SAMUEL JOHNSON.

(_Encyclopodia Britannica_, December 1856.)

Samuel Johnson, {172}one of the most eminent English writers of the

eighteenth century, was the son of Michael Johnson, who was, at the

beginning of that century, a magistrate of Lichfield, and a bookseller

of great note in the midland counties. Michael’s abilities and

attainments seem to have been considerable. He was so well acquainted

with the contents of the volumes which he exposed to sale, that the

country rectors of Staffordshire and Worcestershire thought him an

oracle on points of learning. Between him and the clergy, indeed,

there was a strong religious and political sympathy. He was a zealous

churchman, and, though he had qualified himself for municipal office

by taking the oaths to the sovereigns in possession, was to the last a

Jacobite in heart. At his house, a house which is still pointed out to

every traveller who visits Lichfield, Samuel was born on the 18th of

September 1709. In the child, the physical, intellectual, and moral

peculiarities which afterwards distinguished the man were plainly

discernible; great muscular strength accompanied by much awkwardness and

many infirmities; great quickness of parts, with a morbid propensity to

sloth and procrastination; a kind and generous heart, {173}with a gloomy

and irritable temper. He had inherited from his ancestors a scrofulous

taint, which it was beyond the power of medicine to remove. His parents

were weak enough to believe that the royal touch was a specific for this

malady. In his third year he was taken up to London, inspected by the

court surgeon, prayed over by the court chaplains, and stroked and

presented with a piece of gold by Queen Anne. One of his earliest

recollections was that of a stately lady in a diamond stomacher and a

long black hood. Her hand was applied in vain. The boy’s features, which

were originally noble and not irregular, were distorted by his malady.

His cheeks were deeply scarred. He lost for a time the sight of one eye;

and he saw but very imperfectly with the other. But the force of

his mind overcame every impediment. Indolent as he was, he acquired

knowledge with such ease and rapidity that at every school to which

he was sent he was soon the best scholar. From sixteen to eighteen he

resided at home, and was left to his own devices. He learned much at

this time, though his studies were without guidance and without plan. He

ransacked his father’s shelves, dipped into a multitude of books, read

what was interesting, and passed over what was dull. An ordinary lad

would have acquired little or no useful knowledge in such a way: but

much that was dull to ordinary lads was interesting to Samuel. He read

little Greek; for his proficiency in that language was not such that he

could take much pleasure in the masters of Attic poetry and eloquence.

But he had left school a good Latinist; and he soon acquired, in the

large and miscellaneous library of which he now had the command, an

extensive knowledge of Latin literature. {174}That Augustan delicacy of

taste which is the boast of the great public schools of England he never

possessed. But he was early familiar with some classical writers who

were quite unknown to the best scholars in the sixth form at Eton.

He was peculiarly attracted by the works of the great restorers of

learning. Once, while searching for some apples, he found a large folio

volume of Petrarch’s works. The name excited his curiosity; and

he eagerly devoured hundreds of pages. Indeed, the diction and

versification of his own Latin compositions show that he had paid at

least as much attention to modern copies from the antique as to the

original models.

While he was thus irregularly educating himself, his family was sinking

into hopeless poverty. Old Michael Johnson was much better qualified

to pore upon books, and to talk about them, than to trade in them. His

business declined; his debts increased; it was with difficulty that the

daily expenses of his household were defrayed. It was out of his power

to support his son at either university: but a wealthy neighbour offered

assistance; and, in reliance on promises which proved to be of very

little value, Samuel was entered at Pembroke College, Oxford. When the

young scholar presented himself to the rulers of that society, they were

amazed not more by his ungainly figure and eccentric manners than by

the quantity of extensive and curious information which he had picked up

during many months of desultory but not unprofitable study. On the first

day of his residence he surprised his teachers by quoting Macrobius; and

one of the most learned among them declared that he had never known a

freshman of equal attainments.

At Oxford, Johnson resided during about three years. {175}He was poor,

even to raggedness; and his appearance excited a mirth and a pity which

were equally intolerable to his haughty spirit. He was driven from the

quadrangle of Christ-Church by the sneering looks which the members

of that aristocratical society cast at the holes in his shoes. Some

charitable person placed a new pair at his door; but he spurned them

away in a fury. Distress made him, not servile, but reckless and

ungovernable. No opulent gentleman commoner, panting for one-and-twenty,

could have treated the academical authorities with more gross

disrespect. The needy scholar was generally to be seen under the gate

of Pembroke, a gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing a circle of

lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and dirty linen, his wit

and audacity gave him an undisputed ascendency. In every mutiny against

the discipline of the college he was the ringleader. Much was

pardoned, however, to a youth so highly distinguished by abilities and

acquirements. He had early made himself known by turning Pope’s Messiah

into Latin verse. The style and rhythm, indeed, were not exactly

Virgilian; but the translation found many admirers, and was read with

pleasure by Pope himself.

The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the ordinary course of

things, have become a Bachelor of Arts: but he was at the end of his

resources. Those promises of support on which he had relied had not been

kept. His family could do nothing for him. His debts to Oxford tradesmen

were small indeed, yet larger than he could pay. In the autumn of 1731,

he was under the necessity of quitting the university without a

degree. In the following winter his father died. The old man left but a

pittance; and of that pittance almost the whole was appropriated

to the support of his widow. The property to which Samual succeeded

amounted to no more than twenty pounds.

His life, during the thirty years which followed, was

one hard struggle with poverty. The misery of that

struggle needed no aggravation, but was aggravated by

the sufferings of an unsound body and an unsound

mind. Before the young man left the university, his

hereditary malady had broken forth in a singularly

cruel form. He had become an incurable hypochrondriac.

He said long after that he had been mad all

his life, or at least not perfectly sane; and, in truth,

eccentricities less strange for that his have often been

thought grounds sufficient for absolving felons,

and for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his gestures, his mutterings,

sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified people who did not know him.

At a dinner table he would, in a fit of absence, stoop down and twitch

off a lady’s shoe. He would amaze a drawing room by suddenly ejaculating

a clause of the Lord’s Prayer.

He would conceive an unintelligible aversion to a particular alley, and

perform a great circuit rather than see the hateful place. He would set

his heart on touching every post in the streets through which he walked.

If by any chance he missed a post, he would go back a hundred yards

and repair the omission. Under the influence of his disease, his senses

became morbidly torpid, and his imagination morbidly active.

At one time he would stand poring on the town clock without being able

to tell the hour. At another, he would distinctly hear his mother, who

was many miles off, calling him by his name. But this was not the worst.

A deep melancholy took possession of him, and gave a dark tinge to all

his views of human napittance {176}almost the whole was appropriated

to the support of his widow. The property to which Samuel succeeded

amounted to no more than twenty pounds.

His life, during the thirty years which followed, was one hard struggle

with poverty. The misery of that struggle needed no aggravation, but

was aggravated by the sufferings of an unsound body and an unsound mind.

Before the young man left the university, his hereditary malady had

broken forth in a singularly cruel form. He had become an incurable

hypochondriac. He said long after that he had been mad all his life, or

at least not perfectly sane; and, in truth, eccentricities less

strange than his have often been

thought grounds sufficient for obsolving felons, and for

setting aside wills. His grimaces, his gestures, his

mutterings, sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified

people who did not know him. At a dinner table he

would, in a fit of absence, stoop down and twitch off

a lady's shoe. He would amaze a drawing room by

suddenly ejaculating a clause of the Lord's Prayer.

He would conceive an unintelligible aversion to a

particular alley, and peform a great circuit rather than

see the hateful place. He would set his heart on

touching every post in the streets through which he

walked. If by any chance he missed a post, he would

go back a hundred yards and repair the omission.

Under the influence of his disease, his senses became

morbidly torpid, and his imagination morbidly active.

At one time he would stand poring on the town clock

without being able to tell the hour. At another, he

would distinctly hear his mother, who was many miles

off, calling him by his name. But this was not the

worst. A deep melancholy took possession of him,

and gave a dark tinge to all his views of human

nature {177}and of human destiny. Such

wretchedness as he endured has driven many men to shoot themselves or

drown themselves. But he was under no temptation to commit suicide. He

was sick of life; but he was afraid of death; and he shuddered at every

sight or sound which reminded him of the inevitable hour. In religion he

found but little comfort during his long and frequent fits of dejection;

for his religion partook of his own character. The light from heaven

shone on him indeed, but not in a direct line, or with its own pure

splendour. The rays had to struggle through a disturbing medium; they

reached him refracted, dulled and discoloured by the thick gloom which

had settled on his soul; and, though they might be sufficiently clear to

guide him, were too dim to cheer him.

