CHAPTER XI

RESULTS

The London salon did not pass away without leaving behind it serious

criticisms by serious people who knew it well. Thus Wraxall, writing

of Mrs. Montagu’s later assemblies, asserts that the charm departed

with the death of Johnson, ‘who formed the nucleus round which all

the subordinate members revolved.’[403] Miss More, in reference to

the same subject, says: ‘The old little parties are not to be had in

the usual style of comfort. Everything is great and vast and late

and magnificent and dull.’[404] At a period much earlier than this,

Gibbon made an interesting comparison between French and English

society which is worthy of consideration in any attempt to judge the

London salon. Writing at Paris, in May 1763, he says: ‘Là [_i.e._

in London] on croit vous faire plaisir en vous recevant. Ici on

croit s’en faire à soi-même’;[405] and elsewhere, ‘In two months I

am acquainted with more (and more agreeable) people, than I knew in

London in two years. Indeed the way of life is quite different.

Much less play, more conversation, and instead of our immense routs,

agreeable societies where you know and are known by almost every body

you meet.’[406]

There may perhaps be something worth considering in the suggestion

that the Gallic temperament lends itself more readily than the Saxon

to the life and atmosphere of salons. I have already pointed out that

one characteristic of that life, by which, indeed, its vitality is

to be tested, is the peculiar nature of the friendships between the

hostess and her author-guest. In London such relations are found,

but they seem tame, cool, and unequal. Passion is unknown in them.

It is inevitable that the salon, if not the literature that springs

from it, should suffer from this lack; and this contention cannot

be dismissed by insisting that authors are better off without such

questionable friendships. For better or for worse, these made for the

production of literature, and one cannot think of the great Parisian

salons as existing without them.

But we must go farther. The great English authors in general not only

declined to form such intimate associations in the salons, but looked

on literary assemblies with something approaching contempt, if indeed

they paid any attention whatever to them. The attitude of Johnson is

hardly to be thought of as an exception to this statement. After his

death he was loudly claimed as a member of the innermost bluestocking

circle, and he was so considered by more than one contemporary. Miss

More, for example, in her _Bas Bleu_ described Johnson as generally

participating in the assemblies of the bluestockings. This assertion

might be quite misleading, if we did not have Boswell’s _Life_ to

correct the impression. The amount of time which Johnson spent in

such assemblies is almost negligible. One smiles to think what a

tornado would have burst from him, had it been hinted to him that his

literary activity was in any way vitalized by women. The attitude of

other authors is even clearer. Burke was admittedly a renegade from

the salons.[407] Goldsmith does not appear to have had dignity or

authority enough to interest the bluestockings very much. Sheridan,

who might easily have shone in salons, was pre-occupied with dramatic

and political affairs. Sterne, Walpole, and Gibbon knew the Parisian

salon too well to have any illusions about its London offspring.

Approaching the matter from the other side, it must be obvious that

the salon could not win great distinction from those persons who were

content to accept its favours and submit to its influence. Beattie

and Hannah More, the translator of Epictetus and the translator of

Sophocles, and even the author of the excellent _Cecilia_—these were

but feeble luminaries for an institution, which, if it is to win

recognition at all, must shine with a splendour that is piercing.

Even when all this has been taken into account, the real question

is still to ask. Why did not English authors more generally seek

the inspiration and assistance of this institution? The salon was

not without a certain power: it was generous; it had influence

with publishers and with booksellers; it could bring authors into

pleasant and profitable contact with one another. But despite all

this, the bluestockings never became, like their French models, true

disseminators of ideas; they were never the devotees of new and

daring philosophies and of radical transitions. They were always

on the side of law and order, and of a conservative tradition.

They stood for the classicism of English literature. Now no temper

could have been more unfortunate than this at the moment when the

bluestockings sought to exert their influence. The things which

they represented were already passing away, and with the things

that were coming to birth they felt no profound sympathy. They did,

it is true, show a certain interest in romanticism, and Mrs. Vesey

scandalized her sisters by getting interested in agnosticism; but the

true significance of these things they never guessed. None of them

glimpsed that dawn in which to be alive was bliss. They were apart

from the whole current of European literature. At the moment when

poets were hearkening to the voices of new gods, the bluestockings

were prolonging faint echoes of conservatism; at the moment when

poetry was deserting the metropolis and schools of literature were

shattering into individualism, they cast their influence on the side

of a yet closer centralization. English literature was about to find

its true exponents in two men who were about as far removed from

the influence of salons as can well be imagined, the shy recluse of

Olney, and the passionate poet of the Lowlands.

Thus the salon, judged by classical models, must be said to have

failed. It was born out of its due time. Had the position of woman

in the English literary world permitted it to flower fifty years

earlier, there might have been a different story to tell. As it

is, we must be content to study it as an interesting attempt to

domesticate a foreign institution and as a revelation of certain

significant features in English literary life. Conceived in its

strictest sense, it is difficult to claim for the salon more than

this.

But there is a freer sense in which the whole movement may be

conceived. We may turn our eyes from the bluestockings and their

somewhat tiresome assemblies to consider the broader manifestations

of the social instinct. The age which we are studying is unique in

English literature as having struck out or brought to perfection

types of literature which exist solely to record and celebrate the

social life. That body of work is perhaps its most significant,

and certainly its most characteristic, contribution to English

literature. It is no idle speculation that sees in it the working of

the same spirit which tried to express itself in the salon. Full

expression was reserved for this spirit in simpler forms of social

life, and out of these rose a body of literature worthy to represent

it. To this truer manifestation of the social spirit in letters we

now address our attention.

PART III

THE SOCIAL SPIRIT IN ENGLISH LETTERS

[Illustration: SAMUEL JOHNSON

From a photograph, preserved in the British Museum, of an undescribed

painting, formerly attributed to Gainsborough]

CHAPTER XII

JOHNSON AND THE ART OF CONVERSATION

Chapters like this usually begin with a lament. The age of

conversation, it is proper to begin, is gone, gone with the

harpsichord and the minuet and the long, leisurely evenings when the

bluestockings discussed literature and the theory of equality. The

rush of modern life, one continues, has killed conversation, even

as the penny post has killed the art of letter-writing. In all this

there is much false sentiment and false implication. It is foolish

to assume the existence of a time when talk was universally clever

and wise. There were dullards even in 1780. Cards and dancing, then

as now, were sought as a relief from thinking, and serious talkers

were not seldom voted a nuisance. No doubt they often were. The

bluestockings, as we have seen, sometimes bored even themselves. The

reputation of the age for conversation depended upon a few.

It is difficult to recover a sufficient body of this conversation

upon which to base an opinion. It is a much easier thing to read

about than to get at. Plenty of essays on conversation have been

preserved—no manual for young ladies was without one—but the talk

itself is not so easy to find. We have Chesterfield’s advice to his

son on how to shine in conversation, but the record of Chesterfield’s

own discourse is little better than a collection of puns and bits

of repartee, mere flotsam and jetsam. Cowper wrote a long and

rather dreary poem on colloquial happiness, but where is Cowper’s

conversation? Fielding, too, wrote an essay on the subject, but it

is a rather priggish affair (for Fielding), and the perusal of it

only fills us with regret that we must take this poor substitute for

the brilliant chatter that went on about the punch-bowl. The scraps

of talk casually embedded in works on other subjects, the anecdotes,

jests, and _bons mots_ have lost with time much of their flavour

and significance, and give us no adequate notion of the distinctive

opinions held by their authors, no grounds for large general

conclusions about them, and no conception of the general strain of

their talk. There is no steady light from these flashes of eloquence

and wit. At most they make us regret what we have lost. Thus there

is every reason to suppose that the conversation of Richard Brinsley

Sheridan was a model of brilliance; but the collection of his sayings

recorded by Moore is quite lacking in the grace of reality. These

good things are without a foil; they need arrangement; they are mere

ornaments adorning nothing, a little heap of unset gems.

To all this there is but one exception, the grand exception of

Boswell’s record of Johnson. Perhaps the chief distinction of

that record is that it gives us not only the high lights in the

conversation, not only its exciting moments, but its very _longueurs_

(as Horace Walpole objected), its ineptitude, its occasional

inconclusiveness. There is, therefore, something by which the wit

of it all is set off. It has the ring of vitality. It is to the

everlasting credit of Boswell that he let us see the worst of

Johnson’s talk, that, in the words of Hannah More, he ‘mitigated none

of his asperities,’ but gave us the heaviness as well as the wit and

the rudeness as well as the depth. We hear the voice of Johnson, not

a mere quotation of his words.

But in spite of the obvious faults of Johnson’s talk, it is difficult

to speak of it without a continuous and perhaps offensive use of

superlatives. Age could not wither Johnson. Instead of impairing

his memory, time enriched it. The pomposity of his written work

never impedes his quickness of wit in conversation. He was, to be

sure, fond of parading that pomposity of style for the amazement and

amusement of his hearers, and it is scarcely true to say that he used

one style in writing and another in talking. It would be nearer the

truth to say that, as he grew older, he tended to introduce more of

the ease of his talk into his written work. Sentence after sentence

from the _Lives of the Poets_ might be cited to show the almost

colloquial ease of his later manner, and significant parallels might

be drawn. Yet it is certain that conversation gave more scope to

that aptness of homely illustration which was his most entertaining

gift. Posterity is right in preferring Johnson’s conversation to

his writings, for while it lacks nothing in the stream of thought

and finish of style that distinguish his writings, it is distinctly

superior in mother wit.

In the heat of conversation Johnson had a stimulus which he never

felt in writing, the joy of personal contention. He admittedly

regarded conversation as a contest, and was frankly contemptuous of

the type of man who, like Addison or Goldsmith, was always at his

best when he was arguing alone. Of two men talking, Johnson asserted,

one must always rise superior to the other. For himself he had too

much pride to be contentedly submerged by the conversation of others.

Rather than be worsted, he would strike below the belt, or, in the

words of Boswell, ‘toss and gore several persons.’ He had a rough and

ready way of escaping from difficulties. When Mrs. Frances Brooke

requested him to look over her new tragedy, complaining that she

herself had no time to revise it, since she had ‘so many irons in

the fire,’ the sage replied, ‘Why, then, Madam, the best thing I can

advise you to do is to put your tragedy along with your irons.’ ‘If

your company does not drive a man out of his house, nothing will,’

he said to Boswell because the Scotsman had ventured to defend the

Americans. When he got the floor—and by the use of such methods

he got it very often—he was not inclined to abandon it, and the

conversation became a monologue. Goldsmith, who so often had the

right in dispute and was, indeed, one of the wittiest opponents

Johnson ever had, complained that he was ‘for making a monarchy of

what should be a republic.’ Even Boswell admitted that in Johnson’s

company men did not so much interchange conversation as listen to

what was said. But, whatever lofty notions of conversation we may

cherish, it may be questioned whether it can ever be a republic. If

the flow of talk is to get anywhere, if it is to reach a conclusion,

it must be confined within a rather narrow channel or it is certain

to dissipate itself. Johnson hated spattering talk. He censured

Goldsmith because he was always ‘coming on without knowing how he was

to get off,’ and asserted that he could not talk well because he had

made up his mind about nothing. ‘Goldsmith,’ said he, ‘had no settled

notions upon any subject; so he talked always at random.’ It was not

so with Johnson. He saw his conclusions and drove straight towards

them, scattering his opponents or knocking them on the head if they

impeded him.

