himself by writings chiefly of the
Encyclopedia or Gazetteer kind; and became, still in Johnson's phrase,
"the richest author that ever grazed the common of literature." A more
singular and less reputable character was that impudent quack, Sir John
Hill, who, with his insolent attacks upon the Royal Society, pretentious
botanical and medical compilations, plays, novels, and magazine
articles, has long sunk into utter oblivion. It is said of him that he
pursued every branch of literary quackery with greater contempt of
character than any man of his time, and that he made as much as £1500 in
a year;--three times as much, it is added, as any one writer ever made
in the same period.
The political scribblers--the Arnalls, Gordons, Trenchards, Guthries,
Ralphs, and Amhersts, whose names meet us in the notes to the _Dunciad_
and in contemporary pamphlets and newspapers--form another variety of
the class. Their general character may be estimated from Johnson's
classification of the "Scribbler for a Party" with the "Commissioner of
Excise," as the "two lowest of all human beings." "Ralph," says one of
the notes to the _Dunciad_, "ended in the common sink of all such
writers, a political newspaper." The prejudice against such employment
has scarcely died out in our own day, and may be still traced in the
account of Pendennis and his friend Warrington. People who do dirty work
must be paid for it; and the Secret Committee which inquired into
Walpole's administration reported that in ten years, from 1731 to 1741,
a sum of £50,077 18_s_. had been paid to writers and printers of
newspapers. Arnall, now remembered chiefly by Pope's line,--
Spirit of Arnall, aid me whilst I lie!
had received, in four years, £10,997 6_s_. 8_d_. of this amount. The
more successful writers might look to pensions or preferment. Francis,
for example, the translator of Horace, and the father, in all
probability, of the most formidable of the whole tribe of such literary
gladiators, received, it is said, 900_l_. a year for his work, besides
being appointed to a rectory and the chaplaincy of Chelsea.
It must, moreover, be observed that the price of literary work was
rising during the century, and that, in the latter half, considerable
sums were received by successful writers. Religious as well as dramatic
literature had begun to be commercially valuable. Baxter, in the
previous century, made from 60_l_. to 80_l_. a year by his pen. The
copyright of Tillotson's _Sermons_ was sold, it is said, upon his death
for £2500. Considerable sums were made by the plan of publishing by
subscription. It is said that 4600 people subscribed to the two
posthumous volumes of Conybeare's _Sermons_. A few poets trod in Pope's
steps. Young made more than £3000 for the Satires called the _Universal
Passion_, published, I think, on the same plan; and the Duke of Wharton
is said, though the report is doubtful, to have given him £2000 for the
same work. Gay made £1000 by his _Poems_; £400 for the copyright of the
_Beggar's Opera_, and three times as much for its second part, _Polly_.
Among historians, Hume seems to have received £700 a volume; Smollett
made £2000 by his catchpenny rival publication; Henry made £3300 by his
history; and Robertson, after the booksellers had made £6000 by his
_History of Scotland_, sold his _Charles V._ for £4500. Amongst the
novelists, Fielding received £700 for _Tom Jones_ and £1000 for
_Amelia_; Sterne, for the second edition of the first part of _Tristram
Shandy_ and for two additional volumes, received £650; besides which
Lord Fauconberg gave him a living (most inappropriate acknowledgment,
one would say!), and Warburton a purse of gold. Goldsmith received 60
guineas for the immortal _Vicar_, a fair price, according to Johnson,
for a work by a then unknown author. By each of his plays he made about
£500, and for the eight volumes of his _Natural History_ he received 800
guineas. Towards the end of the century, Mrs. Radcliffe got £500 for the
_Mysteries of Udolpho_, and £800 for her last work, the _Italian_.
Perhaps the largest sum given for a single book was £6000 paid to
Hawkesworth for his account of the South Sea Expeditions. Horne Tooke
received from £4000 to £5000 for the _Diversions of Purley_; and it is
added by his biographer, though it seems to be incredible, that Hayley
received no less than £11,000 for the _Life of Cowper_. This was, of
course, in the present century, when we are already approaching the
period of Scott and Byron.
Such sums prove that some few authors might achieve independence by a
successful work; and it is well to remember them in considering
Johnson's life from the business point of view. Though he never grumbled
at the booksellers, and on the contrary, was always ready to defend them
as liberal men, he certainly failed, whether from carelessness or want
of skill, to turn them to as much profit as many less celebrated rivals.
Meanwhile, pecuniary success of this kind was beyond any reasonable
hopes. A man who has to work like his own dependent Levett, and to make
the "modest toil of every day" supply "the wants of every day," must
discount his talents until he can secure leisure for some more
sustained effort. Johnson, coming up from the country to seek for work,
could have but a slender prospect of rising above the ordinary level of
his Grub Street companions and rivals. One publisher to whom he applied
suggested to him that it would be his wisest course to buy a porter's
knot and carry trunks; and, in the struggle which followed, Johnson must
sometimes have been tempted to regret that the advice was not taken.
The details of the ordeal through which he was now to pass have
naturally vanished. Johnson, long afterwards, burst into tears on
recalling the trials of this period. But, at the time, no one was
interested in noting the history of an obscure literary drudge, and it
has not been described by the sufferer himself. What we know is derived
from a few letters and incidental references of Johnson in later days.
On first arriving in London he was almost destitute, and had to join
with Garrick in raising a loan of five pounds, which, we are glad to
say, was repaid. He dined for eightpence at an ordinary: a cut of meat
for sixpence, bread for a penny, and a penny to the waiter, making out
the charge. One of his acquaintance had told him that a man might live
in London for thirty pounds a year. Ten pounds would pay for clothes; a
garret might be hired for eighteen-pence a week; if any one asked for an
address, it was easy to reply, "I am to be found at such a place."