With such infirmities of body and of mind, this celebrated man was

left, at two-and-twenty, to fight his way through the world. He remained

during about five years in the midland counties. At Lichfield, his

birth-place and his early home, he had inherited some friends and

acquired others. He was kindly noticed by Henry Hervey, a gay officer

of noble family, who happened to be quartered there. Gilbert Walmesley,

registrar of the ecclesiastical court of the diocese, a man of

distinguished parts, learning, and knowledge of the world, did himself

honour by patronising the young adventurer, whose repulsive person,

unpolished manners and squalid garb moved many of the petty aristocracy

of the neighbourhood to laughter or to disgust. At Lichfield, however,

Johnson could find no way of earning a livelihood. He became usher of

a grammar school in Leicestershire; he resided as a humble companion

in the house of a country gentleman; but a life of dependence was

insupportable to his haughty spirit. He repaired {178}to Birmingham, and

there earned a few guineas by literary drudgery. In that town he printed

a translation, little noticed at the time, and long forgotten, of a

Latin book about Abyssinia. He then put forth proposals for publishing

by subscription the poems of Politian, with notes containing a history

of modern Latin verse: but subscriptions did not come in; and the volume

never appeared.

While leading this vagrant and miserable life, Johnson fell in love.

The object of his passion was Mrs. Elizabeth Porter, a widow who had

children as old as himself. To ordinary spectators, the lady appeared

to be a short, fat, coarse woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed in

gaudy colours, and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graces which

were not exactly those of the Queensberrys and Lepels. To Johnson,

however, whose passions were strong, whose eyesight was too weak to

distinguish ceruse from natural bloom, and who had seldom or never been

in the same room with a woman of real fashion, his Titty, as he called

her, was the most beautiful, graceful and accomplished of her sex. That

his admiration was unfeigned cannot be doubted; for she was as poor as

himself. She accepted, with a readiness which did her little honour,

the addresses of a suitor who might have been her son. The marriage,

however, in spite of occasional wranglings, proved happier than might

have been expected. The lover continued to be under the illusions of the

wedding-day till the lady died in her sixty-fourth year. On her monument

he placed an inscription extolling the charms of her person and of her

manners; and, when, long after her decease, he had occasion to mention

her, he exclaimed, with a tenderness half ludicrous, half pathetic,

“Pretty creature!”

His {179}marriage made it necessary for him to exert himself more

strenuously than he had hitherto done. He took a house in the

neighbourhood of his native town, and advertised for pupils. But

eighteen months passed away; and only three pupils came to his academy.

Indeed, his appearance was so strange, and his temper so violent, that

his schoolroom must have resembled an ogre’s den. Nor was the tawdry

painted grandmother whom he called his Titty well qualified to make

provision for the comfort of young gentlemen. David Garrick, who was

one of the pupils, used, many years later, to throw the best company of

London into convulsions of laughter by mimicking the endearments of this

extraordinary pair.

At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, determined to

seek his fortune in the capital as a literary adventurer. He set out

with a few guineas, three acts of the tragedy of Irene in manuscript,

and two or three letters of introduction from his friend Walmesley.

Never, since literature became a calling in England, had it been a less

gainful calling than at the time when Johnson took up his residence in

London. In the preceding generation a writer of eminent merit was sure

to be munificently rewarded by the government. The least that he could

expect was a pension or a sinecure place; and, if he showed any aptitude

for politics, he might hope to be a member of parliament, a lord of the

treasury, an ambassador, a secretary of state. It would be easy, on the

other hand, to name several writers of the nineteenth century of

whom the least successful has received forty thousand pounds from the

booksellers. But Johnson entered on his vocation in the most dreary

part of the dreary interval which {180}separated two ages of prosperity.

Literature had ceased to flourish under the patronage of the great, and

had not begun to flourish under the patronage of the public. One man of

letters, indeed. Pope, had acquired by his pen what was then considered

as a handsome fortune, and lived on a footing of equality with nobles

and ministers of state. But this was a solitary exception. Even an

author whose reputation was established, and whose works were popular,

such an author as Thomson, whose Seasons were in every library, such an

author as Fielding, whose Pasquin had had a greater run than any drama

since The Begar’s Opera, was sometimes glad to obtain, by pawning his

best coat, the means of dining on tripe at a cook-shop underground,

where he could wipe his hands, after his greasy meal, on the back of a

Newfoundland dog. It is easy, therefore, to imagine what humiliations

and privations must have awaited the novice who had still to earn a

name. One of the publishers to whom Johnson applied for employment

measured with a scornful eye that athletic though uncouth frame, and

exclaimed, “You had better get a porter’s knot, and carry trunks.” Nor

was the advice bad; for a porter was likely to be as plentifully fed,

and as comfortably lodged, as a poet.

Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson was able to form any

literary connection from which he could expect more than bread for the

day which was passing over him. He never forgot the generosity with

which Hervey, who was now residing in London, relieved his wants during

this time of trial. “Harry Hervey,” said the old philosopher many years

later, “was a vicious man; but he was very kind to me. If you call a dog

Hervey I shall love him.”

At {181}Hervey’s table Johnson sometimes enjoyed feasts which were made

more agreeable by contrast. But in general be dined, and thought that he

dined well, on sixpenny worth of meat, and a pennyworth of bread, at an

alehouse near Drury Lane.

The effect of the privations and sufferings which he endured at this

time was discernible to the last in his temper and his deportment. His

manners had never been courtly. They now became almost savage. Being

frequently under the necessity of wearing shabby coats and dirty shirts,

he became a confirmed sloven. Being often very hungry when he sat down

to his meals, he contracted a habit of eating with ravenous greediness.

Even to the end of his life, and even at the tables of the great, the

sight of food affected him as it affects wild beasts and birds of prey.

His taste in cookery, formed in subterranean ordinaries and ala mode

beefshops, was far from delicate. Whenever he was so fortunate as to

have near him a hare that had been kept too long, or a meat pie made

with rancid butter, he gorged himself with such violence that his veins

swelled, and the moisture broke out on his forehead. The affronts which

his poverty emboldened stupid and low-minded men to offer to him would

have broken a mean spirit into sycophancy, but made him rude even to

ferocity. Unhappily the insolence which, while it was defensive,

was pardonable, and in some sense respectable, accompanied him into

societies where he was treated with courtesy and kindness. He was

repeatedly provoked into striking those who had taken liberties with

him. All the sufferers, however, were wise enough to abstain from

talking about their beatings, except Osborne, the most rapacious and

brutal of booksellers, who proclaimed every where that he had been

{182}knocked down by the huge fellow whom he had hired to puff the

Harleian Library.

About, a year after Johnson had begun to reside in London, he was

fortunate enough to obtain regular employment from Cave, an enterprising

and intelligent bookseller, who was proprietor and editor of the

“Gentleman’s Magazine.” That journal, just entering on the ninth year

of its long existence, was the only periodical work in the kingdom which

then had what would now be called a large circulation. It was, indeed,

the chief source of parliamentary intelligence. It was not then safe,

even during a recess, to publish an account of the proceedings of either

House without some disguise. Cave, however, ventured to entertain his

readers with what he called “Reports of the Debates of the Senate of

Lilliput.” France was Blefuseu; London was Mildendo: pounds were sprugs:

the Duke of Newcastle was the Nardac secretary of State: Lord Hardwicke

was the Hurgo Hickrad: and William Pulteney was Wingul Pulnub. To write

the speeches, was, during several years, the business of Johnson. He was

generally furnished with notes, meagre indeed, and inaccurate, of what

had been said; but sometimes he had to find arguments and eloquence both

for the ministry and for the opposition. He was himself a Tory, not

from rational conviction--for his serious opinion was that one form of

government was just as good or as bad as another--but from mere passion,

such as inflamed the Capulets against the Montagues, or the Blues of

the Roman circus against the Greens. In his infancy he had heard so much

talk about the villanies of the Whigs, and the dangers of the Church,

that he had become a furious partisan when he could scarcely speak.

Before he was three he {183}had insisted on being taken to hear

Sacheverell preach at Lichfield Cathedral, and had listened to the

sermon with as much respect, and probably with as much intelligence, as

any Staffordshire squire in the congregation. The work which had been

begun in the nursery had been completed by the university. Oxford, when

Johnson resided there, was the most Jacobitical place in England;

and Pembroke was one of the most Jacobitical colleges in Oxford. The

prejudices which he brought up to London were scarcely less absurd than

those of his own Tom Tempest. Charles II. and James II. were two of the

best kings that ever reigned. Laud, a poor creature who never did, said,

or wrote anything indicating more than the ordinary capacity of an

old woman, was a prodigy of parts and learning over whose tomb Art and

Genius still continued to weep. Hampden deserved no more honourable name

than that of “the zealot of rebellion.” Even the ship money, condemned

not less decidedly by Falkland and Clarendon than by the bitterest

Roundheads, Johnson would not pronounce to have been an unconstitutional

impost. Under a government, the mildest that had ever been known in the

world--under a government which allowed to the people an unprecedented

liberty of speech and action--he fancied that he was a slave; he

assailed the ministry with obloquy which refuted itself, and regretted

the lost freedom and happiness of those golden days in which a writer

who had taken but one-tenth part of the license allowed to him would

have been pilloried, mangled with the shears, whipped at the cart’s

tail, and flung into a noisome dungeon to die. He hated dissenters and

stock-jobbers, the excise and the army, septennial parliaments, and

continental connections.