But it would be a mistake to infer that Johnson was a sort of

conversational head-hunter, or the ourang-outang of the drawing-room

whom Macaulay depicts, alternately howling and growling and rending

his associates in pieces before our eyes. If we have any respect for

the consistent testimony of his contemporaries, we shall come to

realize that he talked somewhat unwillingly. He had to be drawn out.

‘He was like the ghosts,’ said Tyers. Nothing annoyed him more than

to be shown off. At the famous Wilkes dinner, to which he had been

taken simply that he might contend with a worthy opponent, he was so

angry when he realized what had happened that he took up a book, ‘sat

down upon a window seat and read, or at least kept his eye upon it

intently for some time,’ exactly as upon the very different occasion

of his first meeting with Fanny Burney.

Because of this lack of pliability in Johnson, Boswell deserves far

more credit than he has ever received for his success in making him

talk. Boswell, though not a profound thinker, was of a mind curious

and alert. He is entirely misjudged by those readers—if, indeed, they

are ever readers—who join Macaulay in thinking him a fool. Boswell

said foolish things, to be sure, and asked the foolishest questions,

as what proportion of their wages housemaids might properly spend on

their attire, how hogs were slaughtered in the Tahiti Islands, and

what Dr. Johnson would do if he were shut up in a tower alone with a

new-born baby; but under the silliest of them there is always a keen

experimentalist, an amused observer tickling a giant with a straw.

Boswell introduced a valuable amount of friction into Johnson’s life,

arranged that he should meet men whose views were wholly opposed

to his own, carried him off to dine with Whigs, got him to call on

Lord Monboddo (who held the most offensive opinions about primitive

man), introduced him to General Paoli, and to Beattie and Sir Adam

Fergusson (of the infamous race of Scots), and dragged him across all

Scotland to Mull and Icomkill. No one else so mastered the art of

managing Johnson as this same wily Scot. Mrs. Thrale could not do it.

Neither Goldsmith nor Dr. Taylor could do it. Topham Beauclerk might

perhaps have done it, had he thought it worth while. Fanny Burney

had the subtle combination of grace and ability which appealed to

Johnson, but was lacking in force. When she attempted to show Johnson

to her ‘Daddy Crisp,’ or to engage him in conversation with Mr. and

Mrs. Greville, her failure was conspicuous. The great man’s placid

self-absorption gave a deeper offence than any tirade could have done.

Johnson had at times so serene a manner that, in an affable moment,

he declared to Boswell that ‘that is the happiest conversation where

there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange

of sentiments.’ Such is the general strain of his conversation

at Streatham, as recorded by Miss Burney.[408] Here we detect a

playfulness, even a frivolity, of manner which is a pleasant contrast

to the more professional tone with which Boswell has familiarized

us. There is in it no hint of dress parade. It is a very human

conversation, containing most of the faults that disgrace our own.

Johnson gossips. He talks of the weather; he talks of his friends

behind their back—what true comrade ever failed to do that?—and will

even indulge in a bit of scandal. He talks of Sheridan’s marriage

with the beautiful prima donna, Elizabeth Linley, and of Goldsmith’s

fracas with his Welsh publisher, Evans; and censures or defends

Garrick or Foote as the mood impels. There are even moments when

he emulates Goldsmith and makes himself a laughing-stock for the

delectation of his friends.

‘Our roasting,’ he once remarked, when describing the state of his

kitchen, ‘is not magnificent, for we have no jack.... Small joints,

I believe, they manage with a string, and larger are done at the

tavern. I have some thoughts (with profound gravity) of buying a

jack, because I think a jack is some credit to a house’

‘Well,’ remarked Mr. Thrale, ‘but you’ll have a spit, too?’

‘No, sir, no; that would be superfluous; for we shall never use it;

and if a jack is seen, a spit will be presumed!’

This feature of the Johnsonian manner, which might almost be compared

with Goldsmith’s fondness for the rôle of fool, has been generally

overlooked. One may doubt whether even Boswell was more than dimly

aware of it. Yet there can be little doubt that Johnson enjoyed

assuming and playing a part. He was certainly not a bear, but he

enjoyed playing the bear, and hugged his victims to death that the

world might laugh. It was his peculiar misfortune to play the rôle

too well, as it was Goldsmith’s misfortune to play the fool too

well. Again, Johnson was assuredly not at heart a pompous man;

yet he could in a moment assume pomposity and drop into the rôle

of Gargantua. But he sometimes created such consternation in the

part that the world did not dare to laugh. Thus, in the trite old

illustration of his remark about Buckingham’s _Rehearsal_, he revised

the crisp sentence, ‘It has not wit enough to keep it sweet,’ into

the crazy pomposity of, ‘It has not vitality enough to preserve it

from putrefaction.’ It is amazing that Macaulay and the world of

readers after him could delude themselves into thinking that Johnson

was seriously attempting to improve this sentence. It was, on the

contrary, a pose worthy of Laurence Sterne. It was a favourite device

of a true humourist putting forth a caricature of himself. Instances

of it could be multiplied indefinitely. Remarking on the morality

of the _Beggars’ Opera_, for example, he said, ‘It may have some

influence for evil by making the character of a rogue familiar, and

in some degree pleasing’; then with the familiar shift of style,

‘There is in it such a _labefactation_ of all principles as to be

injurious to morality.’ Gibbon and Cambridge, who were present, could

regard this stylistic somersault as an attempt at critical dignity,

and even Boswell felt that he must smother his mirth. Fanny Burney,

had she been there, would, I imagine, have smiled confidently in

Johnson’s face, for she appreciated this aspect of his talk better

than others. It is to her that we owe Johnson’s delicious criticism

of his pensioners, and, in particular of the mysterious Miss Poll

Carmichael: ‘I could make nothing of her; she was wiggle-waggle, and

I could never persuade her to be categorical.’

But however dull the eighteenth century may have been in apprehending

this type of humour, it did full justice to the more serious side

of Johnson’s conversation. It was chiefly impressed, as every age

must be, with the scope and versatility of the man’s mind. It is of

course the merest platitude to remark that Johnson’s conversation is

characterized by breadth of interest and accuracy of information;

yet, like many platitudes, it is essential to an examination of

the subject. It is most significant of the man and of the age in

which he lived—so far removed from the narrowness of our own age

of specialization—simply to turn the pages of Boswell’s _Life_ and

note the number of topics upon which Johnson talked with that easy

mastery which distinguishes the scholar and philosopher from the

promiscuously well-informed man of the world. Take, for example,

the topics touched upon in a dozen consecutive pages of the book,

chosen at random; evidence for supernatural appearances, the Roman

Church, the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England, the Royal

Marriage Bill, the respect due to old families, the art of mimicry,

the word _civilisation_ (‘shop’ was evidently not an excluded topic),

vitriol, the question, Was there one original language? the relation

of Erse to Irish, the rights of schoolmasters, in the infliction of

punishment, the Lord Chancellors, the Scotch accent, the future

state of the soul, prayers for the dead, the poet Gray, Akenside,

Elwal the heretic, the question, Is marriage natural to man? (it

seems that it is not), the philosophy of beauty, swearing, the

philosophy of biography, the proper use of riches, the philosophy

of philanthropy. Here surely is a sufficiently varied list. But no

mere enumeration can give any notion of the novelty of Johnson’s

thinking. His remarks are no echo, no quotation. They are the

natural up-welling of an original mind, showing us that Johnson was

a philosopher; but they also reveal a fund of accurate detail and an

ability to quote chapter and verse, showing us that Johnson was a

scholar. These two offices may be quickly illustrated from the topics

enumerated above. When Boswell introduced the subject of the future

state of the soul, he made the highly conventional observation that

‘one of the most pleasing thoughts is that we shall see our friends

again.’ Whereupon Johnson replied:

Yes, Sir; but you must consider, that when we are become purely

rational, many of our friendships will be cut off. Many friendships

are formed by a community of sensual pleasures: all these will

be cut off. We form many friendships with bad men, because they

have agreeable qualities, and they can be useful to us; but, after

death, they can no longer be of use to us. We form many friendships

by mistake, imagining people to be different from what they

really are. After death, we shall see every one in a true light.

Then, Sir, they talk of our meeting our relations: but then all

relationship is dissolved; and we shall have no regard for one

person more than another, but for their real value. However, we

shall either have the satisfaction of meeting our friends, or be

satisfied without meeting them.

There is Johnson the philosopher. Five minutes later, Boswell was

saying, ‘I have been told that in the Liturgy of the Episcopal Church

of Scotland, there was a form of prayer for the dead,’ to which

Johnson replied, ‘Sir, it is not in the liturgy which Laud framed for

the Episcopal Church of Scotland; if there is a liturgy older than

that, I should be glad to see it.’ There is Johnson the scholar.

It would be rash to assert that Johnson was always on safe ground,

and ludicrous to assert that he was always right. He enjoyed a random

shot at the truth as well as any other man whose chief interest is

in the vitality of his thinking rather than in the literalness of

his conclusions; but it was a diversion which he seldom permitted to

others, and a tendency in himself which was generally restrained by

the specialists about him. Here we have a truly formative element in

the social life of the time.

But no man of the eighteenth century could hold his hearers simply by

the display of a wealth of information. Brilliancy of manner was as

indispensable as breadth of mind. ‘Weight without lustre is lead,’

wrote Lord Chesterfield. No good talker was without a superficial

attraction. Garrick was noted for the histrionic quality, Beauclerk

for acidity, and Goldsmith for Irish humour. Johnson’s conversation,

from the inner fire of it, was for ever sparkling into wit and

epigram. Yet he never made the mistake of serving his friends with

nothing but epigrams, which is very like serving one’s guests with

nothing but _hors d’œuvres_. Epigram stimulates the appetite, but

does not satisfy it, and will not do for a steady diet. It is with

Johnson, however, something more than a mannerism. It was the form

that lent itself best to the expression of his critical faculty.

An examination of Johnson’s literary criticism will reveal the

fact that his method is prevailingly sententious and summary. He

was impatient of a long and slow development of thought, nor did

he ‘wind into’ a subject, like Burke. In reading the _Lives of the

Poets_, we do not feel that matters are gradually illuminated, but

that they are revealed by sudden flashes. If his criticism offends,

it is usually because it is a final pronouncement and is too summary

to be adequate. When he attempts an orderly criticism of details,

the method, though more elaborate, is usually less satisfying. He

is at his best when he is most crisp and dogmatic: ‘If Pope be not

a poet, where is poetry to be found?’ ‘Dryden is read with frequent

astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight.’ ‘His page,’ he says

of Addison, ‘is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected

splendour.’ The value of Johnson’s criticism consists in such

sentences as these, not in longer passages of sustained comment like

the analysis of Gray’s _Bard_.

Now whatever charm or power there is in such a method is found also

in Johnson’s conversation. There is the same pointed style, the same

finality of tone, and often the same irritating quality: ‘No man,’

said he of Goldsmith, ‘was more foolish when he had not a pen in

his hand, or more wise when he had.’ ‘That man [Lyttelton] sat down

to write a book to tell the world what the world had all his life

been telling him.’ ‘All theory is against the freedom of the will;

all experience for it.’ ‘In republics there is not a respect for

authority, but a fear of power.’ Many profess to dislike such an

epigrammatic style as this; but I incline to think that those who

protest most loudly against such _dicta_ are those who are least

capable of thinking them out. At any rate, if they accomplished no

more, such statements gave something to attack, and the desire to

demolish is of the very soul of conversation.