Threepence laid out at a coffee-house would enable him to pass some
hours a day in good company; dinner might be had for sixpence, a
bread-and-milk breakfast for a penny, and supper was superfluous. On
clean shirt day you might go abroad and pay visits. This leaves a
surplus of nearly one pound from the thirty.
Johnson, however, had a wife to support; and to raise funds for even so
ascetic a mode of existence required steady labour. Often, it seems, his
purse was at the very lowest ebb. One of his letters to his employer is
signed _impransus_; and whether or not the dinnerless condition was in
this case accidental, or significant of absolute impecuniosity, the less
pleasant interpretation is not improbable. He would walk the streets all
night with his friend, Savage, when their combined funds could not pay
for a lodging. One night, as he told Sir Joshua Reynolds in later years,
they thus perambulated St. James's Square, warming themselves by
declaiming against Walpole, and nobly resolved that they would stand by
their country.
Patriotic enthusiasm, however, as no one knew better than Johnson, is a
poor substitute for bed and supper. Johnson suffered acutely and made
some attempts to escape from his misery. To the end of his life, he was
grateful to those who had lent him a helping hand. "Harry Hervey," he
said of one of them shortly before his death, "was a vicious man, but
very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey, I shall love him." Pope was
impressed by the excellence of his first poem, _London_, and induced
Lord Gower to write to a friend to beg Swift to obtain a degree for
Johnson from the University of Dublin. The terms of this circuitous
application, curious, as bringing into connexion three of the most
eminent men of letters of the day, prove that the youngest of them was
at the time (1739) in deep distress. The object of the degree was to
qualify Johnson for a mastership of £60 a year, which would make him
happy for life. He would rather, said Lord Gower, die upon the road to
Dublin if an examination were necessary, "than be starved to death in
translating for booksellers, which has been his only subsistence for
some time past." The application failed, however, and the want of a
degree was equally fatal to another application to be admitted to
practise at Doctor's Commons.
Literature was thus perforce Johnson's sole support; and by literature
was meant, for the most part, drudgery of the kind indicated by the
phrase, "translating for booksellers." While still in Lichfield, Johnson
had, as I have said, written to Cave, proposing to become a contributor
to the _Gentleman's Magazine_. The letter was one of those which a
modern editor receives by the dozen, and answers as perfunctorily as his
conscience will allow. It seems, however, to have made some impression
upon Cave, and possibly led to Johnson's employment by him on his first
arrival in London. From 1738 he was employed both on the Magazine and in
some jobs of translation.
Edward Cave, to whom we are thus introduced, was a man of some mark in
the history of literature. Johnson always spoke of him with affection
and afterwards wrote his life in complimentary terms. Cave, though a
clumsy, phlegmatic person of little cultivation, seems to have been one
of those men who, whilst destitute of real critical powers, have a
certain instinct for recognizing the commercial value of literary wares.
He had become by this time well-known as the publisher of a magazine
which survives to this day. Journals containing summaries of passing
events had already been started. Boyer's _Political State of Great
Britain_ began in 1711. _The Historical Register_, which added to a
chronicle some literary notices, was started in 1716. _The Grub Street
Journal_ was another journal with fuller critical notices, which first
appeared in 1730; and these two seem to have been superseded by the
_Gentleman's Magazine_, started by Cave in the next year. Johnson saw
in it an opening for the employment of his literary talents; and
regarded its contributions with that awe so natural in youthful
aspirants, and at once so comic and pathetic to writers of a little
experience. The names of many of Cave's staff are preserved in a note to
Hawkins. One or two of them, such as Birch and Akenside, have still a
certain interest for students of literature; but few have heard of the
great Moses Browne, who was regarded as the great poetical light of the
magazine. Johnson looked up to him as a leader in his craft, and was
graciously taken by Cave to an alehouse in Clerkenwell, where, wrapped
in a horseman's coat, and "a great bushy uncombed wig," he saw Mr.
Browne sitting at the end of a long table, in a cloud of tobacco-smoke,
and felt the satisfaction of a true hero-worshipper.
It is needless to describe in detail the literary task-work done by
Johnson at this period, the Latin poems which he contributed in praise
of Cave, and of Cave's friends, or the Jacobite squibs by which he
relieved his anti-ministerialist feelings. One incident of the period
doubtless refreshed the soul of many authors, who have shared Campbell's
gratitude to Napoleon for the sole redeeming action of his life--the
shooting of a bookseller. Johnson was employed by Osborne, a rough
specimen of the trade, to make a catalogue of the Harleian Library.
Osborne offensively reproved him for negligence, and Johnson knocked him
down with a folio. The book with which the feat was performed (_Biblia
Graeca Septuaginta, fol._ 1594, Frankfort) was in existence in a
bookseller's shop at Cambridge in 1812, and should surely have been
placed in some safe author's museum.
The most remarkable of Johnson's performances as a hack writer deserves
a brief notice. He was one of the first of reporters. Cave published
such reports of the debates in Parliament as were then allowed by the
jealousy of the Legislature, under the title of _The Senate of
Lilliput_. Johnson was the author of the debates from Nov. 1740 to
February 1742. Persons were employed to attend in the two Houses, who
brought home notes of the speeches, which were then put into shape by
Johnson. Long afterwards, at a dinner at Foote's, Francis (the father of
Junius) mentioned a speech of Pitt's as the best he had ever read, and
superior to anything in Demosthenes. Hereupon Johnson replied, "I wrote
that speech in a garret in Exeter Street." When the company applauded
not only his eloquence but his impartiality, Johnson replied, "That is
not quite true; I saved appearances tolerably well, but I took care that
the Whig dogs should not have the best of it." The speeches passed for a
time as accurate; though, in truth, it has been proved and it is easy to
observe, that they are, in fact, very vague reflections of the original.