He {184}long had an aversion to the Scotch, an aversion of which he

could not remember the commencement, but which, he owned, had probably

originated in his abhorrence of the conduct of the nation during the

Great Rebellion. It is easy to guess in what manner debates on great

party questions were likely to be reported by a man whose judgment

was so much disordered by party spirit, A show of fairness was indeed

necessary to the prosperity of the Magazine. But Johnson long afterwards

owned that, though he had saved appearances, he had taken care that the

Whig dogs should not have the best of it; and, in fact, every passage

which has lived, every passage which bears the marks of his higher

faculties, is put into the mouth of some member of the opposition.

A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these obscure labours, he

published a work which at once placed him high among the writers of his

age. It is probable that what he had suffered during his first year in

London had often reminded him of some parts of that noble poem in which

Juvenal had described the misery and degradation of a needy man of

letters, lodged among the pigeons’ nests in the tottering garrets which

overhung the streets of Rome. Pope’s admirable imitations of Horace’s

Satires and Epistles had recently appeared, were in every hand, and were

by many readers thought superior to the originals. What Pope had done

for Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juvenal. The enterprise was bold,

and yet judicious. For between Johnson and Juvenal there was much in

common, much more certainly than between Pope and Horace.

Johnson’s London appeared without his name in May 1738. He received only

ten guineas for this stately {185}and vigorous poem: but the sale was

rapid, and the success complete. A second edition was required within a

week. Those small critics who are always desirous to lower established

reputations ran about proclaiming that the anonymous satirist was

superior to Pope in Pope’s own peculiar department of literature. It

ought to be remembered, to the honour of Pope, that he joined heartily

in the applause with which the appearance of a rival genius was

welcomed. He made inquiries about the author of London. Such a man, he

said, could not long be concealed. The name was soon discovered; and

Pope, with great kindness, exerted himself to obtain an academical

degree and the mastership of a grammar school for the poor young poet.

The attempt failed; and Johnson remained a bookseller’s hack.

It does not appear that these two men, the most eminent writer of the

generation which was going out, and the most eminent writer of the

generation which was coming in, ever saw each other. They lived in

very different circles, one surrounded by dukes and earls, the other by

starving pamphleteers and index-makers. Among Johnson’s associates at

this time may be mentioned Boyse, who, when his shirts were pledged,

scrawled Latin verses sitting up in bed with his arms through two holes

in his blanket; who composed very respectable sacred poetry when he

was sober; and who was at last run over by a hackney coach when he

was drunk: Hoole, surnamed the metaphysical tailor, who, instead of

attending to his measures, used to trace geometrical diagrams on the

board where he sate cross-legged: and the penitent impostor, George

Psalmanazar, who, after poring all day, in a humble lodging, on the

folios of Jewish rabbis {186}and Christian fathers, indulged himself at

night with literary and theological conversation at an alehouse in the

city. But the most remarkable of the persons with whom at this time

Johnson consorted was Richard Savage, an earl’s son, a shoemaker’s

apprentice, who had seen life in all its forms, who had feasted among

blue ribands in Saint James’s Square, and had lain with fifty pounds’

weight of irons on his legs in the condemned ward of Newgate. This man

had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last into abject and

hopeless poverty. His pen had failed him. His patrons had been taken

away by death, or estranged by the riotous profusion with which he

squandered their bounty, and the ungrateful insolence with which he

rejected their advice. He now lived by begging. He dined on venison and

champagne whenever he had been so fortunate as to borrow a guinea. If

his questing had been unsuccessful, he appeased the rage of hunger with

some scraps of broken meat, and lay down to rest under the Piazza of

Covent Garden in warm weather, and, in cold weather, as near as he could

get to the furnace of a glass house. Yet, in his misery, he was still

an agreeable companion. He had an inexhaustible store of anecdotes about

that gay and brilliant world from which he was now an outcast. He had

observed the great men of both parties in hours of careless relaxation,

had seen the leaders of opposition without the mask of patriotism, and

had heard the prime minister roar with laughter and tell stories not

over decent. During some months Savage lived in the closest familiarity

with Johnson; and then the friends parted, not without tears. Johnson

remained in London to drudge for Cave. Savage went to the West of

England, {187}lived there as he had lived everywhere, and, in 1748,

died, penniless and heart-broken, in Bristol gaol.

Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was strongly excited

about his extraordinary character, and his not less extraordinary

adventures, a life of him appeared widely different from the catchpenny

lives of eminent men which were then a staple article of manufacture in

Grub Street. The style was indeed deficient in ease and variety; and the

writer was evidently too partial to the Latin element of our language.

But the little work, with all its faults, was a masterpiece. No finer

specimen of literary biography existed in any language, living or dead;

and a discerning critic might have confidently predicted that the author

was destined to be the founder of a new school of English eloquence.

The Life of Savage was anonymous; but it was well known in literary

circles that Johnson was the writer. During the three years which

followed, he produced no important work; but he was not, and indeed

could not be, idle. The fame of his abilities and learning continued to

grow. Warburton pronounced him a man of parts and genius; and the praise

of Warburton was then no light thing. Such was Johnson’s reputation

that, in 1747, several eminent booksellers combined to employ him in the

arduous work of preparing a Dictionary of the English Language, in two

folio volumes. The sum which they agreed to pay him was only fifteen

hundred guineas; and out of this sum he had to pay several poor men of

letters who assisted him in the humbler parts of his task.

The prospectus of the Dictionary he addressed to the Earl of

Chesterfield. Chesterfield had long been celebrated {188}for the

politeness of his manners, the brilliancy of his wit, and the delicacy

of his taste. He was acknowledged to be the finest speaker in the House

of Lords. He had recently governed Ireland, at a momentous conjuncture,

with eminent firmness, wisdom, and humanity; and he had since became

Secretary of State. He received Johnson’s homage with the most winning

affability, and requited it with a few guineas, bestowed doubtless in

a very graceful manner, but was by no means desirous to see all his

carpets blackened with the London mud, and his soups and wines thrown to

right and left over the gowns of fine ladies and the waistcoats of fine

gentlemen, by an absent, awkward scholar, who gave strange starts and

uttered strange growls, who dressed like a scarecrow, and ate like a

cormorant. During some time Johnson continued to call on his patron,

but, after being repeatedly told by the porter that his lordship was

not at home, took the hint, and ceased to present himself at the

inhospitable door.

Johnson had flattered himself that he should have completed his

Dictionary by the end of 1750; but it was not till 1755 that he at

length gave his huge volumes to the world. During the seven years

which he passed in the drudgery of penning definitions and marking

quotations for transcription, he sought for relaxation in literary

labour of a more agreeable kind.

In 1749 he published the Vanity of Human Wishes, an excellent imitation

of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal.

It is in truth not easy to say whether the palm belongs to the ancient

or to the modern poet. The couplets in which the fall of Wolsey is

described, though lofty and sonorous, are feeble when compared with

the wonderful lines which bring before us all Rome in tumult on the day

{189}of the fall of Sejanus, the laurels on the doorposts, the white

bull stalking towards the Capitol, the statues rolling down from their

pedestals, the flatterers of the disgraced minister running to see

him dragged with a hook through the streets, and to have a kick at his

carcase before it is hurled into the Tiber. It must be owned too that in

the concluding passage the Christian moralist has not made the most of

his advantages, and has fallen decidedly short of the sublimity of

his Pagan model. On the other hand, Juvenal’s Hannibal must yield to

Johnson’s Charles: and Johnson’s vigorous and pathetic enumeration

of the miseries of a literary life must be allowed to be superior to

Juvenal’s lamentation over the fate of Demosthenes and Cicero.

For the copyright of the Vanity of Human Wishes Johnson received only

fifteen guineas.

A few days after the publication of this poem, his tragedy, begun many

years before, was brought on the stage. His pupil, David Garrick, had,

in 1741, made his appearance on a humble stage in Goodman’s Fields,

had at once risen to the first place among actors, and was now, after

several years of almost uninterrupted success, manager of Drury Lane

Theatre. The relation between him and his old preceptor was of a very

singular kind. They repelled each other strongly, and yet attracted

each other strongly. Nature had made them of very different clay; and

circumstances had fully brought out the natural peculiarities of both.