Those who are offended by such a conversational method might attack

it more effectively by pointing out that it was often employed to

startle rather than to instruct. Johnson felt the normal human

desire to shock people, and indulged to the full his transitory

moods. ‘Rousseau,’ he would exclaim, ‘is a very bad man. I should

like to have him work in the plantations!’ ‘I am willing to love

all mankind, _except an American_.’ In a fit of petulance he even

quoted with approval the ridiculous remark, ‘For anything I can see,

foreigners are fools.’ There is no deliberation in such words; it is,

in truth, hardly fair to quote them. At any rate, they are entirely

misleading when taken out of their setting; for it is the charm of

conversation that it is not deliberate, and that a talker may dare

to have a prejudice as well as an opinion. A good talker will ‘paint

a man highly’ for the mere love of painting. Voltaire and all free

talkers with him are guilty of the same excesses. Madame Necker tells

us that in listening to Voltaire it was necessary to distinguish

the statements that were truly characteristic of the man from those

which were dictated by the passing mood and were no more than the

_vérité du moment_. It is the peculiar office of conversation thus

to give the whole man, with all his faults upon his head, all his

lapses from sense and self-consciousness, all his irrationalities

and inconsistencies: it is these things that show that he is human.

It was Johnson himself who remarked that in conversation ‘you never

get a system.’ Let us be grateful that it is so. A ‘unified’ person,

a man whose mind is governed by a system, cannot converse; he can

only lecture. His thoughts flow like a canal, not like a river. He is

really the most limited of men, for he must live within his system as

he lives within his income. It is the glory of Johnson’s conversation

that you cannot make a system out of it. For a system you must go to

the _Rambler_ or _The Vanity of Human Wishes_.

But this is not to say that Johnson had no conversational principles

or that he uttered thoughts merely because they were novel. His

‘stream of mind’—to use one of his own phrases—was free, but it was

not therefore without a very definite trend. Like a stream again, he

drew constantly upon his sources, certain general conclusions about

life, which really control his conversation. He himself declared that

general principles were not to be had from a man’s talk, but from

books. Certainly this dictum does not apply to his own talk, for

general principles are obvious enough in it. It is quite evident that

we are listening to a man who has made up his mind about life and

about what is worth while. If, unlike Goldsmith, he talked well in

public, it was because, like Imlac, he had thought well in private.

It is his constant custom to bring the casual topic immediately into

the realm of general principles, and thus the talk about a particular

subject becomes a philosophy of it. Boswell realized this, and

introduced topic after topic in order to get it cleared up once for

all. ‘I _wished to have it settled_,’ he says, ‘whether duelling was

contrary to the laws of Christianity.’ He always felt that Johnson

could have settled the whole matter of necessity and freewill, if

only he had been willing to talk about it. Of a lady talking with

Johnson of the resurrection body, he naïvely remarks, ‘She seemed

desirous of knowing more, but he left the question in obscurity.’

Such is his confidence in his master’s method.

It is always profitable to delve through Johnson’s talk to the

philosophy that underlies it; but not unfrequently he spares us the

trouble by enunciating the principle himself. Thus when the subject

of gaming arose, he pronounced as follows:

Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an

unsocial man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring

property without producing any intermediate good. Trade gives

employment to numbers, and so produces intermediate good.

Whether this doctrine be economically sound I do not know; but it is

plainly a _doctrine_. He delighted in such formulation of principles.

Thus when Hume’s statement that all who are happy are equally happy

was quoted to him, he replied with a definition of happiness:

Sir, that all who are happy are equally happy is not true. A

peasant and a philosopher may be equally _satisfied_, but not

equally _happy_. Happiness consists in a multiplicity of agreeable

consciousness. A peasant has not capacity for having equal

happiness with a philosopher.

In like manner, he deduced principles of æsthetics from a teacup, and

demolished the theory of equality by inviting the footman to sit down

and dine.

But Johnson’s conversation is more than a _reductio ad principia_,

as it is more than epigram and more than information. Philosophic

in method, it was creative in effect. It fertilized other minds,

and attained to new life long after it was uttered and forgotten.

Johnson cannot be measured by one who reads only his writings, but

he can be measured by one who reads only his conversation. Thus his

work is linked with that of men who have accomplished more by the

spoken word than by the written thought, so that, on the one hand,

it has its place in the history of table-talk, like that of Selden

and Coleridge, and, on the other, typifies the relation of society

and letters at its best. By the dynamic force of his conversation

Johnson developed men, he woke in them powers of which they did not

know themselves to be possessed, and raised them to higher levels

of attainment than his own. Men listened to him with rage or with

wonder, as the Hebrews to a prophet and the Romans to a Sibyl, and

they scoffed or recorded according to their mood. Of much of this

Johnson was, fortunately, unconscious. He regarded his books as his

chief influence upon the world. ‘Now, Sir,’ said he, ‘the good I can

do by my conversation bears the same relation to the good I can do

by my writings that the practice of a physician retired to a small

country town, does to his practice in a great city.’ But Boswell

saw more clearly. ‘To me,’ he said, ‘his conversation seemed more

remarkable than even his writings.’ When, in 1776, Boswell returned

to Johnson’s side, he felt at once the electric force. ‘I felt myself

elevated as if brought into another state of being,’ he wrote; and

said to Mrs. Thrale, ‘I am quite restored by him, by transfusion

of _mind_.’ The cynical will of course dismiss this as a spasm of

hero-worship; but it is more than that. No one will be inclined to

accuse Edmund Burke of worshipping Johnson, yet he remarked: ‘To the

conversation of this truly great man I am proud to acknowledge that

I owe the best part of my education.’ Orme the historian remarked

that in conversation Johnson gave one either ‘new thoughts or a

new colouring.’ Testimony of an even more striking character may

be quoted from Reynolds. Speaking of his own _Discourses on Art_,

Reynolds said:

Whatever merit they have must be imputed, in a great measure, to

the education which I may be said to have had under Dr. Johnson. I

do not mean to say, though it would certainly be to the credit of

these Discourses if I could say it with truth, that he contributed

even a single sentiment to them: but he qualified my mind to think

justly.... The observations which he made on poetry, on life, and

on everything about us, I applied to our art.

Those who heard the conversation of Johnson may be said to have

witnessed literature in the making. At any rate, Johnson’s talk

became literature by the simple fact of being recorded. It is the

best example that can be given of the fusion of the literary life

with the social, and brought to bear the same kind of influence

which the salons were trying to exert. It was destined to give

Johnson his distinctive place in the literature. It was regarded, and

properly, by Boswell as constituting the peculiar value of his _Life

of Johnson_, and as it was the chief inspiration, so it remains the

chief attraction of that remarkable book.

CHAPTER XIII

WALPOLE AND THE ART OF FAMILIAR CORRESPONDENCE

The golden age of English letter-writing arrived without a period

of long and painful preparation. With the more rudimentary

correspondence of the seventeenth century, the new art had but the

slightest relations, appearing in full bloom almost as soon as it

appeared at all. There was of course much in England to encourage

it. It is significant, for example, that the era of letter-writing

was coincident with the production of large numbers of novels in

letter-form, which made the art the vehicle of a new realism, and

thus helped to spread the popularity of both types at once. Again,

the era was also that of the development of the salons and of the art

of conversation, a coincidence which is duplicated in the literary

history of France.[409] Letter-writing, considered as a familiar

art—and we have no concern with its other aspects—is but written

conversation, a sort of _tête-à-tête_, with the talking, for the

moment, all one side. It is dominated by a smiling intimacy, and it

is this note which one feels to be a new thing in the correspondence

of the eighteenth century, a note which is heard but seldom in the

letters of an earlier period. The models of the new style were, in

fact, not English. When Chesterfield was choosing exemplars for his

son, he took no account of English letter-writers; he cites Cicero

and Cardinal d’Ossat as models for serious correspondence, and then

adds: ‘For gay and amusing letters, for _enjouement_ and _badinage_,

there are none that equal Comte Bussy’s and Madame Sévigné’s. They

are so natural that they seem to be the extempore conversation of two

people of wit rather than letters. I would advise you to let that

book be one of your itinerant library.’[410] The regard for Madame

de Sévigné was well-nigh universal. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who

probably found her too womanly, is almost alone in her dislike.

Thomas Gray has been said to imitate her.[411] Fanny Burney, who had

read her from the days of her youth, considered her ‘almost all that

can be wished to form female perfection,’ felt attached to her as

though she were alive and in the same room, and longed to run into

her arms.[412] Mrs. Boscawen created an almost national sensation

by circulating a rumour of the discovery in France of five hundred

new letters of Madame de Sévigné. All the blues were in a flutter

over it. Mrs. Montagu wrote to Hannah More that the truth of the

matter would be evident at once upon publication, since Madame de

Sévigné’s style was ‘of all things the most inimitable.’[413] Miss

More yielded to none in her admiration, and in one of her happiest

phrases compares her to a ‘master sketching for his own amusement.’

But all this admiration is as nothing compared with the worship which

Walpole gave the French writer. ‘My dear Madame de Sévigné,’ he calls

her, ‘that divine woman,’ ‘my saint,’ and ‘Notre Dame de Livry.’

He collected relics of her with a fervour fairly religious, and

enshrined them under her portrait. The cult became a jest among his

friends. Madame du Deffand sent him a snuff-box, with the likeness

of Madame de Sévigné painted upon it, and wrote a letter as from the

lady herself to accompany the gift:

Des champs Elisées.

(Point de succession de tems; point de date.)

Je connois votre folle passion pour moi; votre enthousiasme pour

mes lettres, votre vénération pour les lieux que j’ai habités: J’ai

appris le culte que vous m’y avez rendu: j’en suis si pénétrée que

j’ai sollicité et obtenu la permission de mes Souverains de vous

venir trouver pour ne vous quitter jamais. J’abandonne sans regret

ces lieux fortunés; je vous préfère à tous ses habitans: jouissez

du plaisir de me voir; ne vous plaignez point que ce ne soit

qu’en peinture; c’est la seule existence que puissent avoir les

ombres....[414]

When people bored Walpole with talk of Shakespeare and Swift, he

would set his thoughts upon Madame de Sévigné[415] as a monk takes

refuge in holy meditation. ‘If she could have talked nonsense,’

he cries, ‘I should, like any other bigot, believe she was

inspired.’[416]

Worshipping her thus, it is not surprising that he should have been,

even in his own day, compared to her.[417] He affected to regard

such praise as blasphemy; but, though he was in all probability

secretly pleased, he was too great an artist in his own way not to

realize that there was a difference between him and the goddess

of his idolatry. It is typical of this difference that one thinks

instinctively of Walpole as the ‘prince of letter-writers’ and of

Madame de Sévigné as a friend. Walpole was too strongly individualist

to be quite the ‘perfect medium’ that we find in the marquise. We

are conscious of his cleverness, his prejudices, his distortions,

his rank and snobbishness. We think of Walpole as often as we think

of Walpole’s news. His art is not, however, the less perfect, but

only different in method. He does not, like Madame de Sévigné, simply

transmit the light, but stains and fractures it so that it glows with

a confusion of colours and flashing rays. Walpole could never have

attained to the pearl-like perfection of Madame de Sévigné. If we

must needs deal in parallels, we shall find a much closer one between

Madame de Sévigné and William Cowper. The recluse of Olney, like

the Lady of Livry, had caught the secret of the unpremeditated art.

Walpole—like the prince that he is—is almost never free from a sense

of his rank.