The editors of Chesterfield's Works published two of the speeches, and,
to Johnson's considerable amusement, declared that one of them resembled
Demosthenes and the other Cicero. It is plain enough to the modern
reader that, if so, both of the ancient orators must have written true
Johnsonese; and, in fact, the style of the true author is often as
plainly marked in many of these compositions as in the _Rambler_ or
_Rasselas_. For this deception, such as it was, Johnson expressed
penitence at the end of his life, though he said that he had ceased to
write when he found that they were taken as genuine. He would not be
"accessory to the propagation of falsehood."
Another of Johnson's works which appeared in 1744 requires notice both
for its intrinsic merit, and its autobiographical interest. The most
remarkable of his Grub-Street companions was the Richard Savage already
mentioned. Johnson's life of him written soon after his death is one of
his most forcible performances, and the best extant illustration of the
life of the struggling authors of the time. Savage claimed to be the
illegitimate son of the Countess of Macclesfield, who was divorced from
her husband in the year of his birth on account of her connexion with
his supposed father, Lord Rivers. According to the story, believed by
Johnson, and published without her contradiction in the mother's
lifetime, she not only disavowed her son, but cherished an unnatural
hatred for him. She told his father that he was dead, in order that he
might not be benefited by the father's will; she tried to have him
kidnapped and sent to the plantations; and she did her best to prevent
him from receiving a pardon when he had been sentenced to death for
killing a man in a tavern brawl. However this may be, and there are
reasons for doubt, the story was generally believed, and caused much
sympathy for the supposed victim. Savage was at one time protected by
the kindness of Steele, who published his story, and sometimes employed
him as a literary assistant. When Steele became disgusted with him, he
received generous help from the actor Wilks and from Mrs. Oldfield, to
whom he had been introduced by some dramatic efforts. Then he was taken
up by Lord Tyrconnel, but abandoned by him after a violent quarrel; he
afterwards called himself a volunteer laureate, and received a pension
of 50_l_. a year from Queen Caroline; on her death he was thrown into
deep distress, and helped by a subscription to which Pope was the chief
contributor, on condition of retiring to the country. Ultimately he
quarrelled with his last protectors, and ended by dying in a debtor's
prison. Various poetical works, now utterly forgotten, obtained for him
scanty profit. This career sufficiently reveals the character. Savage
belonged to the very common type of men, who seem to employ their whole
talents to throw away their chances in life, and to disgust every one
who offers them a helping hand. He was, however, a man of some talent,
though his poems are now hopelessly unreadable, and seems to have had a
singular attraction for Johnson. The biography is curiously marked by
Johnson's constant effort to put the best face upon faults, which he has
too much love of truth to conceal. The explanation is, partly, that
Johnson conceived himself to be avenging a victim of cruel oppression.
"This mother," he says, after recording her vindictiveness, "is still
alive, and may perhaps even yet, though her malice was often defeated,
enjoy the pleasure of reflecting that the life, which she often
endeavoured to destroy, was at last shortened by her maternal offices;
that though she could not transport her son to the plantations, bury him
in the shop of a mechanic, or hasten the hand of the public executioner,
she has yet had the satisfaction of embittering all his hours, and
forcing him into exigencies that hurried on his death."
But it is also probable that Savage had a strong influence upon
Johnson's mind at a very impressible part of his career. The young man,
still ignorant of life and full of reverent enthusiasm for the literary
magnates of his time, was impressed by the varied experience of his
companion, and, it may be, flattered by his intimacy. Savage, he says
admiringly, had enjoyed great opportunities of seeing the most
conspicuous men of the day in their private life. He was shrewd and
inquisitive enough to use his opportunities well. "More circumstances to
constitute a critic on human life could not easily concur." The only
phrase which survives to justify this remark is Savage's statement
about Walpole, that "the whole range of his mind was from obscenity to
politics, and from politics to obscenity." We may, however, guess what
was the special charm of the intercourse to Johnson. Savage was an
expert in that science of human nature, learnt from experience not from
books, upon which Johnson set so high a value, and of which he was
destined to become the authorized expositor. There were, moreover,
resemblances between the two men. They were both admired and sought out
for their conversational powers. Savage, indeed, seems to have lived
chiefly by the people who entertained him for talk, till he had
disgusted them by his insolence and his utter disregard of time and
propriety. He would, like Johnson, sit up talking beyond midnight, and
next day decline to rise till dinner-time, though his favourite drink
was not, like Johnson's, free from intoxicating properties. Both of them
had a lofty pride, which Johnson heartily commends in Savage, though he
has difficulty in palliating some of its manifestations. One of the
stories reminds us of an anecdote already related of Johnson himself.
Some clothes had been left for Savage at a coffee-house by a person who,
out of delicacy, concealed his name. Savage, however, resented some want
of ceremony, and refused to enter the house again till the clothes had
been removed.
What was honourable pride in Johnson was, indeed, simple arrogance in
Savage. He asked favours, his biographer says, without submission, and
resented refusal as an insult. He had too much pride to acknowledge, not
not too much to receive, obligations; enough to quarrel with his
charitable benefactors, but not enough to make him rise to independence
of their charity. His pension would have sufficed to keep him, only that
as soon as he received it he retired from the sight of all his
acquaintance, and came back before long as penniless as before. This
conduct, observes his biographer, was "very particular." It was hardly
so singular as objectionable; and we are not surprised to be told that
he was rather a "friend of goodness" than himself a good man. In short,
we may say of him as Beauclerk said of a friend of Boswell's that, if he
had excellent principles, he did not wear them out in practice.