Sudden prosperity had turned Garrick’s head. Continued adversity had

soured Johnson’s temper. Johnson saw with more envy than became so great

a man the villa, the plate, the china, the Brussels carpet, which the

little mimic had got by repeating, with grimaces and gesticulations,

what wiser men had written; and the {190}exquisitely sensitive vanity of

Garrick was galled by the thought that, while all the rest of the world

was applauding him, he could obtain from one morose cynic, whose opinion

it was impossible to despise, scarcely any compliment not acidulated

with scorn. Yet the two Lichfield men had so many early recollections in

common, and sympathised with each other on so many points on which they

sympathised with nobody else in the vast population of the capital,

that, though the master was often provoked by the monkey-like

impertinence of the pupil, and the pupil by the bearish rudeness of the

master, they remained friends till they were parted by death. Garrick

now brought Irene out, with alterations sufficient to displease the

author, yet not sufficient to make the piece pleasing to the audience.

The public, however, listened with little emotion, but with much

civility, to five acts of monotonous declamation.

After nine representations the play was withdrawn. It is, indeed,

altogether unsuited to the stage, and, even when perused in the closet,

will be found hardly worthy of the author. He had not the slightest

notion of what blank verse should be. A change in the last syllable of

every other line would make the versification of the Vanity of Human

Wishes closely resemble the versification of Irene. The poet, however,

cleared, by his benefit nights, and by the sale of the copyright of his

tragedy, about three hundred pounds, then a great sum in his estimation.

About a year after the representation of Irene, he began to publish a

series of short essays on morals, manners, and literature. This species

of composition had been brought into fashion by the success of the

Tatler, and by the still more brilliant success of the Spectator. A

crowd of small writers had vainly attempted {191}to rival Addison.

The Lay Monastery, the Censor, the Freethinker, the Plain Dealer, the

Champion, and other works of the same kind, had had their short day.

None of them had obtained a permanent place in our literature; and they

are now to be found only in the libraries of the curious. At length

Johnson undertook the adventure in which so many aspirants had failed.

In the thirty-sixth year after the appearance of the last number of the

Spectator appeared the first number of the Rambler. From March 1750 to

March 1752, this paper continued to come out every Tuesday and Saturday.

From the first the Rambler was enthusiastically admired by a few eminent

men. Richardson, when only five numbers had appeared, pronounced it

equal, if not superior, to the Spectator. Young and Hartley expressed

their approbation not less warmly. Bubb Dodington, among whose many

faults indifference to the claims of genius and learning cannot be

reckoned, solicited the acquaintance of the writer. In consequence

probably of the good offices of Dodington, who was then the confidential

adviser of Prince Frederic, two of his Royal Highness’s gentlemen

carried a gracious message to the printing office, and ordered seven

copies for Leicester House. But these overtures seem to have been very

coldly received. Johnson had had enough of the patronage of the great to

last him all his life, and was not disposed to haunt any other door as

he had haunted the door of Chesterfield.

By the public the Rambler was at first very coldly received. Though the

price of a number was only twopence, the sale did not amount to five

hundred. The profits were therefore very small. But as soon as the

flying leaves were collected and reprinted they became {192}popular. The

author lived to see thirteen thousand copies spread over England alone.

Separate editions were published for the Scotch and Irish markets. A

large party pronounced the style perfect, so absolutely perfect that in

some essays it would be impossible for the writer himself to alter a

single word for the better. Another party, not less numerous, vehemently

accused him of having corrupted the purity of the English tongue. The

best critics admitted that his diction was too monotonous, too obviously

artificial, and now and then turgid even to absurdity. But they did

justice to the acuteness of his observations on morals and manners, to

the constant precision and frequent brilliancy of his language, to the

weighty and magnificent eloquence of many serious passages, and to

the solemn yet pleasing humour of some of the lighter papers. On the

question of precedence between Addison and Johnson, a question which,

seventy years ago, was much disputed, posterity has pronounced a

decision from which there is no appeal. Sir Roger, his chaplain and his

butler, Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb, the Vision of Mirza, the Journal

of the Retired Citizen, the Everlasting Club, the Dunmow Flitch, the

Loves of Hilpah and Slialum, the Visit to the Exchange, and the Visit

to the Abbey, are known to everybody. But many men and women, even of

highly cultivated minds, are unacquainted with Squire Bluster and Mrs.

Busy, Quisquilius and Venustulus, the Allegory of Wit and Learning, the

Chronicle of the Revolutions of a Garret, and the sad fate of Aningait

and Ajut.

The last Rambler was written in a sad and gloomy hour. Mrs. Johnson had

been given over by the physicians. Three days later she died. She left

her husband {193}almost broken-hearted. Many people had been surprised

to see a man of his genius and learning stooping to every drudgery, and

denying himself almost every comfort, for the purpose of supplying a

silly, affected old woman with superfluities, which she accepted with

but little gratitude. But all his affection had been concentrated on

her. He had neither brother nor sister, neither son nor daughter. To him

she was beautiful as the Gunnings, and witty as Lady Mary. Her opinion

of his writings was more important to him than the voice of the pit

of Drury Lane Theatre or the judgment of the Monthly Review. The chief

support which had sustained him through the most arduous labour of his

life was the hope that she would enjoy the fame and the profit which

he anticipated from his Dictionary. She was gone; and in that vast

labyrinth of streets, peopled by eight hundred thousand human beings, he

was alone. Yet it was necessary for him to set himself, as he expressed

it, doggedly to work. After three more laborious years, the Dictionary

was at length complete.

It had been generally supposed that this great work would be dedicated

to the eloquent and accomplished nobleman to whom the prospectus

had been addressed. He well knew the value of such a compliment; and

therefore, when the day of publication drew near, he exerted himself

to soothe, by a show of zealous and at the same time of delicate and

judicious kindness, the pride which he had so cruelly wounded. Since

the Ramblers had ceased to appear, the town had been entertained by a

journal called The World, to which many men of high rank and fashion

contributed. In two successive numbers of The World the Dictionary was,

to use the modern phrase, puffed with {194}wonderful skill. The writings

of Johnson were warmly praised. It was proposed that he should be

invested with the authority of a Dictator, nay, of a Pope, over our

language, and that his decisions about the meaning and the spelling of

words should be received as final. His two folios, it was said, would of

course be bought by everybody who could afford to buy them. It was

soon known that these papers were written by Chesterfield. But the just

resentment of Johnson was not to be so appeased. In a letter written

with singular energy and dignity of thought and language, he repelled

the tardy advances of his patron. The Dictionary came forth without

a dedication. In the preface the author truly declared that he owed

nothing to the great, and described the difficulties with which he had

been left to struggle so forcibly and pathetically that the ablest and

most malevolent of all the enemies of his fame, Horne Tooke, never could

read that passage without tears.

The public, on this occasion, did Johnson full justice, and something

more than justice. The best lexicographer may well be content if his

productions are received by the world with cold esteem. But Johnson’s

Dictionary was hailed with an enthusiasm such as no similar work has

ever excited. It was indeed the first dictionary which could be read

with pleasure. The definitions show so much acuteness of thought and

command of language, and the passages quoted from poets, divines and

philosophers are so skilfully selected, that a leisure hour may always

be very agreeably spent in turning over the pages. The faults of the

book resolve themselves, for the most part, into one great fault.

Johnson was a wretched etymologist. He knew little or nothing of any

Teutonic language {195}except English, which indeed, as he wrote it, was

scarcely a Teutonic language; and thus he was absolutely at the mercy of

Junius and Skinner.

The Dictionary, though it raised Johnson’s fame, added nothing to his

pecuniary means. The fifteen hundred guineas which the booksellers had

agreed to pay him had been advanced and spent before the last sheets

issued from the press. It is painful to relate that, twice in the course

of the year which followed the publication of this great work, he was

arrested and carried to spunging-houses, and that he was twice indebted

for his liberty to his excellent friend Richardson. It was still

necessary for the man who had been formally saluted by the highest

authority as Dictator of the English language to supply his wants by

constant toil. He abridged his Dictionary. He proposed to bring out

an edition of Shakspeare by subscription; and many subscribers sent in

their names, and laid down their money; but he soon found the task so

little to his taste that he turned to more attractive employments. He

contributed many papers to a new monthly journal, which was called the

Literary Magazine. Few of these papers have much interest; but among

them was the very best thing that he ever wrote, a masterpiece both of

reasoning and of satirical pleasantry, the review of Jenyns’s Inquiry

into The Nature and Origin of Evil.