I am tempted to say that this self-consciousness of Walpole is an art

in itself. He enjoys displaying various sides of himself, plays with

his prejudices, exaggerates all his enthusiasms and all his dislikes,

affects to be old and look back over a vista of years, jests about

his gout and the infallible bootikins, pretends to believe that the

country is going to the dogs, and takes refuge at Strawberry Hill

among his cats and his cameos. There are moments when he is as full

of humours as Charles Lamb. Throughout three thousand letters his

sprightliness, that subtle union of wit and grace, is hardly once

at fault; everything seems to contribute to it. Does he cross the

Channel in rough weather? He is drowned without being shipwrecked.

He has a ‘lap full of waves,’ is ‘washed from head to foot in the

boat at ten o’clock at night,’ and plunged into the sea up to his

knees. ‘_Qu’avois-je à faire dans cette galère?_ In truth, it is a

little late to be seeking adventures.’[418] Condemned to a state

of eternal emaciation, none shall outdo him in the description of

his leanness: he is ‘emaciated, wan, wrinkled,’ a ‘poor skeleton,’

a ‘thinner Don Quixote.’ Nor is he surpassed (even by Macaulay) in

his account of the ‘tinsel glories’ of Strawberry Hill. He would

certainly have been the first to call himself a snob, had he known

the word, or had it occurred to him to invent it. Meanwhile he made

no pretence of concealing his boredom with most things in heaven and

earth: to three-quarters of the world he displayed only a polished

indifference; most of the rest of it he openly despised, but it was

that he might have the more attention for the few whom he found worth

while. His career in the Parisian salons, which has been already

described, his repudiation of the _philosophes_ and the complete

absorption of his interest in Madame du Deffand, are really typical

of the man and of his entire career. If to be loyal through life to a

few friends, to expend one’s genius in giving them delight—‘spreading

one’s leaf gold over them and making them shine’—is to be a snob,

then Walpole richly deserves the name.

There is no lack of naturalness in Walpole’s relations with his

friends. He always ‘lets himself go,’ to a degree, indeed, that is

surprising when one recalls that he knew all along that his letters

would one day be printed. Like Johnson,[419] he feared the press,

which, he says, ‘exceeds even the day of Judgement, for it brings

to light everybody’s faults, and a good deal more.’[420] He was in

nervous dread that his letters to Madame du Deffand would get into

print, and made the poor lady wretched by harping upon his fear; on

the other hand, he himself collected and prepared certain of his

letters for print; and yet, in spite of all this, there is nothing

of restraint in his style or of caution in his words. He never sues

for the good opinion of posterity by adopting a judicial tone, but is

always delightfully himself. He knew that his letters to Sir Horace

Mann, which extend through forty-five years with hardly a break,

would one day be an invaluable record of public events,[421] and was

concerned that it should be kept intact; yet for all that he is never

betrayed into the manner of the archivist. So strong, indeed, is

Walpole’s individualism, so wayward his humour, that it is sometimes

rash to use his letters as documentary evidence.

There is, perhaps, no species of literature more exposed to

misinterpretation than the familiar letter. It may almost be stated

as a general law of the species that in proportion as a letter is

suited for print and for public reading, it is a poor thing. A

letter is, by its very nature, not addressed to an audience, but

to an individual; and as certainly as it becomes general in its

appeal, it loses that intimacy of tone which is its peculiar charm.

What is duller than an ‘open letter’? What is more chilling than a

postscript which invites you, when you have read a letter, to pass

it on to John and to Mary? Not there shall you find anything of

that conversation apart which constitutes the joy of writing as of

reading letters. The letter which is intelligible to everybody is

already impersonal and almost professional in tone, and you may

print it with impunity; but a letter which is addressed to a friend

will, in proportion to its intimacy, teem with allusions, oddities

of phrase, and obscure references which make full sense only to

the recipient, and you will print it at your peril. Lockhart, who

declined to ‘Boswellize’ Scott, has given full expression to this

fact, contending that if conversation is not to be misunderstood, ‘it

is a necessary pre-requisite that we should be completely familiar

with all the interlocutors, and understand thoroughly all their

minutest relations, and points of common knowledge.... In proportion

as a man is witty and humorous, there will always be about him and

his a widening maze and wilderness of cues and catchwords, which the

uninitiated will, if they are bold enough to try interpretation,

construe, ever and anon, egregiously amiss—not seldom into arrant

falsity.’ Now all this is at least as true of letter-writing[422] as

of conversation. It is, one might argue, never safe to attempt to

understand a familiar letter until you know all about the author of

it, and almost as much about the recipient; for the letter is but the

resultant of the first force working upon the second.

It is obvious, therefore, that no good letter should ever be printed.

A published letter courts all manner of misconstruction, and exacts

premature payment for those idle words whereof we are one day to

give account. Few men would willingly yield up the intimacies of

their private correspondence to the cruelty of public scrutiny and

criticism; it is disturbing to think how much of our published

correspondence would perish if the wish of the writer could effect it.

And yet it is this very unsuitability for print, it is this baffling

intimacy, the covert allusions, the obscure language of friendship,

that attract us to published correspondence. The pleasure in reading

it is the fun of seeing, once in your life, what was never intended

for your eye. Every printed letter seems to reproach us in its

revelation of a trust betrayed. There is thus something almost

unholy in the joy of reading published letters. It is never quite a

respectable thing to be doing. There is something of the eavesdropper

in it; it savours of intrusion and at times even of listening at

keyholes. One must be a kind of busybody to find out what it all

means. Sprightly letters are often as obscure as an overheard

conversation: witness the following extract from a letter of Walpole

to Thomas Gray:

George Selwyn says I may, if I please, write Historic Doubts on the

present Duke of G. too. Indeed they would be doubts, for I know

nothing certainly.

There is wit here and more than one sly allusion; but it is only by

prying rather deeply into old scandals that you discover the full

meaning of the passage. Familiar correspondence soon comes to need

a wealth of annotation. Walpole speaks of certain letters of Gray

to him as not ‘printable yet,’ on the ground that they are ‘too

obscure without many notes.’[423] But all the editorial art in the

world will not restore the quondam lustre. ‘If one’s tongue,’ Walpole

writes to George Montagu, ‘don’t move in the steps of the day, it is

only an object of ridicule, like Mrs. Hobart in her cottillon.’ The

brilliancy of this passage is bound up with the precarious fame of

Mrs. Hobart, nay, with the yet more precarious fame of her dancing.

Its elusiveness is an indication of the unfathomable quality in

letters.

Walpole was himself an insatiable reader of letters, and understood

and analyzed his ruling passion:

Fools! yes, I think all the world is turned fool, or was born so;

_cette tête à perruque_, that wig-block the Chancellor, what do

you think he has done? Burnt all his father’s correspondence with

Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot &c.—why do you think? because several of

the letters were indiscreet. To be sure he thought they would go

and publish themselves, if not burnt, but indeed I suspect the

indiscretion was that there were some truths which it was not

proper to preserve, considering _considerandis_. That is just what

I should like to have seen. There was otherwise so much discretion,

and so little of anything else except hypocrisy in all the letters

of those men that have appeared, that I should not so much regret

what discreet folly has now burnt. Apropos, did I ever tell you a

most admirable _bon mot_ of Mr. Bentley? He was talking to me of an

old devout Lady St. John, who burnt a whole trunk of letters of the

famous Lord Rochester, ‘for which,’ said Mr. Bentley, ‘her soul is

now burning in heaven.’ The oddness, confusion and wit of the idea

struck me of all things.[424]

‘That is just what I should like to have seen’—there is the passion

of the letter-monger. It was all very indiscreet, no doubt, but ‘that

is just what I should like to have seen.’ The indiscretion is the

best proof that the correspondence was intimate, that it was not a

mere series of messages nor a volume of essays. To burn it was an

eminently safe thing to do with it—and eminently deplorable.

A good letter-writer, a Walpole, a Lamb, is hardly more concerned

with the cause of edification than with the cause of discretion.

His concern is with the news. He moves genially along the lower

levels of life, content to ramble rather than to soar, and forgets

high philosophies and abstract truths. What he offers his friend is

companionship, not education. The news of yesterday is frequently a

harder thing to get at than the learning of the ages, and all the

wisdom of the east will not make a good letter.

This ideal of familiar correspondence was fully stated in the

eighteenth century. It would be possible to construct a whole

philosophy of the subject by marshalling a series of quotations from

eighteenth century letters. Even the bluestockings appreciated the

artlessness of letters. Hannah More never wrote wiser sentences than

these:

If I want wisdom, sentiment or information, I can find them much

better in books than in letters. What I want in a letter is a

picture of my friend’s mind, and the common sense of his life. I

want to know what he is saying and doing: I want him to turn out

the inside of his heart to me, without disguise, without appearing

better than he is, without writing for a character. I have the same

feeling in writing to him. My letter is therefore worth nothing to

an indifferent person, but it is of value to my friend who cares

for me.[425]

Madame du Deffand, no unworthy successor of Madame de Sévigné, would

have subscribed to all this. She, too, thought that physics and

metaphysics had no place in correspondence, and detested the letters

of Abelard and Héloïse because they lacked the note of intimacy and

were filled with fustian, ‘_faux_, _exagéré_, _dégoûtant_.’ She begs

Walpole to fill his letters with trifles, to send news of his dogs,

Vachette and Rosette, to describe his curios, and to omit politics.

‘J’aime tous les détails domestiques.... Dans les lettres de Madame

de Sévigné c’est un des articles qui me plaît le plus.’[426] Here was

a correspondent worthy of Walpole’s quill.

It was long the custom to sneer at Walpole for his gossip. Lord

Macaulay did not fail to ridicule him for it in language as

unmeasured as that of scandal itself; but Macaulay’s manner is now

giving way to apologies and vindications hardly less damaging.

Walpole was indubitably and incorrigibly a gossip—why should we

avoid the word? He did not avoid it. He was, on the contrary, the

first to make the charge. As early as 1749 he calls his letters to

Horace Mann ‘gossiping gazettes’; yet these are perhaps as little

open to the charge as any letters that he wrote. The same charge was

brought against Walpole’s idol, Madame de Sévigné. Lady Mary Wortley

Montagu could find in her letters nothing but gossip—‘sometimes the

tittle-tattle of a fine lady; sometimes that of an old nurse, always

tittle-tattle.’[427] A similar charge may be brought against Cowper,

Lamb, Jane Carlyle, and all favourite letter-writers. It is always

ready to hand for those who prefer disquisitions to news. As for

Walpole’s letters, they might almost be conceived as a delightful

defence of the vice.

Now gossip is of course a very dreadful business; but its most

hardened opponents can scarcely deny that it has at times been the

staple of some very fine literature indeed. What is Pepys but gossip?

What would Boswell be without his gossip? Even work that professes

to attack gossip is often interesting chiefly for its illustration

of what it denounces. Look at the career of Lady Teazle. As long as

she retains her place in the Scandal School, she is human, almost

lovable, and wholly delightful; but as soon as she is reformed, she

becomes quite insignificant. Her entrance in the fifth act is the

dullest moment in the play, and her demeanour is wholly unconvincing

and perhaps untruthful. One cannot think of her apart from her

glittering geysers of scandal; when she gives up gossip she is as

dull as Maria, and we are glad that the play is over. If there is a

more depressing spectacle than a bird that has lost its wings, it is

a wit that has bridled the tongue.

Gossip, in its milder stages, may even denote a serene interest

in the little affairs of life, which is truly admirable. Cowper’s

letters, which Lady Mary would no doubt have found quite as filled

with tittle-tattle as Madame de Sévigné’s, are in the truest sense of

the term the treasure of the humble. The finest things in them are,

like the finest things in _The Task_, the description of domestic

trifles. The most delightful letter Cowper ever wrote describes a

runaway rabbit. Cowper’s eminence as a letter-writer is an invaluable

illustration of the fact that a man may be a master of this art

though his life contains nothing of excitement or romance. The great

explorers and adventurers have seldom been good letter-writers.