There is something quaint about this picture of a thorough-paced scamp,
admiringly painted by a virtuous man; forced, in spite of himself, to
make it a likeness, and striving in vain to make it attractive. But it
is also pathetic when we remember that Johnson shared some part at least
of his hero's miseries. "On a bulk, in a cellar, or in a glass-house,
among thieves and beggars, was to be found the author of _The Wanderer_,
the man of exalted sentiments, extensive views, and curious
observations; the man whose remarks on life might have assisted the
statesman, whose ideas of virtue might have enlightened the moralist,
whose eloquence might have influenced senators, and whose delicacy might
have polished courts." Very shocking, no doubt, and yet hardly
surprising under the circumstances! To us it is more interesting to
remember that the author of the _Rambler_ was not only a sympathizer,
but a fellow-sufferer with the author of the _Wanderer_, and shared the
queer "lodgings" of his friend, as Floyd shared the lodgings of Derrick.
Johnson happily came unscathed through the ordeal which was too much for
poor Savage, and could boast with perfect truth in later life that "no
man, who ever lived by literature, had lived more independently than I
have done." It was in so strange a school, and under such questionable
teaching that Johnson formed his character of the world and of the
conduct befitting its inmates. One characteristic conclusion is
indicated in the opening passage of the life. It has always been
observed, he says, that men eminent by nature or fortune are not
generally happy: "whether it be that apparent superiority incites great
designs, and great designs are naturally liable to fatal miscarriages;
or that the general lot of mankind is misery, and the misfortunes of
those, whose eminence drew upon them an universal attention, have been
more carefully recorded because they were more generally observed, and
have in reality been only more conspicuous than those of others, not
more frequent or more severe."
The last explanation was that which really commended itself to Johnson.
Nobody had better reason to know that obscurity might conceal a misery
as bitter as any that fell to the lot of the most eminent. The gloom due
to his constitutional temperament was intensified by the sense that he
and his wife were dependent upon the goodwill of a narrow and ignorant
tradesman for the scantiest maintenance. How was he to reach some solid
standing-ground above the hopeless mire of Grub Street? As a journeyman
author he could make both ends meet, but only on condition of incessant
labour. Illness and misfortune would mean constant dependence upon
charity or bondage to creditors. To get ahead of the world it was
necessary to distinguish himself in some way from the herd of needy
competitors. He had come up from Lichfield with a play in his pocket,
but the play did not seem at present to have much chance of emerging.
Meanwhile he published a poem which did something to give him a general
reputation.
_London_--an imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal--was published in
May, 1738. The plan was doubtless suggested by Pope's imitations of
Horace, which had recently appeared. Though necessarily following the
lines of Juvenal's poem, and conforming to the conventional fashion of
the time, both in sentiment and versification, the poem has a
biographical significance. It is indeed odd to find Johnson, who
afterwards thought of London as a lover of his mistress, and who
despised nothing more heartily than the cant of Rousseau and the
sentimentalists, adopting in this poem the ordinary denunciations of the
corruption of towns, and singing the praises of an innocent country
life. Doubtless, the young writer was like other young men, taking up a
strain still imitative and artificial. He has a quiet smile at Savage in
the life, because in his retreat to Wales, that enthusiast declared that
he "could not debar himself from the happiness which was to be found in
the calm of a cottage, or lose the opportunity of listening without
intermission to the melody of the nightingale, which he believed was to
be heard from every bramble, and which he did not fail to mention as a
very important part of the happiness of a country life." In _London_,
this insincere cockney adopts Savage's view. Thales, who is generally
supposed to represent Savage (and this coincidence seems to confirm the
opinion), is to retire "from the dungeons of the Strand," and to end a
healthy life in pruning walks and twining bowers in his garden.
There every bush with nature's music rings,
There every breeze bears health upon its wings.
Johnson had not yet learnt the value of perfect sincerity even in
poetry. But it must also be admitted that London, as seen by the poor
drudge from a Grub Street garret, probably presented a prospect gloomy
enough to make even Johnson long at times for rural solitude. The poem
reflects, too, the ordinary talk of the heterogeneous band of patriots,
Jacobites, and disappointed Whigs, who were beginning to gather enough
strength to threaten Walpole's long tenure of power. Many references to
contemporary politics illustrate Johnson's sympathy with the inhabitants
of the contemporary Cave of Adullam.
This poem, as already stated, attracted Pope's notice, who made a
curious note on a scrap of paper sent with it to a friend. Johnson is
described as "a man afflicted with an infirmity of the convulsive kind,
that attacks him sometimes so as to make him a sad spectacle." This
seems to have been the chief information obtained by Pope about the
anonymous author, of whom he had said, on first reading the poem, this
man will soon be _déterré_. _London_ made a certain noise; it reached a
second edition in a week, and attracted various patrons, among others,
General Oglethorpe, celebrated by Pope, and through a long life the warm
friend of Johnson. One line, however, in the poem printed in capital
letters, gives the moral which was doubtless most deeply felt by the
author, and which did not lose its meaning in the years to come. This
mournful truth, he says,--
Is everywhere confess'd,
Slow rises worth by poverty depress'd.
Ten years later (in January, 1749) appeared the _Vanity of Human
Wishes_, an imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. The difference in
tone shows how deeply this and similar truths had been impressed upon
its author in the interval. Though still an imitation, it is as
significant as the most original work could be of Johnson's settled
views of life. It was written at a white heat, as indeed Johnson wrote
all his best work. Its strong Stoical morality, its profound and
melancholy illustrations of the old and ever new sentiment, _Vanitas
Vanitatum_, make it perhaps the most impressive poem of the kind in the
language. The lines on the scholar's fate show that the iron had entered
his soul in the interval. Should the scholar succeed beyond expectation
in his labours and escape melancholy and disease, yet, he says,--
Yet hope not life from grief and danger free,
Nor think the doom of man reversed on thee;
Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes
And pause awhile from letters, to be wise;
There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail;
See nations, slowly wise and meanly just,
To buried merit raise the tardy bust.