In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of a series of essays,

entitled The Idler. During two years these essays continued to appear

weekly. They were eagerly read, widely circulated, and, indeed,

impudently pirated, while they were still in the original form, and had

a large sale when collected into volumes. The Idler may be described as

a second part of The {196}Rambler, somewhat livelier and somewhat weaker

than the first part.

While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his mother, who had

accomplished her ninetieth year, died at Lichfield. It was long since

he had seen her; but he had not failed to contribute largely, out of

his small means, to her comfort. In order to defray the charges of her

funeral, and to pay some debts which she had left, he wrote a little

book in a single week, and sent off the sheets to the press without

reading them over. A hundred pounds were paid him for the copyright; and

the purchasers had great cause to be pleased with their bargain; for the

book was Rasselas.

The success of Rasselas was great, though such ladies as Miss Lydia

Languish must have been grievously disappointed when they found that

the new volume from the circulating library was little more than a

dissertation on the author’s favourite theme, the Vanity of Human

Wishes; that the Prince of Abyssinia was without a mistress, and the

Princess without a lover; and that the story set the hero and the

heroine down exactly where it had taken them up. The style was the

subject of much eager controversy. The Monthly Review and the Critical

Review took different sides. Many readers pronounced tire writer a

pompous pedant, who would never use a word of two syllables where it was

possible to use a word of six, and who could not make a waiting woman

relate her adventures without balancing every noun with another noun,

and every epithet with another epithet. Another party, not less zealous,

cited with delight numerous passages in which weighty meaning was

expressed with accuracy and illustrated with splendour. And both the

censure and the praise were merited.

About {197}the plan of Rasselas little was said by the critics; and yet

the faults of the plan might seem to invite severe criticism. Johnson

has frequently blamed Shakspeare for neglecting the proprieties of

time and place, and for ascribing to one age or nation the manners and

opinions of another. Yet Shakspeare has not sinned in this way more

grievously than Johnson. Rasselas and Imlac, Nekayah and Pekuah, are

evidently meant to be Abyssinians of the eighteenth century: for the

Europe which Imlac describes is the Europe of the eighteenth century;

and the inmates of the Happy Valley talk familiarly of that law of

gravitation which Newton discovered, and which was not fully received

even at Cambridge till the eighteenth century. What a real company of

Abyssinians would have been may be learned from Bruce’s Travels. But

Johnson, not content with turning filthy savages, ignorant of their

letters, and gorged with raw steaks cut from living cows, into

philosophers as eloquent and enlightened as himself or his friend Burke,

and into ladies as highly accomplished as Mrs. Lennox or Mrs. Sheridan,

transferred the whole domestic system of England to Egypt. Into a land

of harems, a land of polygamy, a land where women are married without

ever being seen, he introduced the flirtations and jealousies of our

ball-rooms. In a land where there is boundless liberty of divorce,

wedlock is described as the indissoluble compact. “A youth and maiden

meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances,

reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of each other. Such,” says

Rasselas, “is the common process of marriage.” Such it may have been,

and may still be, in London, but assuredly not at Cairo. A writer who

was guilty of such improprieties had {198}little right to blame the

poet who made Hector quote Aristotle, and represented Julio Romano as

flourishing in the days of the oracle of Delphi.

By such exertions as have been described, Johnson supported himself till

the year 1762. In that year a great change in his circumstances took

place. He had from a child been an enemy of the reigning dynasty. His

Jacobite prejudices had been exhibited with little disguise both in

his works and in his conversation. Even in his massy and elaborate

Dictionary, he had, with a strange want of taste and judgment, inserted

bitter and contumelious reflections on the Whig party. The excise, which

was a favourite resource of Whig financiers, he had designated as

a hateful tax. He had railed against the commissioners of excise in

language so coarse that they had seriously thought of prosecuting him.

He had with difficulty been prevented from holding up the Lord Privy

Seal by name as an example of the meaning of the word “renegade.”’ A

pension he had defined as pay given to a state hireling to betray his

country; a pensioner as a slave of state hired by a stipend to obey a

master. It seemed un-likely that the author of these definitions would

himself be pensioned. But that was a time of wonders. George the

Third had ascended the throne; and had, in the course of a few months,

disgusted many of the old friends and conciliated many of the old

enemies of his house. The city was becoming mutinous. Oxford was

becoming loyal. Cavendishes and Bentincks were murmuring. Somersets and

Wyndhams were hastening to kiss hands. The head of the treasury was

now Lord Bute, who was a Tory, and could have no objection to Johnson’s

Toryism. Bute wished to be thought a patron of men of letters; and

Johnson was one of the {199}most eminent and one of the most needy men

of letters in Europe. A pension of three hundred a year was graciously

offered, and with very little hesitation accepted.

This event produced a change in Johnson’s whole way of life. For the

first time since his boyhood he no longer felt the daily goad urging him

to the daily toil. He was at liberty, after thirty years of anxiety and

drudgery, to indulge his constitutional indolence, to be in bed till

two in the afternoon, and to sit up talking till four in the morning,

without fearing either the printer’s devil or the sheriff’s officer.

One laborious task indeed he had bound himself to perform. He had

received large subscriptions for his promised edition of Shakspeare;

he had lived on those subscriptions during some years; and he could not

without disgrace omit to perform his part of the contract. His friends

repeatedly exhorted him to make an effort; and he repeatedly resolved

to do so. But, notwithstanding their exhortations and his resolutions,

month followed month, year followed year, and nothing was done. He

prayed fervently against his idleness; he determined, as often as he

received the sacrament, that he would no longer doze away and trifle

away his time; but the spell under which he lay resisted prayer

and sacrament. His private notes at this time are made up of

self-reproaches. “My indolence,” he wrote on Easter eve in 1764,

“has sunk into grosser sluggishness. A kind of strange oblivion has

overspread me, so that I know not what has become of the last year.”

Easter 1765 came, and found him still in the same state, “My time,” he

wrote, “has been unprofitably spent, and seems as a dream that has left

nothing behind. My memory grows confused, {200}and I know not how the

days pass over me.” Happily for his honour, the charm which held him

captive was at length broken by no gentle or friendly hand. He had been

weak enough to pay serious attention to a story about a ghost which

haunted a house in Cock Lane, and had actually gone himself, with

some of his friends, at one in the morning, to St. John’s Church,

Clerkenwell, in the hope of receiving a communication from the perturbed

spirit. But the spirit, though adjured with all solemnity, remained

obstinately silent; and it soon appeared that a naughty girl of eleven

had been amusing herself by making fools of so many philosophers.

Churchill, who, confident in his powers, drunk with popularity, and

burning with party spirit, was looking for some man of established fame

and Tory politics to insult, celebrated the Cock Lane Ghost in three

cantos, nicknamed Johnson Pomposo, asked where the book was which had

been so long promised and so liberally paid for, and directly accused

the great moralist of cheating. This terrible word proved effectual; and

in October 1765 appeared, after a delay of nine years, the new edition

of Shakspeare.

This publication saved Johnson’s character for honesty, but added

nothing to the fame of his abilities and learning. The preface, though

it contains some good passages, is not in his best manner. The most

valuable notes are those in which he had an opportunity of showing

how attentively he had during many years observed human life and human

nature. The best specimen is the note on the character of Polonius.

Nothing so good is to be found even in Wilhelm Meister’s admirable

examination of Hamlet. But here praise must end. It would be difficult

to name a more {201}slovenly, a more worthless, edition of any great

classic. The reader may turn over play after play without finding

one happy conjectural emendation, or one ingenious and satisfactory

explanation of a passage which had baffled preceding commentators.

Johnson had, in his Prospectus, told the world that he was peculiarly

fitted for the task which he had undertaken, because he had, as a

lexicographer, been under the necessity of taking a wider view of the

English language than any of his predecessors. That his knowledge of

our literature was extensive is indisputable. But, unfortunately, he had

altogether neglected that very part of our literature with which it is

especially desirable that an editor of Shakspeare should be conversant.

It is dangerous to assert a negative. Yet little will be risked by the

assertion, that in the two folio volumes of the English Dictionary there

is not a single passage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan

age, except Shakspeare and Ben. Even from Ben the quotations are few.