Macaulay laughed at Walpole because he made a serious business

of trifles; but it is in this very fact that half the delight of

Walpole’s letters consists. Neither Walpole nor Cowper could have

written the letters he did without that love; the one lends as much

interest to crossing the Channel as to crossing the Alps, and the

other amuses us as much with the loss of a rabbit as with the finding

of a continent. Like Biron in conversation,

His eye begets occasion for his wit;

For every object that the one doth catch,

The other turns to a mirth-moving jest,

Which his fair tongue, conceit’s expositor,

Delivers in such apt and gracious words,

That aged ears play truant at his tales,

And younger hearings are quite ravished;

So sweet and voluble is his discourse.

The display of such a wit as this is all the more delightful in a

letter because of the very intimacy of the thing. It is not done

to amuse a company, but to delight a friend. Every true letter is

a gift. If it rises to the plane of literature, it is literature

created in honour of an individual, and is his to cherish or destroy.

It is thus the most personal and private of all literary types, since

it is the only one that can be held to be the peculiar and exclusive

property of an individual. A lover of letters is as jealous as he is

insatiable. Like Madame du Deffand with the letters of Walpole, he is

always looking about for somebody with whom to share his pleasures,

and is for ever discovering that no one is worthy of the honour;[428]

and, like her, his passion is such that he would give the two

letters that he has for the one which he is awaiting. The secret of

such a jealous sense of ownership as this lies in the fact that every

intimate letter is really suffused with two personalities, one of

which is that of the recipient.

Such intimate correspondence as this was not without an effect upon

English literature. The idealization of intimacy which made it

possible spread the love of simplicity and of a more familiar tone.

The type was, oddly enough, at one with the new romanticism in this

demand for the natural. The style in which it was expressed is fifty

years ahead of its time, and already prophesies the more familiar

tone of such men as Lamb and Hazlitt. The following passage from

Walpole is typical:

Every summer one lives in a state of mutiny and murmur, and I have

found the reason. It is because we will affect to have a summer,

and we have no title to any such thing. Our poets learned their

trade of the Romans, and so adopted the terms of their masters.

They talk of shady groves, purling streams, and cooling breezes,

and we get sore throats and agues with attempting to realize these

visions. Master Damon writes a song and invites Miss Chloe to enjoy

the cool of the evening, and the deuce a bit have we of any such

thing as a cool evening. Zephyr is a north-east wind that makes

Damon button up to the chin, and pinches Chloe’s nose till it is

red and blue; and then they cry, ‘This is a bad summer’—as if we

ever had any other. The best sun we have is made of Newcastle

coal, and I am determined never to reckon upon any other. We ruin

ourselves with inviting over foreign trees, and make our houses

clamber up hills to look at prospects. How our ancestors would

laugh at us, who knew there was no being comfortable unless you

had a high hill before your nose and a thick warm wood at your

back![429]

If the style of nineteenth century prose marks an improvement over

that of the eighteenth century in respect of sprightliness, then

surely such a passage as this must be held to indicate the progress

towards it.

It is amazing how wide-spread was the knowledge of this craft. There

are scores of letter-writers at the end of the century who may be

read with pleasure. Even Mrs. Montagu could descend from the heights

long enough to write in this pleasant tone to Mrs. Garrick and Miss

More:

Most engaged and engaging ladies, will you drink tea with me on

Thursday with a very small party? I think it an age, not a golden

age, since I saw you last.[430]

With the presence of such letter-writers as Cowper, Johnson, Lady

Mary Wortley Montagu, and Horace Walpole, not to mention countless

minor names, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the familiar

letter was the chosen medium of the age, as the periodic essay was of

the earlier period and as the drama was of the Elizabethan age. It

will always remain the best general record of the social life of the

century; but its value is more particular than this. You may read the

boisterous life of the age in its novels, you may find its solidity

in Johnson and its superficiality in Chesterfield; you may see its

rags in Hogarth or its grace in Reynolds; but for its simplicity, its

affectionate intimacies, and its smiling ease, you must turn to its

letters.

CHAPTER XIV

FANNY BURNEY AND THE ART OF THE DIARIST

The Diary of Fanny Burney cannot, like the conversation of Johnson

and the correspondence of Walpole, be cited as perhaps the finest

specimen of its kind. Of the arts we are discussing, the diarist’s

is the most difficult to define or characterize; for at one extreme,

it may shrink into the dulness of a calendar, and at the other,

it may record the agonies of a soul’s attempt to be honest with

its God or with itself. Kinds so distinct as Pepys’s _Diary_ and

the _Confessions_ of Rousseau seem to defy all attempts at common

definition. The Diary of Miss Burney, unlike these works, has no

psychological problems; but exists for the simple and engaging

purpose of recording events of interest. In the beginning she

resolved never to mix with her record, her ‘religious sentiments,

opinions, hopes, fears, beliefs, or aspirations;[431] but to reserve

her Diary for worldly dross.’ If not among the greatest diaries of

the world, it is among the most normal; and it is not impossible to

define it roughly. Diaries of this kind may be described as a sort of

letter to oneself.

Miss Burney’s Diary was, however, written to be read by others than

herself. It was addressed to her sisters, to whom sections of it

were despatched from time to time. It partakes, therefore, in large

measure of the nature of private correspondence, and much that has

been said of that type applies obviously to this. But there are

important differences. The greatness of the Diary certainly does

not consist in the delightful treatment of domestic and personal

trifles. Nor does Miss Burney paint highly for the mere love of

painting, as the conversationalist and the letter-writer often do.

She is not communicating herself, but the important life with which

she is in touch. She does not so much wish that the reader should

see her, as that he should see with her eyes—and her artistic vision

was remarkably shrewd and keen. The Diary is thus a panorama rather

than a portrait. We read diaries either to get at the personality

of the writer or at the events described. The character of Fanny

Burney, combining sweetness, shyness, wisdom, and pride, presents no

particular problems, and is not of commanding interest. What she saw

and what she heard, the people who loved her, who attached her to

them, and who, not unfrequently, preyed upon her—these constitute the

interest of the book; it is these and the art with which they are set

before us that make the Diary what it is.

The thought that is for ever borne in upon the reader is that Miss

Burney was a very lucky woman. Suffering as she did from shyness

and an inflamed sense of propriety, it might easily have been her

lot to lead a life as secluded as that of her friend, Mr. Crisp of

Chessington; yet in fact Johnson himself did not commonly associate

with more people whom one would like to have known. The young lady’s

unassuming manner was of actual value in increasing her circle of

desirable acquaintance, when once she was famous. When once she was

famous, I repeat, for most of her interesting friends and experiences

came to her as the result of her celebrity and of the bluestocking

patronage which ensued upon it. It was Mrs. Thrale who drew Fanny

Burney into the great world which she was to adorn and to record;

but the interest of Mrs. Thrale went out rather to the author of

_Evelina_, than to the mouse-like young lady of St. Martin Street.

Seldom has so timid an entry into the literary world been accorded

a reception so flattering. The young woman who had disposed of her

novel under cover of night and anonymity, as though it had been

so much stolen goods, was presently to find that she had every

bluestocking in London at her feet, and that the King of Letters was

proclaiming her the equal of Fielding. One speculates what would have

become of her if she had begun her career with _The Wanderer_ instead

of _Evelina_. She had the luck to write her best novel—some will say

her only good novel—first; and from that happy beginning sprang all

the rest of her good fortune.

It is to be remembered by those who study Miss Burney’s career that

the appearance of _Evelina_, in 1778, marks a definite period in the

history of woman’s contribution to English literature. Johnson’s

estimate of the book was of course ludicrously wrong, and it is

well to assume that his chivalry (for once) got the better of his

judgment; yet it is impossible to deny the superlative significance

of the book. It was the greatest creative work that had yet been

produced by an Englishwoman. It is still read with delight by people

who never heard of Aphra Behn’s _Oroonoko_, Miss Fielding’s _Peter

Simple_, or Charlotte Lennox’s _Female Quixote_. The bluestockings

were right in feeling that the author had forced a new estimate

of the sex. The respect for her work was universal: extravagant

things—impossibilities—were expected of her.

It was now that Miss Burney’s modesty (so carefully nurtured) was

felt to be but an added grace. The most vicious satirist could

discover in ‘little Burney’ nothing of the arrogance of a _femme

savante_. She gave the impression of hating her talents and the fame

which had been thrust upon her. Her unassuming demeanour and her

youthful sweetness (for she was still girlish at twenty-six) made

her the delight of every drawing-room she would consent to enter,

and not unfrequently brought down upon her admiration and social

attentions which she would have been happier without. At last, in an

unhappy hour, they brought her to the attention of Queen Charlotte.

But for the moment, all was sweetness and triumph and popularity.

Her position among the bluestockings is noticeable; she was beloved

of them all. She was loyal to Mrs. Thrale without sacrificing the

regard of Mrs. Montagu or in any way offending her beloved Mrs. Ord.

She almost reconciled stiff old Mrs. Delany and the dear Duchess of

Portland to literary eminence in a woman. Outside this circle she

was no less esteemed. Johnson loved her as a daughter, and professed

himself glad to ‘send his name down to posterity’ linked with hers.

Burke, who read _Evelina_ repeatedly, distinguished her by a special

greeting when she appeared at the trial of Warren Hastings, as,

indeed, did the prisoner himself. Wyndham delighted to converse with

her by the hour. Walpole received her at Strawberry Hill, and was

no less pleased with her unpretentious manner than with the fact

that Mrs. Montagu now had a superior. Had Miss Burney cared to open

a salon, she might have reigned over these men like a more rational

Lespinasse. The more her fortune is dwelt upon, the more obvious

it becomes. As a child she had had David Garrick for a grown-up

playmate; as a young woman she had the privilege of welcoming Sarah

Siddons to the court; later in life, she conversed on terms of

intimacy with Madame de Stael. She had passed the day in Reynolds’s

studio, and had looked at the stars through the glass of Herschel.

She was visited at Windsor by Boswell, proof-sheets in hand; and

Sheridan, at the height of his reputation, repeatedly invited her to

write a comedy. She described her acquaintance to Queen Charlotte

as being ‘not only very numerous, but very mixed, taking in not only

most stations in life, but also most parties.’[432] We may marvel at

the fact that the shy Fanny Burney became a novelist; but she could

hardly help becoming a diarist.

Even the great misfortune of her life really contributed to her

greatness. Her life at Court, which half killed her, a life which she

repeatedly calls ‘monastic’ and describes as ‘dead and tame’—strong

words from one who thought she adored the Queen—enabled her to depict

a kind of life which, dull as it was, can never lack significance.

If for no more important reason, her account of it will always be

read as one of the great dramas of disillusion. It furnished Macaulay

with material for one of his most brilliant extravaganzas. Like

him, we read the third and fourth volume of the Diary, which detail

that life, with feelings of rage at the royal gaolers and at the

Hanoverian ideals of conduct that they almost succeeded in imposing

upon her. The Queen’s obvious delight in checking Miss Burney’s

literary activity and in stiffening her sense of propriety (which

needed no stiffening) makes it difficult to control the judgment;

and yet, upon reflection, it will be seen that the reader’s rage is

but a tribute to one of the most effective pieces of realism in the

language. It is true that it is often dull, but so is realism. It is

true that Miss Burney’s adulation of the Royal Family is at times

painfully fulsome; but even this only heightens the description of

that life which, despite all adulation, she found unendurable. The

story of her captivity is no less thrilling than that of Pamela in

the clutches of Mrs. Jewkes.