If dreams yet flatter, once again attend.
Hear Lydiat's life and Galileo's end.
For the "patron," Johnson had originally written the "garret." The
change was made after an experience of patronage to be presently
described in connexion with the _Dictionary_.
For _London_ Johnson received ten guineas, and for the _Vanity of Human
Wishes_ fifteen. Though indirectly valuable, as increasing his
reputation, such work was not very profitable. The most promising career
in a pecuniary sense was still to be found on the stage. Novelists were
not yet the rivals of dramatists, and many authors had made enough by a
successful play to float them through a year or two. Johnson had
probably been determined by his knowledge of this fact to write the
tragedy of _Irene_. No other excuse at least can be given for the
composition of one of the heaviest and most unreadable of dramatic
performances, interesting now, if interesting at all, solely as a
curious example of the result of bestowing great powers upon a totally
uncongenial task. Young men, however, may be pardoned for such blunders
if they are not repeated, and Johnson, though he seems to have retained
a fondness for his unlucky performance, never indulged in play writing
after leaving Lichfield. The best thing connected with the play was
Johnson's retort to his friend Walmsley, the Lichfield registrar. "How,"
asked Walmsley, "can you contrive to plunge your heroine into deeper
calamity?" "Sir," said Johnson, "I can put her into the spiritual
court." Even Boswell can only say for _Irene_ that it is "entitled to
the praise of superior excellence," and admits its entire absence of
dramatic power. Garrick, who had become manager of Drury Lane, produced
his friend's work in 1749. The play was carried through nine nights by
Garrick's friendly zeal, so that the author had his three nights'
profits. For this he received £195 17_s_. and for the copy he had £100.
People probably attended, as they attend modern representations of
legitimate drama, rather from a sense of duty, than in the hope of
pleasure. The heroine originally had to speak two lines with a bowstring
round her neck. The situation produced cries of murder, and she had to
go off the stage alive. The objectionable passage was removed, but
_Irene_ was on the whole a failure, and has never, I imagine, made
another appearance. When asked how he felt upon his ill-success, he
replied "like the monument," and indeed he made it a principle
throughout life to accept the decision of the public like a sensible man
without murmurs.
Meanwhile, Johnson was already embarked upon an undertaking of a very
different kind. In 1747 he had put forth a plan for an English
Dictionary, addressed at the suggestion of Dodsley, to Lord
Chesterfield, then Secretary of State, and the great contemporary
Maecenas. Johnson had apparently been maturing the scheme for some
time. "I know," he says in the "plan," that "the work in which I engaged
is generally considered as drudgery for the blind, as the proper toil of
artless industry, a book that requires neither the light of learning nor
the activity of genius, but may be successfully performed without any
higher quality than that of bearing burdens with dull patience, and
beating the track of the alphabet with sluggish resolution." He adds in
a sub-sarcastic tone, that although princes and statesmen had once
thought it honourable to patronize dictionaries, he had considered such
benevolent acts to be "prodigies, recorded rather to raise wonder than
expectation," and he was accordingly pleased and surprised to find that
Chesterfield took an interest in his undertaking. He proceeds to lay
down the general principles upon which he intends to frame his work, in
order to invite timely suggestions and repress unreasonable
expectations. At this time, humble as his aspirations might be, he took
a view of the possibilities open to him which had to be lowered before
the publication of the dictionary. He shared the illusion that a
language might be "fixed" by making a catalogue of its words. In the
preface which appeared with the completed work, he explains very
sensibly the vanity of any such expectation. Whilst all human affairs
are changing, it is, as he says, absurd to imagine that the language
which repeats all human thoughts and feelings can remain unaltered.
A dictionary, as Johnson conceived it, was in fact work for a "harmless
drudge," the definition of a lexicographer given in the book itself.
Etymology in a scientific sense was as yet non-existent, and Johnson was
not in this respect ahead of his contemporaries. To collect all the
words in the language, to define their meanings as accurately as might
be, to give the obvious or whimsical guesses at Etymology suggested by
previous writers, and to append a good collection of illustrative
passages was the sum of his ambition. Any systematic training of the
historical processes by which a particular language had been developed
was unknown, and of course the result could not be anticipated. The
work, indeed, required a keen logical faculty of definition, and wide
reading of the English literature of the two preceding centuries; but it
could of course give no play either for the higher literary faculties on
points of scientific investigation. A dictionary in Johnson's sense was
the highest kind of work to which a literary journeyman could be set,
but it was still work for a journeyman, not for an artist. He was not
adding to literature, but providing a useful implement for future men of
letters.
Johnson had thus got on hand the biggest job that could be well
undertaken by a good workman in his humble craft. He was to receive
fifteen hundred and seventy-five pounds for the whole, and he expected
to finish it in three years. The money, it is to be observed, was to
satisfy not only Johnson but several copyists employed in the mechanical
part of the work. It was advanced by instalments, and came to an end
before the conclusion of the book. Indeed, it appeared when accounts
were settled, that he had received a hundred pounds more than was due.
He could, however, pay his way for the time, and would gain a reputation
enough to ensure work in future. The period of extreme poverty had
probably ended when Johnson got permanent employment on the _Gentleman's
Magazine_. He was not elevated above the need of drudgery and economy,
but he might at least be free from the dread of neglect. He could
command his market--such as it was. The necessity of steady labour was
probably unfelt in repelling his fits of melancholy. His name was
beginning to be known, and men of reputation were seeking his
acquaintance. In the winter of 1749 he formed a club, which met weekly
at a "famous beef-steak house" in Ivy Lane. Among its members were
Hawkins, afterwards his biographer, and two friends, Bathurst a
physician, and Hawkesworth an author, for the first of whom he
entertained an unusually strong affection. The Club, like its more
famous successor, gave Johnson an opportunity of displaying and
improving his great conversational powers. He was already dreaded for
his prowess in argument, his dictatorial manners and vivid flashes of
wit and humour, the more effective from the habitual gloom and apparent
heaviness of the discourser.