Johnson might easily, in a few months, have made himself well acquainted

with every old play that was extant. But it never seems to have occurred

to him that this was a necessary preparation for the work which he had

undertaken. He would doubtless have admitted that it would be the height

of absurdity in a man who was not familiar with the works of Æschylus

and Euripides to publish an edition of Sophocles. Yet he ventured to

publish an edition of Shakspeare, without having ever in his life,

as far as can be discovered, read a single scene of Massinger, Ford,

Decker, Webster, Marlow, Beaumont, or Fletcher. His detractors were

noisy and scurrilous. Those who most loved and honoured him had little

to say in praise of the manner in which he had {202}discharged the duty

of a commentator. He had, however, acquitted himself of a debt which had

long lain heavy on his conscience; and he sank back into the repose from

which the sting of satire had roused him. He long continued to

live upon the fame which he had already won. He was honoured by the

University of Oxford with a Doctor’s degree, by the Royal Academy with

a professorship, and by the King with an interview, in which his Majesty

most graciously expressed a hope that so excellent a writer would not

cease to write. In the interval, however, between 1765 and 1775 Johnson

published only two or three political tracts, the longest of which he

could have produced in forty-eight hours, if he had worked as he worked

on the Life of Savage and on Rasselas.

But, though his pen was now idle, his tongue was active. The influence

exercised by his conversation, directly upon those with whom he lived,

and indirectly on the whole literary world, was altogether without a

parallel. His colloquial talents were indeed of the highest order. He

had strong sense, quick discernment, wit, humour, immense knowledge of

literature and of life, and an infinite store of curious anecdotes.

As respected style, he spoke far better than he wrote Every sentence

which dropped from his lips was as correct in structure as the most

nicely balanced period of the Rambler. But in his talk there were no

pompous triads, and little more than a fair proportion of words in

_osity_ and _ation_. All was simplicity, ease, and vigour. He uttered

his short, weighty, and pointed sentences with a power of voice, and

a justness and energy of emphasis, of which the effect was rather

increased than diminished by the rollings of his huge form, and by the

asthmatic gaspings and puffings in which the peals {203}of his eloquence

generally ended. Nor did the laziness which made him unwilling to sit

down to his desk prevent him from giving instruction or entertainment

orally. To discuss questions of taste, of learning, of casuistry,

in language so exact and so forcible that it might have been printed

without the alteration of a word, was to him no exertion, but a

pleasure. He loved, as he said, to fold his legs and have his talk out.

He was ready to bestow the overflowings of his full mind on anybody who

would start a subject, on a fellow-passenger in a stage coach, or on the

person who sate at the same table with him in an eating house. But

his conversation was nowhere so brilliant and striking as when he was

surrounded by a few friends, whose abilities and knowledge enabled them,

as he once expressed it, to send him back every ball that he threw. Some

of these, in 1764, formed themselves into a club, which gradually

became a formidable power in the commonwealth of letters. The verdicts

pronounced by this conclave on new books were speedily known over all

London, and were sufficient to sell off a whole edition in a day, or

to condemn the sheets to the service of the trunk-maker and the

pastry-cook. Nor shall we think this strange when we consider what

great and various talents and acquirements met in the little fraternity.

Goldsmith was the representative of poetry and light literature,

Reynolds of the arts, Burke of political eloquence and political

philosophy. There, too, were Gibbon, the greatest historian, and Jones,

the greatest linguist, of the age. Garrick brought to the meetings his

inexhaustible pleasantry, his incomparable mimicry, and his consummate

knowledge of stage effect. Among the most constant attendants were

two high-born and high-bred gentlemen, closely bound together {204}by

friendship, but of widely different characters and habits; Bennet

Langton, distinguished by his skill in Greek literature, by the

orthodoxy of his opinions, and by the sanctity of his life; and Topham

Beauclerk, renowned for his amours, his knowledge of the gay world,

his fastidious taste, and his sarcastic wit. To predominate over such a

society was not easy. Yet even over such a society Johnson predominated.

Burke might indeed have disputed the supremacy to which others were

under the necessity of submitting. But Burke, though not generally a

very patient listener, was content to take the second part when Johnson

was present; and the club itself, consisting of so many eminent men, is

to this day popularly designated as Johnson’s Club.

Among the members of this celebrated body was one to whom it has owed

the greater part of its celebrity, yet who was regarded with little

respect by his brethren, and had not without difficulty obtained a seat

among them. This was James Boswell, a young Scotch lawyer, heir to an

honourable name and a fair estate. That he was a coxcomb, and a bore,

weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous, was obvious to all who were

acquainted with him. That he could not reason, that he had no wit,

no humour, no eloquence, is apparent from his writings. And yet his

writings are read beyond the Mississippi, and under the Southern Cross,

and are likely to be read as long as the English exists, either as

a living or as a dead language. Nature had made him a slave and an

idolater. His mind resembled those creepers which the botanists call

parasites, and which can subsist only by clinging round the stems and

imbibing the juices of stronger plants. He must have fastened himself on

somebody. He might {205}have fastened himself on Wilkes, and have

become the fiercest patriot in the Bill of Rights Society. He might

have fastened himself on Whitfield, and have become the loudest field

preacher among the Calvinistic Methodists. In a happy hour he fastened

himself on Johnson. The pair might seem ill matched. For Johnson had

early been prejudiced against Boswell’s country. To a man of Johnson’s

strong understanding and irritable temper, the silly egotism and

adulation of Boswell must have been as teasing as the constant buzz of

a fly. Johnson hated to be questioned; and Boswell was eternally

catechising him on all kinds of subjects, and sometimes propounded such

questions as “What would you do, sir, if you were locked up in a

tower with a baby?” Johnson was a water-drinker; and Boswell was a

wine-bibber, and indeed little better than a habitual sot. It was

impossible that there should be perfect harmony between two such

companions. Indeed, the great man was sometimes provoked into fits of

passion in which he said things which the small man, during a few hours,

seriously resented. Every quarrel, however, was soon made up. During

twenty years the disciple continued to worship the master: the master

continued to scold the disciple, to sneer at him, and to love him. The

two friends ordinarily resided at a great distance from each other.

Boswell practised in the Parliament House of Edinburgh, and could pay

only occasional visits to London. During those visits his chief business

was to watch Johnson, to discover all Johnson’s habits, to turn the

conversation to subjects about which Johnson was likely to say something

remarkable, and to fill quarto note books with minutes of what Johnson

had said. In this way were gathered the materials {206}out of which was

afterwards constructed the most interesting biographical work in the

world.

Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson formed a connection less

important indeed to his fame, but much more important to his happiness,

than his connection with Boswell. Henry Thrale, one of the most opulent

brewers in the kingdom, a man of sound and cultivated understanding,

rigid principles, and liberal spirit, was married to one of those

clever, kind-hearted, engaging, vain, pert young women, who are

perpetually doing or saying what is not exactly right, but who do or

say what they may, are always agreeable. In 1765 the Thrales became

acquainted with Johnson; and the acquaintance ripened last into

friendship. They were astonished and delighted by the brilliancy of

his conversation. They were flattered by finding that a man so widely

celebrated preferred their house to any other in London. Even the

peculiarities which seemed to unfit him for civilised society, his

gesticulations, his rollings, his puffings, his mutterings, the strange

way in which he put on his clothes, the ravenous eagerness with which

he devoured his dinner, his fits of melancholy, his fits of anger, his

frequent rudeness, his occasional ferocity, increased the interest which

his new associates took in him. For these things were the cruel marks

left behind by a life which had been one long conflict with disease and

with adversity. In a vulgar hack writer such oddities would have excited

only disgust. But in a man of genius, learning, and virtue their effect

was to add pity to admiration and esteem. Johnson soon had an apartment

at the brewery in Southwark, and a still more pleasant apartment at the

villa of his friends on Streatham Common. A large part of every year he

passed in those abodes, abodes {207}which must have seemed magnificent

and luxurious indeed, when compared with the dens in which he had

generally been lodged. But his chief pleasures were derived from what

the astronomer of his Abyssinian tale called “the endearing elegance of

female friendship.” Mrs. Thrale rallied him, soothed him, coaxed him,

and, if she sometimes provoked him by her flippancy, made ample amends

by listening to his reproofs with angelic sweetness of temper. When he

was diseased in body and in mind, she was the most tender of nurses.

No comfort that wealth could purchase, no contrivance that womanly

ingenuity, set to work by womanly compassion, could devise, was wanting

to his sick room. He requited her kindness by an affection pure as the

affection of a father, yet delicately tinged with a gallantry, which,

though awkward, must have been more flattering than the attentions of a

crowd of the fools who gloried in the names, now obsolete, of Buck and

Maccaroni. It should seem that a full half of Johnson’s life, during

about sixteen years, was passed under the roof of the Thrales. He

accompanied the family sometimes to Bath, and sometimes to Brighton,

once to Wales, and once to Paris. But he had at the same time a house in

one of the narrow and gloomy courts on the north of Fleet Street. In the

garrets was his library, a large and miscellaneous collection of books,

falling to pieces and begrimed with dust. On a lower floor he sometimes,

but very rarely, regaled a friend with a plain dinner, a veal pie, or

a leg of lamb and spinage, and a rice pudding. Nor was the dwelling

uninhabited during his long absences. It was the home of the most

extraordinary assemblage of inmates that ever was brought together. At

the head of the establishment Johnson {208}had placed an old lady

named Williams, whose chief recommendations were her blindness and her

poverty. But, in spite of her murmurs and reproaches, he gave an asylum

to another lady who was as poor as herself, Mrs. Desmoulins, whose

family he had known many years before in Staffordshire. Room was found

for the daughter of Mrs. Desmoulins, and for another destitute damsel,

who was generally addressed as Miss Carmichael, but whom her generous

host called Polly. An old quack doctor named Levett, who bled and dosed

coal-heavers and hackney coachmen, and received for fees crusts of

bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin, and sometimes a little copper,

completed this strange menagerie. All these poor creatures were at

constant war with each other, and with Johnson’s negro servant Frank.