As a delineation of an ogress, Mrs. Schwellenberg is at once more

horrible and more lifelike than Mrs. Jewkes; beside her, all the

‘weatherbeaten old she-dragons’ of eighteenth century fiction and

drama pale into insignificance. Miss Burney has often been praised

for creating the character of Madame Duval, but that lady is a mere

commonplace when compared with the spiteful old crone who had no

interest above piquet and who divided the slight remnant of affection

of which her withered nature was capable between her royal owner

and her tame frogs. Her ambitions for Fanny Burney, the idol of the

blues, was that she should learn piquet, give up writing, and become

like unto herself, a spaniel of the backstairs. Few characters in

literature are at once so comic and so loathsome.

It might be assumed that the depiction of Mrs. Schwellenberg were

the result of mere dislike, if Miss Burney had not, at the same

moment, been proving by her portrayal of Queen Charlotte that her

vision was never more keen and her judgment of character never more

unbiassed. She had no intention whatever of analyzing her mistress.

As a lover of royal families, she was far more prone to idealize her;

but for all that she had a genius for truthfulness, and could not

help mirroring the royal nature with a fatal accuracy. It is the

revelation of such royalty as can conceive no happiness apart from

its own presence, of a queenly etiquette in which a native sweetness

is lost in acquired selfishness. For subtlety and moderation this

characterization is unsurpassed in its own century, and not often

equalled in the century that followed it, for all its psychology and

realism.

The triumph of Miss Burney’s realism over her personal inclination

may be illustrated by setting side by side two sentences drawn from

the same entry in the Diary for December 1790: ‘Her Majesty was very

kind during this time, and the Princesses interested themselves about

me with a sweetness very grateful to me.’ This is the expression of

what is proper from the Keeper of the Robes; but on the next page it

shrivels away before her sense of actuality: ‘Though I was frequently

so ill in her presence that I could scarcely stand, I saw she

concluded me, while life remained, inevitably hers.’

These court-episodes in the Diary of Miss Burney are of special use

in showing her powers of characterization. The earlier sections of

the book deal with people no less interesting, but so familiar to

us from other sources that Miss Burney’s skill in depicting them is

not so readily perceived. No particular surprise mingles with our

pleasure as we read of Johnson and of Mrs. Thrale, of Reynolds and

of Mrs. Montagu, because the author’s art seems but to reflect, at

most to amplify, what we have seen elsewhere. It is when she has

occasion to make us acquainted with persons whom we have not met

elsewhere, with ‘Mr. Turbulent’ and Mrs. Schwellenberg, that we begin

to perceive the extent of her powers. Her five years’ imprisonment in

no way impairs her observation of human nature. The sudden apparition

of James Boswell upon the scene is as captivating a piece of writing

as anything in the whole Diary; the contrast between his cheerful

officiousness and the blundering officiousness of Mr. Turbulent is a

sufficient proof of the fact that Miss Burney has retained all her

old skill in characterization. Nor has the sense for a boisterous

scene departed from the author of _Evelina_. The quiet little

lady with prim demeanour still had a love of broad comedy, as the

following pages may show. The scene is Mrs. Schwellenberg’s table,

the occasion a dinner of the royal attendants in honour of the King’s

birthday, the chief actor the Duke of Clarence (afterwards William

IV), the Royal Sailor, who is shown, to use Miss Burney’s words—and

they are significant of her conscious art—‘in genuine colours.’

Champagne being now brought for the Duke, he ordered it all round.

When it came to me, I whispered to Westerhaults [the footman] to

carry it on: the Duke slapped his hand violently on the table, and

called out, ‘Oh ——, you shall drink it!’

There was no resisting this. We all stood up, and the Duke

sonorously gave the Royal toast.

‘And now,’ cried he, making us all sit down again, ‘where are my

rascals of servants? I sha’n’t be in time for the ball; besides,

I’ve got a —— tailor waiting to fix on my epaulette! Here, you, go

and see for my servants! d’ye hear? Scamper off!’

Off ran William.

‘Come, let’s have the King’s health again. De Luc, drink it. Here,

Champagne to De Luc!’

I wish you could have seen Mr. De Luc’s mixed simper—half pleased,

half alarmed. However, the wine came and he drank it, the Duke

taking a bumper for himself at the same time.

‘Poor Stanhope!’ cried he: ‘Stanhope shall have a glass too! Here,

Champagne! What are you all about? Why don’t you give Champagne to

poor Stanhope?’

Mr. Stanhope, with great pleasure, complied, and the Duke again

accompanied him.

‘Come hither, do you hear?’ cried the Duke to the servants, and on

the approach, slow and submissive, of Mrs. Stainforth’s man, he hit

him a violent slap on the back, calling out ‘Hang you! Why don’t

you see for my rascals?’

Away flew the man, and then he called out to Westerhaults,

‘Hark’ee! bring another glass of Champagne to Mr. De Luc!’

Mr. De Luc knows these Royal youths too well to venture at so vain

an experiment as disputing with them; so he only shrugged his

shoulders and drank the wine. The Duke did the same.

‘And now, poor Stanhope,’ cried the Duke, ‘give another to poor

Stanhope, d’ye hear?’

‘Is not your Royal Highness afraid,’ cried Mr. Stanhope, displaying

the full circle of his borrowed teeth, ‘I shall be apt to be rather

up in the world, as the folks say, if I tope on at this rate?’

‘Not at all! you can’t get drunk in a better cause. I’d get drunk

myself if it was not for the ball. Here, Champagne! another glass

for the philosopher! I keep sober for Mary.’...

He then said it was necessary to drink the Queen’s health.

The gentlemen here made no demur, though Mr. De Luc arched his

eyebrows in expressive fear of consequences.

‘A bumper,’ cried the Duke, ‘to the Queen’s gentleman-usher.’

They all stood up and drank the Queen’s health.

‘Here are three of us,’ cried the Duke, ‘all belonging to the

Queen: the Queen’s philosopher, the Queen’s gentleman-usher, and

the Queen’s son; but, thank Heaven, I’m nearest!’

‘Sir,’ cried Mr. Stanhope, a little affronted, ‘I am not now the

Queen’s gentleman-usher; I am the Queen’s equerry, sir.’

‘A glass more of Champagne here! What are you all so slow for?

Where are all my rascals gone? They’ve put me in one passion

already this morning. Come, a glass of Champagne for the Queen’s

gentleman-usher!’ laughing heartily.

‘No, sir,’ repeated Mr. Stanhope, ‘I am equerry now!’

‘And another glass to the Queen’s philosopher!’

Neither gentleman objected; but Mrs. Schwellenberg, who had sat

laughing and happy all this time, now grew alarmed, and said, ‘Your

Royal Highness, I am afraid for the ball!’

‘Hold your potato-jaw, my dear,’ cried the Duke, patting her; but

recollecting himself, he took her hand and pretty abruptly kissed

it, and then, flinging it hastily away, laughed aloud, and called

out, ‘There! that will make amends for anything, so now I may

say what I will. So here! a glass of Champagne for the Queen’s

philosopher and the Queen’s gentleman-usher! Hang me if it will not

do them a monstrous deal of good!’

Here news was brought that the equipage was in order. He started

up, calling out, ‘Now, then, for my —— tailor.’[433]

Scenes as vivid, though not so uproarious, might be cited in every

chapter of the work; to quote them all would be to print half the

Diary. The selection here given is sufficient to show why Miss

Burney’s writing is invariably referred to as dramatic. The Diary

is, in parts, so like a novel as to prompt the query whether it

is at all reliable as a record of facts. Did not the author’s

imagination play freely over the events? Did she not select, arrange,

and colour according to the demands of art rather than of history?

Are the conversations not improved? Is not the diarist a novelist

still? Questions of this large kind can hardly be answered save in

a large, impressionistic way. The Diary is, in general, a truthful

document and a reliable account of the life which it records. A

mere glance at the book will reveal the fact that Miss Burney had

little of Boswell’s passion for literalness, for accurate dates,

and for written evidence. But Boswell was unique in his generation,

and Boswell was a lawyer. Miss Burney was writing to amuse her

sisters, not to inform the public; but there are passages which

show that she was endowed with a remarkably accurate memory. She

once has occasion[434] to quote a letter from memory; a comparison

of it with the original, which happens to be in existence, reveals

no evidence of misinterpretation, and shows the copy to be, in

fact, very nearly a literal reproduction of the original. We are to

remember that Miss Burney had been in the habit of keeping a diary,

recording conversations which had interested her, ever since the age

of fifteen; and that this had strengthened her memory as well as her

powers of observation. It was to a similar practice that Boswell owed

his ability to record conversation with accuracy; and he himself

asserted that the ability grew with practice. There is no reason

for supposing that the results in one case were radically different

from those in the other. Certain it is that Miss Burney’s record of

Johnson’s conversation is in no way inconsistent with Boswell’s. To

say that in describing life at Streatham or at the Court she used her

skill in selection and that she employed the judgment of a novelist

in beginning and ending a conversation effectively is merely to

repeat that the Diary is a work of art. Judgment in the choice of

facts to set down need not indicate a misinterpretation of them.

There is but one quality in Miss Burney which shakes the reader’s

confidence in her judgment of character. There is a tendency to

emotionalism in her which the irreverent will term gush. She was

touched with the sentimentality of her times. The tear of sensibility

is ever trembling in her eyes. Her affection for Mrs. Thrale, Mrs.

Locke, Mrs. Delany, and most other ladies, for ‘dear Daddy Crisp,’

for ‘dear Sir Joshua,’ is so effusive as to make all terms of

endearment seem tawdry.

Hardly less distressing than this mawkishness is the lady’s

self-consciousness, which she mistook for the virtue of modesty.

The flattery which brought the blush of shame to her cheek and kept

her on the verge of swooning, the flattery which made her shrink

into corners or retire in confusion from the scene, the praise which

was too gross for her ears, all this is written down _in extenso_

and with something unpleasantly like gusto. It flows through the

Diary like an apocalyptic river of honey. Macaulay reminds us, quite

properly, that all this was ‘for the eyes of two or three persons

who had loved her from infancy, who had loved her in obscurity, and

to whom her fame gave the purest and most exquisite delight.’ This

is true, no doubt; but might not father and sisters have achieved

delight without this surfeit of sweetness, ‘whereof a little more

than a little is by much too much’? It is all very human, of course,

and it would be chivalrous to forget it. But all the chivalry in the

world cannot hide the fact that it is a serious blot on the art of

the Diary, a blot that we cannot but wish away from so splendid a

work.

CHAPTER XV

BOSWELL AND THE ART OF INTIMATE BIOGRAPHY

It is the privilege of few men in any age to raise an art to such

perfection that it becomes in effect a new thing. The development

of intimate biography is still largely the work of one man. After a

hundred years of memorabilia, personal reminiscences, and interviews,

Boswell is still as indubitably the greatest of biographers as when

he referred to his book as the ‘first in the world,’ or when, fifty

years later, Macaulay applied to him the language of the race-course,

and pronounced, ‘Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere.’ Later

biographers do not eclipse him, nor do earlier ones explain him. A

comparison of his work with what went before serves only to reveal

his utter uniqueness. If an earlier biographer suggests a point of

comparison in his realistic record of conversation, the slightness

of his work gives no conception of the whole life he is writing; if

another seems like Boswell in refusing to write a mere eulogy, he

seems chill and judicial where Boswell is warm with pulsing life.