The talk of this society probably suggested topics for the _Rambler_,
which appeared at this time, and caused Johnson's fame to spread further
beyond the literary circles of London. The wit and humour have, indeed,
left few traces upon its ponderous pages, for the _Rambler_ marks the
culminating period of Johnson's worst qualities of style. The pompous
and involved language seems indeed to be a fit clothing for the
melancholy reflections which are its chief staple, and in spite of its
unmistakable power it is as heavy reading as the heavy class of
lay-sermonizing to which it belongs. Such literature, however, is often
strangely popular in England, and the _Rambler_, though its circulation
was limited, gave to Johnson his position as a great practical moralist.
He took his literary title, one may say, from the _Rambler_, as the more
familiar title was derived from the _Dictionary_.
The _Rambler_ was published twice a week from March 20th, 1750, to
March 17th, 1752. In five numbers alone he received assistance from
friends, and one of these, written by Richardson, is said to have been
the only number which had a large sale. The circulation rarely exceeded
500, though ten English editions were published in the author's
lifetime, besides Scotch and Irish editions. The payment, however,
namely, two guineas a number, must have been welcome to Johnson, and the
friendship of many distinguished men of the time was a still more
valuable reward. A quaint story illustrates the hero-worship of which
Johnson now became the object. Dr. Burney, afterwards an intimate
friend, had introduced himself to Johnson by letter in consequence of
the _Rambler_, and the plan of the _Dictionary_. The admiration was
shared by a friend of Burney's, a Mr. Bewley, known--in Norfolk at
least--as the "philosopher of Massingham." When Burney at last gained
the honour of a personal interview, he wished to procure some "relic" of
Johnson for his friend. He cut off some bristles from a hearth-broom in
the doctor's chambers, and sent them in a letter to his
fellow-enthusiast. Long afterwards Johnson was pleased to hear of this
simple-minded homage, and not only sent a copy of the _Lives of the
Poets_ to the rural philosopher, but deigned to grant him a personal
interview.
Dearer than any such praise was the approval of Johnson's wife. She told
him that, well as she had thought of him before, she had not considered
him equal to such a performance. The voice that so charmed him was soon
to be silenced for ever. Mrs. Johnson died (March 17th, 1752) three days
after the appearance of the last _Rambler_. The man who has passed
through such a trial knows well that, whatever may be in store for him
in the dark future, fate can have no heavier blow in reserve. Though
Johnson once acknowledged to Boswell, when in a placid humour, that
happier days had come to him in his old age than in his early life, he
would probably have added that though fame and friendship and freedom
from the harrowing cares of poverty might cause his life to be more
equably happy, yet their rewards could represent but a faint and mocking
reflection of the best moments of a happy marriage. His strong mind and
tender nature reeled under the blow. Here is one pathetic little note
written to the friend, Dr. Taylor, who had come to him in his distress.
That which first announced the calamity, and which, said Taylor,
"expressed grief in the strongest manner he had ever read," is lost.
"Dear Sir,--Let me have your company and instruction. Do not live away
from me. My distress is great.
"Pray desire Mrs. Taylor to inform me what mourning I should buy for my
mother and Miss Porter, and bring a note in writing with you.
"Remember me in your prayers, for vain is the help of man.
"I am, dear sir,
"SAM. JOHNSON."
We need not regret that a veil is drawn over the details of the bitter
agony of his passage through the valley of the shadow of death. It is
enough to put down the wails which he wrote long afterwards when visibly
approaching the close of all human emotions and interests:--
"This is the day on which, in 1752, dear Letty died. I have now uttered
a prayer of repentance and contrition; perhaps Letty knows that I prayed
for her. Perhaps Letty is now praying for me. God help me. Thou, God,
art merciful, hear my prayers and enable me to trust in Thee.
"We were married almost seventeen years, and have now been parted
thirty."
It seems half profane, even at this distance of time, to pry into grief
so deep and so lasting. Johnson turned for relief to that which all
sufferers know to be the only remedy for sorrow--hard labour. He set to
work in his garret, an inconvenient room, "because," he said, "in that
room only I never saw Mrs. Johnson." He helped his friend Hawkesworth in
the _Adventurer_, a new periodical of the _Rambler_ kind; but his main
work was the _Dictionary_, which came out at last in 1755. Its
appearance was the occasion of an explosion of wrath which marks an
epoch in our literature. Johnson, as we have seen, had dedicated the
Plan to Lord Chesterfield; and his language implies that they had been
to some extent in personal communication. Chesterfield's fame is in
curious antithesis to Johnson's. He was a man of great abilities, and
seems to have deserved high credit for some parts of his statesmanship.