Sometimes, indeed, they transferred their hostilities from the servant

to the master, complained that a better table was not kept for them, and

railed or maundered till their benefactor was glad to make his escape

to Streatham, or to the Mitre Tavern. And yet he, who was generally

the haughtiest and most irritable of mankind, who was but too prompt to

resent anything which looked like a slight on the part of a purse-proud

bookseller, or of a noble and powerful patron, bore patiently from

mendicants, who, but for his bounty, must have gone to the workhouse,

insults more provoking than those for which he had knocked down Osborne

and bidden defiance to Chesterfield. Year after year Mrs. Williams and

Mrs. Desmoulins, Polly and Levett, continued to torment him and to live

upon him.

The course of life which has been described was interrupted in Johnson’s

sixty-fourth year by an important event. He had early read an account of

the Hebrides, {209}and had been much interested by learning that there

was so near him a land peopled by a race which was still as rude and

simple as in the middle ages. A wish to become intimately acquainted

with a state of society so utterly unlike all that he had ever seen

frequently crossed his mind. But it is not probable that his curiosity

would have overcome his habitual sluggishness, and his love of the

smoke, the mud, and the cries of London, had not Boswell importuned him

to attempt the adventure, and offered to be his squire. At length, in

August 1773, Johnson crossed the Highland line, and plunged courageously

into what was then considered, by most Englishmen, as a dreary and

perilous wilderness. After wandering about two months through the Celtic

region, sometimes in rude boats which did not protect him from the rain,

and sometimes on small shaggy ponies which could hardly bear his weight,

he returned to his old haunts with a mind full of new images and new

theories. During the following year he employed himself in recording his

adventures. About the beginning of 1775, his Journey to the Hebrides was

published, and was, during some weeks, the chief subject of conversation

in all circles in which any attention was paid to literature. The

book is still read with pleasure. The narrative is entertaining; the

speculations, whether sound or unsound, are always ingenious; and

the style, though too stiff and pompous, is somewhat easier and more

graceful than that of his early writings. His prejudice against the

Scotch had at length become little more than matter of jest; and

whatever remained of the old feeling had been effectually removed by the

kind and respectful hospitality with which he had been received in every

part of Scotland. {210}It was, of course, not to be expected that an

Oxonian Tory should praise the Presbyterian polity and ritual, or that

an eye accustomed to the hedgerows and parks of England should not be

struck by the bareness of Berwickshire and East Lothian. But even

in censure Johnson’s tone is not unfriendly. The most enlightened

Scotchmen, with Lord Mansfield at their head, were well pleased. But

some foolish and ignorant Scotchmen were moved to anger by a little

unpalatable truth which was mingled with much eulogy, and assailed him

whom they chose to consider as the enemy of their country with libels

much more dishonourable to their country than anything that he had ever

said or written. They published paragraphs in the newspapers, articles

in the magazines, sixpenny pamphlets, five shilling books. One scribbler

abused Johnson for being blear-eved: another for being a pensioner;

a third informed the world that one of the Doctor’s uncles had been

convicted of felony in Scotland, and had found that there was in that

country one tree capable of supporting the weight of an Englishman.

Macpherson, whose Fingal had been proved in the Journey to be an

impudent forgery, threatened to take vengeance with a cane. The only

effect of this threat was that Johnson reiterated the charge of forgery

in the most contemptuous terms, and walked about, during some time, with

a cudgel, which, if the impostor had not been too wise to encounter it,

would assuredly have descended upon him, to borrow the sublime language

of his own epic poem, “like a hammer on the red son of the furnace.”

Of other assailants Johnson took no notice whatever. He had early

resolved never to be drawn into controversy; and he adhered to his

resolution with a steadfastness {211}which is the more extraordinary,

because he was, both intellectually and morally, of the stuff of which

controversialists are made. In conversation, he was a singularly eager,

acute, and pertinacious disputant. When at a loss for good reasons,

he had recourse to sophistry; and, when heated by altercation, he made

unsparing use of sarcasm and invective. But, when he took his pen in his

hand, his whole character seemed to be changed. A hundred bad writers

misrepresented him and reviled him; but not one of the hundred could

boast of having been thought by him worthy of a refutation, or even of

a retort. The Kenricks, Campbells, MacNicols, and Hendersons, did their

best to annoy him, in the hope that he would give them importance by

answering them. But the reader will in vain search his works for

any allusion to Kenrick or Campbell, to MacNicol or Henderson. One

Scotchman, bent on vindicating the fame of Scotch learning, defied him

to the combat in a detestable Latin hexameter.

“Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum.”

But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had learned, both from

his own observation and from literary history, in which he was deeply

read, that the place of books in the public estimation is fixed, not by

what is written about them, but by what is written in them; and that

an author whose works are likely to live is very unwise if he stoops

to wrangle with detractors whose works are certain to die. He always

maintained that fame was a shuttlecock which could be kept up only by

being beaten back, as well as beaten forward, and which would soon fall

if there were only one battledore. No saying was oftener in his mouth

than that, {212}fine apophthegm of Bentley, that no man was ever written

down but by himself.

Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of the Journey to the

Hebrides, Johnson did what none of his envious assailants could have

done, and to a certain extent succeeded in writing himself down. The

disputes between England and her American colonies had reached a point

at which no amicable adjustment was possible. Civil war was evidently

impending; and the ministers seem to have thought that the eloquence of

Johnson might, with advantage be employed to inflame the nation against

the opposition here, and against the rebels beyond the Atlantic. He

had already written two or three tracts in defence of the foreign and

domestic policy of the government; and those tracts, though hardly

worthy of him, were much superior to the crowd of pamphlets which lay on

the counters of Ahnon and Stockdale. But his Taxation No Tyranny was a

pitiable failure. The very title was a silly phrase, which can have been

recommended to his choice by nothing but a jingling alliteration which

he ought to have despised. The arguments were such as boys use in

debating societies. The pleasantry was as awkward as the gambols of a

hippopotamus. Even Boswell was forced to own that, in this unfortunate

piece, he could detect no trace of his master s powers. The general

opinion was that the strong faculties which had produced the Dictionary

and the Rambler were beginning to feel the effect of time and of

disease, and that the old man would best consult his credit by writing

no more.

But this was a great mistake. Johnson had failed, not because his mind

was less vigorous than when he wrote Rasselas in the evenings of a week,

but because he {213}had foolishly chosen, or suffered others to choose

for him, a subject such as he would at no time have been competent

to treat. He was in no sense a statesman. He never willingly read or

thought or talked about affairs of state. He loved biography, literary

history, the history of manners; but political history was positively

distasteful to him. The question at issue between the colonies and the

mother country was a question about which he had really nothing to say.

He failed, therefore, as the greatest men must fail when they attempt

to do that for which they are unfit; as Burke would have failed if Burke

had tried to write comedies like those of Sheridan; as Reynolds would

have failed if Reynolds had tried to paint landscapes like those

of Wilson. Happily, Johnson soon had an opportunity of proving most

signally that his failure was not to be ascribed to intellectual decay.

On Easter Eve 1777, some persons, deputed by a meeting which consisted

of forty of the first booksellers in London, called upon him. Though he

had some scruples about doing business at that season, he received his

visitors with much civility. They came to inform him that a new edition

of the English poets, from Cowley downwards, was in contemplation, and

to ask him to furnish short biographical prefaces. He readily undertook

the task, a task for which he was pre-eminently qualified. His knowledge

of the literary history of England since the Restoration was unrivalled.