Other lives give us admirable things: table-talk, a portrait, a

eulogy, a handful of anecdotes, a list of dates from ‘pedigree to

funeral,’ or a volume of letters; but Boswell gives us all these

and more. He aspires to be as complete as life itself. Boswell knew

and delighted in other biographies; but was hardly influenced by

them. He knew Plutarch, Xenophon, and Valerius Maximus, among the

ancients, and Jonson’s _Timber_, Selden’s _Table-Talk_, and Spence’s

_Anecdotes_, among modern _ana_; but is like none of these. He

surpasses them all in intimacy, variety, and what, for want of a

better name, may be called his sustained quality. To read Boswell

after these men is like passing to a Flemish painting from a study in

black and white.

[Illustration: BOSWELL THE JOURNALIST

From a series of caricatures of the _Journal_ by Rowlandson and

Collings]

In so far as he can be said to have learned his art from any man,

his master was Johnson himself. The first sentence in the _Life_

proclaims Johnson’s superiority to all men in writing the lives of

others. Biography was often discussed by the two men together, and

Boswell was also well acquainted with Johnson’s published remarks on

the subject. Johnson enunciated, with fair consistency, the theory

of intimate biography, but he never fully realized it in any work of

his. Thus he was wont to assert that autobiography was superior to

biography, for the simple reason that a man might more readily reveal

the facts concerning himself. If a man’s life is to be written by

another than himself, it should be by one who has ‘eat and drunk and

lived in social intercourse with him.’ The material of biography, he

asserts, at various times, to be ‘trifles,’ the ‘delicate features

of the mind,’ the ‘minute peculiarities of conduct,’ ‘domestic

privacies,’ and ‘the minute details of daily life.’ He approved of

much anecdote in biography, used such incidents with a free hand in

his own work, and encouraged Boswell to record them. He did not,

however, anywhere fully embody his theories. It was, in truth,

impossible for him to do so in the _Lives of the Poets_, for, with

the exception of Savage, he had been on terms of real intimacy with

none of these men. Had he written the life of Goldsmith, as he once

thought of doing, he might, if his indolence had not prevented him,

have produced such a book as would illustrate his own theories. Yet,

in spite of this lack of intimacy in the _Lives of the Poets_, he

was attacked for making them too familiar. Potter, Mrs. Montagu’s

_protégé_, denounced his introduction of trifles into serious

biography, considering it beneath the dignity of that art to mention

that Pope wore three pairs of stockings to increase the size of

his legs, and that he loved to feast on potted lampreys which he

heated in a silver saucepan. ‘We know,’ writes the critic, ‘that the

greatest men are subject to the infirmities of human nature equally

with the meanest; why then are these infirmities recorded?’

This sentence may be taken to summarize the general conception of

biography before Boswell. The death of a man seems to have been

regarded as an opportunity for rationalizing his views and perfecting

his character. The duty of a biographer was to forget all vices

and to idealize all virtues, with the laudable purpose of setting

before the public a notable pattern of conduct. ‘He that writes the

life of another,’ wrote Johnson in the _Idler_, ‘endeavours to hide

the man that he may produce a hero.’ Even Johnson never felt quite

sure how far it was proper to describe a man’s vices in writing his

biography. Boswell notes the inconsistency of his views. When the

subject of the poet Parnell’s drinking arose, Johnson remarked,

‘More ill may be done by the example, than good by telling the

whole truth’; but at another time he said, ‘If a man is to write _A

Panegyric_, he may keep vices out of sight; but if he professes to

write _A Life_, he must represent it really as it was.... It would

produce an instructive caution to avoid drinking, when it was seen

that even the learning and genius of Parnell could be debased by

it.’[435] In practice it is clear that Johnson preferred to err on

the side of frankness. Potter was shocked because he revealed the

avidity of Addison by repeating the now-hackneyed story of how Steele

was forced to pay a debt of £100. If biography is regarded as the

handmaid of morality, and eulogy is preferred to actuality, such

details are of course worse than useless. Beattie dwells on ‘the

due distinction between what deserves to be known and what ought to

be forgotten.’[436] Miss Burney considered that the publication of

letters verbatim was the ‘greatest injury’ to a man’s memory. Horace

Walpole, who deplored the whole policy of expurgation, nevertheless

gives Mason, the biographer of Gray, the conventional advice. He

avows that the publication of the life of Gray is an opportunity to

establish that poet’s character ‘unimpeached.’ He was shocked at the

section of the biography which Mason had submitted to his criticism,

because it was honest and frank. ‘What can provoke you to be so

imprudent?... You know my idea was that your work should consecrate

his name.’[437] Once such a theory of consecration is adopted, the

author of a life is driven relentlessly towards panegyric; for, not

daring to trust the public to interpret facts, he must suppress

everything that is not admirable, lest the mention of even the

slightest fault be taken to point to the existence of thousands that

are passed over in silence. When once you have taken to varnishing,

you must varnish thoroughly, for any cracks or bare spots which

reveal the material beneath ruin your whole effect.

To a public with these lofty notions of propriety Boswell, genially

sacrificing what little was left to him of his reputation, addressed,

in 1785, his _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel

Johnson_ ... ‘containing ... A series of his Conversation, Literary

Anecdotes and Opinions of Men and Books.’ It was a jumble of gossip

such as readers had hitherto seen only in the twopenny pamphlets

of the scandal-mongers of Grub Street; but was set forth with an

abundance of detail which captured the most frivolous and an air

of authenticity which convinced the most sceptical. It depicted a

great man who had been in his grave but a few months. It was written

with veneration, but wholly without awe, as though a valet had

collaborated with the Recording Angel. It flouted all restraints, and

passed the most distant limits of decency. Nothing like it had ever

been heard of. Even in our own day, to a world whose nerves have been

jaded by a thousand _exposés_, such a book would come as a surprise,

but to the world of 1786 it was a revelation of new possibilities

in literature, as alarming as they were entertaining. With all the

frankness of Pepys the author combines the conscious skill of one

who has mastered the art of anecdote and the joy of a conceited man

who realizes that he is about to attain fame by one of the by-paths

of literature. It was difficult, in 1785, to say whether Johnson’s

theory of familiar biography had been realized or travestied in this

book. It was obvious that he had been hoist with his own petard. The

world was informed with the most scrupulous accuracy of how he said

his prayers and how he was persuaded to wear a woollen night-cap.

His idlest word was recorded as though in a dictograph. ‘I have

often thought that if I kept a seraglio, the ladies should all wear

linen gowns,—or cotton; I mean stuffs made of vegetable substances.

I would have no silk; you cannot tell when it is clean, ...’ and so

forth. At times the book is hardly quotable. Once when about to get

into a dirty bed, during their travels in the Hebrides, Boswell

remarks: ‘We had much hesitation, whether to undress, or lye down

with our clothes on. I said at last, “I’ll plunge in! There will

be less harbour for vermin about me when I’m stripped”—Dr. Johnson

said, he was like one hesitating to go into the cold bath. At last

he resolved too.’ The first sensation of the reader of such amazing

stuff as this is that Boswell was engaged in a deliberate attempt to

degrade a great man. He was accused by a writer in the _Gentleman’s

Magazine_[438] of having ‘exposed and cut up’ his hero ‘in the most

shameful and cruel manner.’ That Boswell had a kind of mischievous

delight in what he was doing, no one need take the trouble to tell

us; but that he was a sort of skilful blackmailer is now unthinkable.

He felt that he was doing the world a service in showing that a great

man was human; and time has proved that he was right. ‘There is

something noble,’ Johnson had remarked to him, ‘in publishing truth,

though it condemns one’s self.’ Boswell paid this price. He made

Johnson permanently familiar by making himself almost permanently

notorious. Witness the following extract:

Dr. Johnson went to bed soon. When one bowl of punch was finished,

I rose, and was near the door, in my way up stairs to bed; but

Corrichatachin said, it was the first time Col had been in his

house, and he should have his bowl—and would not I join in drinking

it? The heartiness of my honest landlord, and the desire of doing

social honour to our very obliging conductor, induced me to sit

down again. Col’s bowl was finished; and by that time we were well

warmed. A third bowl was soon made, and that too was finished.

We were cordial, and merry to a high degree; but of what passed

I have no recollection, with any accuracy. I remember calling

_Corrichatachin_ by the familiar appellation of _Corri_, which his

friends do. A fourth bowl was made, by which time Col, and young

M’Kinnon, Corrichatachin’s son, slipped away to bed. I continued a

little with Corri and Knockow; but at last I left them. It was near

five in the morning when I got to bed.

Sunday, September 26.

I awaked at noon, with a severe head-ach. I was much vexed that I

should have been guilty of such a riot, and afraid of a reproof

from Dr. Johnson. I thought it very inconsistent with that

conduct which I ought to maintain, while the companion of the

Rambler. About one he came into my room, and accosted me, ‘What,

drunk yet?’ His tone of voice was not that of severe upbraiding;

so I was relieved a little. ‘Sir, (said I,) they kept me up.’

He answered, ‘No, you kept them up, you drunken dog:’—This he

said with good-humoured _English_ pleasantry. Soon afterwards,

Corrichatachin, Col, and other friends assembled round my bed.

Corri had a brandy-bottle and glass with him, and insisted I should

take a dram. ‘Ay, said Dr. Johnson, fill him drunk again. Do it in

the morning, that we may laugh at him all day. It is a poor thing

for a fellow to get drunk at night, and sculk to bed, and let his

friends have no sport.’ Finding him thus jocular, I became quite

easy; and when I offered to get up, he very good naturedly said,

‘You need be in no such hurry now.’ I took my host’s advice, and

drank some brandy, which I found an effectual cure for my head-ach.

When I rose, I went into Dr. Johnson’s room, and taking up Mrs.

M’Kinnon’s Prayer-book, I opened it at the twentieth Sunday after

Trinity, in the epistle for which I read, ‘And be not drunk with

wine, wherein there is excess.’ Some would have taken this as a

divine interposition.

Such writing as this at once divided the reading public into

hostile camps. There were many who considered the book delightful;

others considered it a new kind of libel. It became the subject of

a long controversy in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_. In the December

following its appearance, Boswell was accused of ‘betraying private

conversations even of the most trivial kind.’ In May, the tastes of a

‘gossiping age’ were denounced as well. By December 1786, the sale of

the book having gone triumphantly forward, Boswell was reminded that

his popularity was due solely to the general interest in Johnson; the

sale of his work was compared to the consumption of potatoes in a

time of famine; and the public was instructed that such works require

for their composition nothing but an ear and a memory.

In the spring of the same year, soon after the appearance of Mrs.

Piozzi’s _Anecdotes_, Walpole wrote to Mann:

She and Boswell and their hero are the joke of the public.

A Dr. Wolcot, _soi-disant_ Peter Pindar, has published a

burlesque eclogue,[439] in which Boswell and the signora are

the interlocutors, and all the absurdest passages in the works

of both are ridiculed. The print-shops teem with satiric prints

on them: one, in which Boswell, as a monkey, is riding on

Johnson, the bear,[440] has this witty inscription, ‘My friend

_delineavit_.’—But enough of these mountebanks![441]

Other caricatures represented the ghost of Johnson haunting Boswell

while he pieced together his _Journal_ from various rags of

reminiscence, and the bust of Johnson frowning down upon Boswell and

Mrs. Piozzi as they wrote. Rowlandson and Collings later made the

_Tour_ the subject of a series of sixteen caricatures.