As a Viceroy in Ireland in particular he showed qualities rare in his
generation. To Johnson he was known as the nobleman who had a wide
social influence as an acknowledged _arbiter elegantiarum_, and who
reckoned among his claims some of that literary polish in which the
earlier generation of nobles had certainly been superior to their
successors. The art of life expounded in his _Letters_ differs from
Johnson as much as the elegant diplomatist differs from the rough
intellectual gladiator of Grub Street. Johnson spoke his mind of his
rival without reserve. "I thought," he said, "that this man had been a
Lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among Lords." And of the
_Letters_ he said more keenly that they taught the morals of a harlot
and the manners of a dancing-master. Chesterfield's opinion of Johnson
is indicated by the description in his _Letters_ of a "respectable
Hottentot, who throws his meat anywhere but down his throat. This absurd
person," said Chesterfield, "was not only uncouth in manners and warm in
dispute, but behaved exactly in the same way to superiors, equals, and
inferiors; and therefore, by a necessary consequence, absurdly to two of
the three. _Hinc illae lacrymae!_"
Johnson, in my opinion, was not far wrong in his judgment, though it
would be a gross injustice to regard Chesterfield as nothing but a
fribble. But men representing two such antithetic types were not likely
to admire each other's good qualities. Whatever had been the intercourse
between them, Johnson was naturally annoyed when the dignified noble
published two articles in the _World_--a periodical supported by such
polite personages as himself and Horace Walpole--in which the need of a
dictionary was set forth, and various courtly compliments described
Johnson's fitness for a dictatorship over the language. Nothing could be
more prettily turned; but it meant, and Johnson took it to mean, I
should like to have the dictionary dedicated to me: such a compliment
would add a feather to my cap, and enable me to appear to the world as a
patron of literature as well as an authority upon manners. "After making
pert professions," as Johnson said, "he had, for many years, taken no
notice of me; but when my _Dictionary_ was coming out, he fell a
scribbling in the _World_ about it." Johnson therefore bestowed upon the
noble earl a piece of his mind in a letter which was not published till
it came out in Boswell's biography.
"My Lord,--I have been lately informed by the proprietor of the _World_
that two papers, in which my _Dictionary_ is recommended to the public,
were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an honour
which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know
not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.
"When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your Lordship, I
was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your
address; and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself, _le
vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre_--that I might obtain that regard for
which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so little
encouraged that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue
it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I had exhausted
all the arts of pleasing which a wearied and uncourtly scholar can
possess. I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have
his all neglected, be it ever so little.
"Seven years, my lord, have now passed, since I waited in your outward
rooms and was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
pushing on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to
complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication
without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, and one smile
of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron
before.
"The shepherd in _Virgil_ grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
him a native of the rocks.
"Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached the ground
encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take
of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed
till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and
cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no
very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has
been received, or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as
owing that to a patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself.
"Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any
favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should
conclude it, should loss be possible, with loss; for I have been long
wakened from that dream of hope in which I once boasted myself with so
much exultation, my Lord,
"Your Lordship's most humble, most obedient servant,
"SAM. JOHNSON."
The letter is one of those knock-down blows to which no answer is
possible, and upon which comment is superfluous. It was, as Mr. Carlyle
calls it, "the far-famed blast of doom proclaiming into the ear of Lord
Chesterfield and through him, of the listening world, that patronage
should be no more."
That is all that can be said; yet perhaps it should be added that
Johnson remarked that he had once received £10 from Chesterfield, though
he thought the assistance too inconsiderable to be mentioned in such a
letter. Hawkins also states that Chesterfield sent overtures to Johnson
through two friends, one of whom, long Sir Thomas Robinson, stated that,
if he were rich enough (a judicious clause) he would himself settle £500
a year upon Johnson. Johnson replied that if the first peer of the realm
made such an offer, he would show him the way downstairs. Hawkins is
startled at this insolence, and at Johnson's uniform assertion that an
offer of money was an insult. We cannot tell what was the history of the
£10; but Johnson, in spite of Hawkins's righteous indignation, was in
fact too proud to be a beggar, and owed to his pride his escape from
the fate of Savage.
The appearance of the _Dictionary_ placed Johnson in the position
described soon afterwards by Smollett. He was henceforth "the great Cham
of Literature"--a monarch sitting in the chair previously occupied by
his namesake, Ben, by Dryden, and by Pope; but which has since that time
been vacant. The world of literature has become too large for such
authority. Complaints were not seldom uttered at the time. Goldsmith has
urged that Boswell wished to make a monarchy of what ought to be a
republic. Goldsmith, who would have been the last man to find serious
fault with the dictator, thought the dictatorship objectionable. Some
time indeed was still to elapse before we can say that Johnson was
firmly seated on the throne; but the _Dictionary_ and the _Rambler_ had
given him a position not altogether easy to appreciate, now that the
_Dictionary_ has been superseded and the _Rambler_ gone out of fashion.
His name was the highest at this time (1755) in the ranks of pure
literature. The fame of Warburton possibly bulked larger for the moment,
and one of his flatterers was comparing him to the Colossus which
bestrides the petty world of contemporaries. But Warburton had subsided
into episcopal repose, and literature had been for him a stepping-stone
rather than an ultimate aim. Hume had written works of far more enduring
influence than Johnson; but they were little read though generally
abused, and scarcely belong to the purely literary history. The first
volume of his _History of England_ had appeared (1754), but had not
succeeded. The second was just coming out. Richardson was still giving
laws to his little seraglio of adoring women; Fielding had died (1754),
worn out by labour and dissipation; Smollett was active in the literary
trade, but not in such a way as to increase his own dignity or that of
his employment; Gray was slowly writing a few lines of exquisite verse
in his retirement at Cambridge; two young Irish adventurers, Burke and
Goldsmith, were just coming to London to try their fortune; Adam Smith
made his first experiment as an author by reviewing the _Dictionary_ in
the _Edinburgh Review_; Robertson had not yet appeared as a historian;
Gibbon was at Lausanne repenting of his old brief lapse into Catholicism
as an act of undergraduate's folly; and Cowper, after three years of
"giggling and making giggle" with Thurlow in an attorney's office, was
now entered at the Temple and amusing himself at times with literature
in company with such small men of letters as Colman, Bonnell Thornton,
and Lloyd. It was a slack tide of literature; the generation of Pope had
passed away and left no successors, and no writer of the time could be
put in competition with the giant now known as "Dictionary Johnson."
When the last sheet of the _Dictionary_ had been carried to the
publisher, Millar, Johnson asked the messenger, "What did he say?"
"Sir," said the messenger, "he said, 'Thank God I have done with him.'"