That knowledge he had derived partly from books, and partly from sources

which had long been closed; from old Grub Street traditions; from the

talk of forgotten poetasters and pamphleteers who had long been lying in

parish vaults; from the recollections of such men as Gilbert Walmesley,

who had conversed with {214}the wits of Button; Cibber, who had

mutilated the plays of two generations of dramatists; Orrery, who had

been admitted to the society of Swift; and Savage, who had rendered

services of no very honourable kind to Pope. The biographer therefore

sate down to his task with a mind full of matter, he had at first

intended to give only a paragraph to every minor poet, and only four or

five pages to the greatest name. But the flood of anecdote and criticism

overflowed the narrow channel. The work, which was originally meant to

consist only of a few sheets, swelled into ten volumes, small volumes,

it is true, and not closely printed. The first four appeared in 1779,

the remaining six in 1781.

The Lives of the Poets, are, on the whole, the best of Johnson’s works.

The narratives are as entertaining as any novel. The remarks on life and

on human nature are eminently shrewd and profound. The criticisms are

often excellent, and, even when grossly and provokingly unjust, well

deserve to be studied. For, however erroneous they may be, they are

never silly. They are the judgments of a mind trammelled by prejudice

and deficient in sensibility, but vigorous and acute. They therefore

generally contain a portion of valuable truth which deserves to be

separated from the alloy; and, at the very worst, they mean something,

a praise to which much of what is called criticism in our time has no

pretensions.

Savage’s Life Johnson reprinted nearly as it had appeared in 1744.

Whoever, after reading that life, will turn to the other lives will be

struck by the difference of style. Since Johnson had been at ease in

his circumstances he had written little and had talked much. When,

therefore, he, after the lapse of years, resumed his {215}pen, the

mannerism which he had contracted while he was in the constant habit

of elaborate composition was less perceptible than formerly; and his

diction frequently had a colloquial ease which it had formerly wanted.

The improvement may be discerned by a skilful critic in the Journey to

the Hebrides, and in the Lives of the Poets is so obvious that it cannot

escape the notice of the most careless reader.

Among the lives the best are perhaps those of Cowley, Dryden, and Pope.

The very worst is, beyond all doubt, that of Gray.

This great work at once became popular. There was, indeed, much just

and much unjust censure: but even those who were loudest in blame were

attracted by the book in spite of themselves. Malone computed the gains

of the publishers at five or six thousand pounds. But the writer

was very poorly remunerated. Intending at first to write very

short prefaces, he had stipulated for only two hundred guineas. The

booksellers, when they saw how far his performance had surpassed his

promise, added only another hundred. Indeed, Johnson, though he did not

despise, or affect to despise, money, and though his strong sense

and long experience ought to have qualified him to protect his own

interests, seems to have been singularly unskilful and unlucky in his

literary bargains. He was generally reputed the first English writer of

his time. Yet several writers of his time sold their copyrights for sums

such as he never ventured to ask. To give a single instance, Robertson

received four thousand five hundred pounds for the History of Charles

V.; and it is no disrespect to the memory of Robertson to say that the

History of Charles V. is both a less valuable and a less amusing book

than the Lives of the Poets.

Johnson {216}was now in his seventy-second year. The infirmities of

age were coming last upon him. That inevitable event of which he never

thought without horror was brought near to him; and his whole life was

darkened by the shadow of death. He had often to pay the cruel price of

longevity. Every year he lost what could never be replaced. The strange

dependents to whom he had given shelter, and to whom, in spite of their

faults, he was strongly attached by habit, dropped off one by one;

and, in the silence of his home, he regretted even the noise of their

scolding matches. The kind and generous Thrale was no more; and it would

have been well if his wife had been laid beside him. But she survived to

be the laughing-stock of those who had envied her, and to draw from the

eyes of the old man who had loved her beyond anything in the world

tears far more bitter than he would have shed over her grave. With

some estimable and many agreeable qualities, she was not made to be

independent. The control of a mind more steadfast than her own was

necessary to her respectability. While she was restrained by her

husband, a man of sense and firmness, indulgent to her taste in trifles,

but always the undisputed master of his house, her worst offences had

been impertinent jokes, white lies, and short fits of pettishness ending

in sunny good humour. But he was gone; and she was left an opulent widow

of forty, with strong sensibility, volatile fancy, and slender judgment.

She soon fell in love with a music-master from Brescia, in whom nobody

but herself could discover anything to admire. Her pride, and perhaps

some better feelings, struggled hard against this degrading passion.

But the struggle irritated her nerves, soured her temper, and at length

endangered her health. {217}Conscious that her choice was one which

Johnson could not approve, she became desirous to escape from his

inspection. Her manner towards him changed. She was sometimes cold and

sometimes petulant. She did not conceal her joy when he left Streatham;

she never pressed him to return; and, if he came unbidden, she received

him in a manner which convinced him that he was no longer a welcome

guest. He took the very intelligible hints which she gave. He read, for

the last time, a chapter of the Greek Testament in the library which had

been formed by himself. In a solemn and tender prayer he commended the

house and its inmates to the Divine protection, and, with emotions which

choked his voice and convulsed his powerful frame, left for ever that

beloved home for the gloomy and desolate house behind Fleet Street,

where the few and evil days which still remained to him were to run out.

Here, in June 1788, he had a paralytic stroke, from which, however,

he recovered, and which does not appear to have at all impaired his

intellectual faculties. But other maladies came thick upon him. His

asthma tormented him day and night. Dropsical symptoms made their

appearance. While sinking under a Complication of diseases, he heard

that the woman whose friendship had been the chief happiness of sixteen

years of his life had married an Italian fiddler; that all London was

crying shame upon her; and that the newspapers and magazines were filled

with allusions to the Ephesian matron, and the two pictures in Hamlet.

He vehemently said that he would try to forget her existence. He never

uttered her name. Every memorial of her which met his eye he flung

into the fire. She meanwhile fled from the laughter and hisses of

her countrymen and countrywomen {218}to a land where she was unknown,

hastened across Mount Cenis, and learned, while passing a merry

Christmas of concerts and lemonade parties at Milan, that the great man

with whose name hers is inseparably associated had ceased to exist.

He had, in spite of much mental and bodily affliction, clung vehemently

to life. The feeling described in that fine but gloomy paper which

closes the series of his Idlers seemed to grow stronger in him as his

last hour drew near. He fancied that he should be able to draw his

breath more easily in a southern climate, and would probably have set

out for Rome and Naples, but for his fear of the expense of the journey.

That expense, indeed, he had the means of defraying; for he had laid

up about two thousand pounds, the fruit of labours which had made the

fortune of several publishers. But he was unwilling to break in upon

this hoard; and he seems to have wished even to keep its existence a

secret. Some of his friends hoped that the government might be induced

to increase his pension to six hundred pounds a year: but this hope was

disappointed; and he resolved to stand one English winter more. That

winter was his last. His legs grew weaker; his breath grew shorter; the

fatal water gathered fast, in spite of incisions which he, courageous

against pain, but timid against death, urged his surgeons to make deeper

and deeper. Though the tender care which had mitigated his sufferings

during months of sickness at Streatham was withdrawn, he was not left

desolate. The ablest physicians and surgeons attended him, and refused

to accept fees from him. Burke parted from him with deep emotion.

Windham sate much in the sick-room, arranged the pillows, and sent his

own servant to watch a night by the bed.

Frances {219}Burney, whom the old man had cherished with fatherly

kindness, stood weeping at the door; while Langton, whose piety

eminently qualified him to be an adviser and comforter at such a time,

received the last pressure of his friend’s hand within. When at length

the moment, dreaded through so many years, came close, the dark cloud

passed away from Johnson’s mind. His temper became unusually patient and

gentle; he ceased to think with terror of death, and of that which

lies beyond death; and he spoke much of the mercy of God, and of the

propitiation of Christ. In this serene frame of mind he died on the

13th of December, 1781. He was laid, a week later, in Westminster Abbey,

among the eminent men of whom he had been the historian,--Cowley and

Denham, Dryden and Congreve, Gay, Prior, and Addison.

Since his death the popularity of his works--the Lives of the Poets,

and, perhaps, the Vanity of Human Wishes, excepted--has greatly

diminished. His Dictionary has been altered by editors till it can

scarcely be called his. An allusion to his Rambler or his Idler is not

readily apprehended in literary circles. The fame even of Rasselas has

grown somewhat dim. But, though the celebrity of the writings may have

declined, the celebrity of the writer, strange to say, is as great as

ever. Boswell’s book has done for him more than the best of his own

books could do. The memory of other authors is kept alive by their

works. But the memory of Johnson keeps many of his works alive. The old

philosopher is still among us in the brown coat with the metal buttons

and the shirt which ought to be at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling

his head, drumming with his fingers, tearing his meat like a tiger, and

swallowing his tea in oceans. No human being who {220}has been more than

seventy years in the grave is so well known to us. And it is but just

to say that our intimate acquaintance with what he would himself have

called the aufractuosities of his intellect and of his temper serves

only to strengthen our conviction that he was both a great and a good

man.