"I am glad," replied Johnson, "that he thanks God for anything."
Thankfulness for relief from seven years' toil seems to have been
Johnson's predominant feeling: and he was not anxious for a time to take
any new labours upon his shoulders. Some years passed which have left
few traces either upon his personal or his literary history. He
contributed a good many reviews in 1756-7 to the _Literary Magazine_,
one of which, a review of Soame Jenyns, is amongst his best
performances. To a weekly paper he contributed for two years, from
April, 1758, to April, 1760, a set of essays called the _Idler_, on the
old _Rambler_ plan. He did some small literary cobbler's work,
receiving a guinea for a prospectus to a newspaper and ten pounds for
correcting a volume of poetry. He had advertised in 1756 a new edition
of Shakspeare which was to appear by Christmas, 1757: but he dawdled
over it so unconscionably that it did not appear for nine years; and
then only in consequence of taunts from Churchill, who accused him with
too much plausibility of cheating his subscribers.
He for subscribers baits his hook;
And takes your cash: but where's the book?
No matter where; wise fear, you know
Forbids the robbing of a foe;
But what to serve our private ends
Forbids the cheating of our friends?
In truth, his constitutional indolence seems to have gained advantages
over him, when the stimulus of a heavy task was removed. In his
meditations, there are many complaints of his "sluggishness" and
resolutions of amendment. "A kind of strange oblivion has spread over
me," he says in April, 1764, "so that I know not what has become of the
last years, and perceive that incidents and intelligence pass over me
without leaving any impression."
It seems, however, that he was still frequently in difficulties. Letters
are preserved showing that in the beginning of 1756, Richardson became
surety for him for a debt, and lent him six guineas to release him from
arrest. An event which happened three years later illustrates his
position and character. In January, 1759, his mother died at the age of
ninety. Johnson was unable to come to Lichfield, and some deeply
pathetic letters to her and her stepdaughter, who lived with her, record
his emotions. Here is the last sad farewell upon the snapping of the
most sacred of human ties.
"Dear Honoured Mother," he says in a letter enclosed to Lucy Porter,
the step-daughter, "neither your condition nor your character make it
fit for me to say much. You have been the best mother, and I believe the
best woman in the world. I thank you for your indulgence to me, and beg
forgiveness of all that I have done ill, and of all that I have omitted
to do well. God grant you His Holy Spirit, and receive you to
everlasting happiness for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. Lord Jesus receive
your spirit. I am, dear, dear mother,
"Your dutiful son,
"SAMUEL JOHNSON."
Johnson managed to raise twelve guineas, six of them borrowed from his
printer, to send to his dying mother. In order to gain money for her
funeral expenses and some small debts, he wrote the story of _Rasselas_.
It was composed in the evenings of a single week, and sent to press as
it was written. He received £100 for this, perhaps the most successful
of his minor writings, and £25 for a second edition. It was widely
translated and universally admired. One of the strangest of literary
coincidences is the contemporary appearance of this work and Voltaire's
_Candide_; to which, indeed, it bears in some respects so strong a
resemblance that, but for Johnson's apparent contradiction, we would
suppose that he had at least heard some description of its design. The
two stories, though widely differing in tone and style, are among the
most powerful expressions of the melancholy produced in strong
intellects by the sadness and sorrows of the world. The literary
excellence of _Candide_ has secured for it a wider and more enduring
popularity than has fallen to the lot of Johnson's far heavier
production. But _Rasselas_ is a book of singular force, and bears the
most characteristic impression of Johnson's peculiar temperament.
A great change was approaching in Johnson's circumstances. When George
III. came to the throne, it struck some of his advisers that it would be
well, as Boswell puts it, to open "a new and brighter prospect to men of
literary merit." This commendable design was carried out by offering to
Johnson a pension of three hundred a year. Considering that such men as
Horace Walpole and his like were enjoying sinecures of more than twice
as many thousands for being their father's sons, the bounty does not
strike one as excessively liberal. It seems to have been really intended
as some set-off against other pensions bestowed upon various hangers-on
of the Scotch prime minister, Bute. Johnson was coupled with the
contemptible scribbler, Shebbeare, who had lately been in the pillory
for a Jacobite libel (a "he-bear" and a "she-bear," said the facetious
newspapers), and when a few months afterwards a pension of £200 a year
was given to the old actor, Sheridan, Johnson growled out that it was
time for him to resign his own. Somebody kindly repeated the remark to
Sheridan, who would never afterwards speak to Johnson.
The pension, though very welcome to Johnson, who seems to have been in
real distress at the time, suggested some difficulty. Johnson had
unluckily spoken of a pension in his _Dictionary_ as "generally
understood to mean pay given to a State hireling for treason to his
country." He was assured, however, that he did not come within the
definition; and that the reward was given for what he had done, not for
anything that he was expected to do. After some hesitation, Johnson
consented to accept the payment thus offered without the direct
suggestion of any obligation, though it was probably calculated that he
would in case of need, be the more ready, as actually happened, to use
his pen in defence of authority. He had not compromised his independence
and might fairly laugh at angry comments. "I wish," he said afterwards,
"that my pension were twice as large, that they might make twice as much
noise." "I cannot now curse the House of Hanover," was his phrase on
another occasion: "but I think that the pleasure of cursing the House of
Hanover and drinking King James's health, all amply overbalanced by
three hundred pounds a year." In truth, his Jacobitism was by this time,
whatever it had once been, nothing more than a humorous crotchet, giving
opportunity for the expression of Tory prejudice.
"I hope you will now purge and live cleanly like a gentleman," was
Beauclerk's comment upon hearing of his friend's accession of fortune,
and as Johnson is now emerging from Grub Street, it is desirable to
consider what manner of man was to be presented to the wider circles
that were opening to receive him.