[Illustration: BOSWELL HAUNTED BY THE GHOST OF JOHNSON

From a contemporary caricature]

In 1786, moreover, a pamphlet appeared entitled, _A Poetical Epistle

from the Ghost of Dr. Johnson to his Friends_, in which Boswell was

satirized together with Strahan, Courtenay, and Mrs. Piozzi. The

verses were elaborately annotated with quotations from the _Journal_,

and Boswell was addressed by the manes of Johnson in these words:

How oft I mark’d thee, like a watchful cat,

List’ning to catch up all my silly chat;

How oft that chat I still more silly made,

To see it in thy commonplace conveyed.

This was the invariable charge against the book. It was a mass of

small talk collected by a man with a retentive memory, ‘not to do

honour to his [Johnson’s] memory, by judiciously selecting the best

and most striking of his sentences, but with a design to show his own

assiduity in exhibiting the Doctor in the most glaring colours of

inconsistency.’[442]

There was a secondary charge against the book. It was conceived as a

libel on living people.[443] Various persons—the Duchess of Hamilton,

Sir Alexander MacDonald, and many of those who had entertained the

travellers in the Hebrides—discovered in the book remarks about

themselves that were anything but palatable. A reference to Mrs.

Thrale created the greatest excitement. Johnson’s remark that she

could not get through Mrs. Montagu’s _Essay on Shakespeare_ was there

for all the world to read. She protested in her _Anecdotes_; but

Boswell reminded her, in the pages of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_,

that she had read his _Journal_ in manuscript, without complaining of

this, and that he was but quoting Johnson’s own words regarding her.

So ended one controversy. It was not the only one.

But perhaps the chief excitement rose from the advertisement at the

end of the volume, in which Boswell announced that he had but begun

his memoirs of Johnson. He proposed presently to ‘erect a literary

monument worthy of so great an author,’ and stated that he had been

collecting biographical material for more than twenty years. The

promise, for those who had known Johnson, was not gratifying. If

Boswell had upset the literary world with an account of three months

in Johnson’s life, what would he do in recounting seventy-five years

of it? Everybody who had known Johnson held his breath for fear. Many

urged the new biographer to be cautious. Fanny Burney refused to

assist him in his work of showing the pleasanter side of Johnson’s

character, and wrote in her Diary,[444] ‘I feel sorry to be named

or remembered by that biographical, anecdotical memorandummer till

his book of poor Dr. Johnson’s life is finished and published.’ Sir

William Forbes, who was distressed because Boswell had quoted his

approval of the _Journal_, took the liberty of ‘strongly enjoining

him’ to be more careful about personalities in the later work.[445]

He had perhaps never heard Boswell’s famous reply to Hannah More,

who had urged him to ‘mitigate some of Johnson’s asperities’ when

he published the _Journal_. ‘He said roughly,’ she writes, ‘“He

would not cut off his claws, nor make a tiger a cat to please

anybody.”’[446] This remark has been hackneyed in every work on

Boswell, but it can never be quoted too often, for it is Boswell’s

reply to the world. There is nothing more to be said.

I have dwelt on the reception of Boswell’s _Journal of a Tour to

the Hebrides_ because it is the most effective way of showing the

novelty and the magnitude of his achievement. If the author had

been any other than James Boswell, critics would long ere this have

expatiated on the splendid courage of his undertaking; but he enjoyed

and esteemed his own work too highly to elicit such praise. Whatever

were Boswell’s superficial faults, whatever the resentments that he

caused, it is impossible to withhold our admiration from the simple

confidence in the letter of the truth that characterized his Scotch

soul. His would be the simplicity of childhood if it were not the

simplicity of genius. The Lord Bishop of Chester complained[447]

that Boswell recorded facts simply because they were facts. Such was

indeed the case.

When, in 1791, the _Life_ appeared, many of the old charges were

repeated and some of the old satires revived; but it is not important

to consider them in detail, for the note of admiration, which had

been heard now and again in the beginning, when the _Journal_ was

published, soon became dominant. The other lives and memoirs of

Johnson, with which Boswell’s former work had often been compared,

now served only for purposes of contrast; they were useful in

illustrating the greatness of the new work.

What are the characteristics which tended to give the _Life_ its

place in the history of biography? They are of the simplest kind.

Boswell had, as this entire chapter has been designed to show, a

passion for completeness. It is hardly necessary to labour this

point. Boswell himself writes near the opening of his book: ‘I will

venture to say that he will be seen in this work more completely than

any man who has yet lived.’ In this sentence Boswell wrote his own

panegyric, as in his reply to Miss More he had pronounced his own

defence. Like everything that he did, the panegyric is not without

the ludicrous touch, for he adds: ‘Had his other friends been as

diligent and ardent as I was, he might have been almost entirely

preserved.’ He might, indeed; for why should anything be lost, while

there is a note-book—and a Boswell? Boswell, I repeat, aspired to the

completeness of life itself.

Nor is it greatly necessary to dwell on Boswell’s fidelity to fact.

It has been often dwelt upon, and, through the labours of Dr.

Birkbeck Hill, is now generally admitted; though by one who liked

neither Boswell nor Hill the matter has recently been once more

called in question.[448] It would seem that a work which in its own

day was both praised and denounced for its scrupulous accuracy might

have been accepted without question. It is scarcely reasonable to

demand a more lifelike biographer than Boswell. His own times readily

granted that he had given the true Johnson; that was both the praise

and the blame. Pepys, who knew Johnson and had no illusions about

him, wrote to Hannah More:

The Journal is a most faithful picture of him, so faithful that I

think anybody who has got a clear idea of his person and manner may

know as much of him from that book as by having been acquainted

with him (in the usual way) for three years.[449]

This was written before the _Life_ appeared. Respecting the later

work we have the testimony of Burke to its value as a monument to

Johnson’s conversation.[450] Even more than this may be said. We have

the nearest possible thing to Johnson’s own approval. He had himself

read the _Journal_ in manuscript, and pronounced it a ‘very exact

picture of a portion of his life.’ It is difficult to demand more

than this. In the same work Boswell writes:

He read this day a good deal of my _Journal_, written in a small

book with which he had supplied me, and was pleased, for he said,

‘I wish thy books were twice as big.’ He helped me fill up blanks

which I had left in first writing it, when I was not quite sure

of what he had said, and he corrected any mistakes that I had

made.[451]

In his accurate reproduction of life, Boswell surpasses all the

realists and attains to something of the inexhaustibility of nature

itself. Delightful as is his book for mere reading, it can never

be fully appreciated till it has been used as a work of reference;

for such it was intended to be. The work exhibits, according to the

title-page, ‘a view of literature and literary men in Great Britain

for near half a century.’ Boswell aspired to be not only stenographer

but historian. And to the life that he loved he was both.

We reach at last the core of Boswell’s being, his pagan joy in life,

that greediness of social pleasure which explains all his faults and

suggests all his greatness. He loved social life as other men have

loved a noble woman or a noble cause. He solemnly dedicated his life

to it and his genius to the recording of it. Only when his work is

viewed in the large does one see its grandeur. Like Ulysses, he might

have said, when his great work was done, ‘Much have I seen and known,

cities of men and manners ... myself not least but honoured of them

all.’

I incline to think that this social avidity is the ruling passion

not only of Boswell but of all the life that we have been studying,

of the salons, the conversationists, the diarists, and the

letter-writers. That life at its best blends two kinds of pleasure

that seem ordinarily incompatible, those of society and solitude,

of association and reflection. In the ‘exchange of mind’ which is

its ideal, its disciples find a joy that excels the more passive

pleasures of reading, by bringing them directly into the creation of

its characteristic product, conversation, and to this it adds the

pleasure of seeing the immediate effect of one’s words. Conversation

such as this may be said to represent the active, social, and more

human side of the intellectual life, while meditation stands for

its contemplative and eremitical side. The two are often mutually

exclusive. Philosopher and poet belong to the latter class, because

the meditative temper naturally shuns social distractions; but

diarists, letter-writers, and biographers owe their very existence to

this social instinct, and write to exalt it. They cannot bear that

the delights which they have experienced should pass away without

leaving a memorial. They are determined not only to pluck the passing

hour, but to do what they can to preserve the blossom even as it

droops in their hand. A withered flower is better than none at all;

at worst, it is a pathetic reminder of what has been. The memorialist

is one whose face is ever towards the past and the glories that have

been, the _noctes cæncæque deum_. It is in honour of them that his

work is done. His office is to record life, not to transfigure it.

He cannot aspire to be among those who have seen visions and pointed

others towards them; the joy of poetic creation and the passion of

adventurous thought are not for him; but it is his to know men and

the cheerful ways of men, and to unite us with the heroic minds of

old, not in the lonely glory of their visions, but in their more

familiar hours and their more human joys.

INDEX

Addison, Joseph, conversation of, 220;

_Spectator_, quoted, 103 _n._

Alembert, Jean d’, birth, 43;

quoted, 11, 32, 49;

referred to, 11, 27, 52, 55.

Anglomania, in Paris, 12 ff.

_Anglomanie_, Saurin’s comedy, 12-13.

Anstey, Christopher, 121.

Arblay, Mme. d’, _see_ Burney, Fanny.

Aurelia, Hoole’s poem, 178.

Barbauld, Letitia, 124.

_Barmécides, Les_, La Harpe’s tragedy, 67.

Barry, James, portrait of Johnson, 199;

of Mrs. Montagu, 199;

relations with Mrs. Montagu, 199.

_Bas Bleu_, Hannah More’s poem, 23, 123-24, 125.

Bath, Earl of, 123, 125.

Beattie, James, character, 189;

_Essay on Truth_, 190;

_Essays_, 192;

_Minstrel, The_, 190 ff.;

—— dedicated to Mrs. Montagu, 193;

presented to George III, 192;

relations with Mrs. Montagu, 189-95.

Beauclerk, Topham, 53, 104.

Beaufort, Duchess of, 153 _n._, 205.

Bedford, Countess of, 85.

Behn, Aphra, 94-96, 257.

biography, art of, 268 ff.;

theory of, before Boswell, 270 ff.

Blount, Martha, 100.

‘blue,’ _i.e._, bluestocking, origin and use of the word, 132-33.

bluestocking, etymology, 127-28;

translated into French, 127, 130, 133.

Bluestocking Club, 123 ff.;

members of, listed, 123-24;

origin of, 129 ff.

bluestockings, as authors, 166 ff.;

as hostesses, 134 ff.;

as patrons of the arts, 189 ff.;

descent from the Marquise de Rambouillet, 22.

Bocage, Mme. du, 35, 52, 75;

poem to Mrs. Montagu, 135 _n._;

visits Mrs. Montagu, 105, 135.

Bolingbroke, Lord, relations with Mme. de Tencin, 45.

Boscawen, Admiral, 125, 129.

Boscawen, Mrs. Frances, 153-58;

assemblies, 153;

Boswell’s opinion of, 153;

interest in Mrs. Yearsley, 205;

letters, 154;

patron of letters, 154;

relations with Hannah More, 154-56, 181, 184 ff.;

—— with Pye, 156 _n._;

—— with Young, 156 _n._;

reports the discovery of new letters by Mme. de Sévigné, 237.

Boswell, James, announces the _Life of Johnson_, 278-79;

biography, knowledge of, 269;

——, theory of, derived from Johnson, 269 ff.;

caricatures of, 277;

character, 8, 110;

influence on Johnson, 222-23;

_Life of Johnson_, completeness of, 281;

——, reception of, 280;

truthfulness of, 281;

love of social life, 282;

quoted, 5;

references to bluestockings, 126;

refuses to idealize Johnson, 279;

_Tour to the Hebrides_, Johnson reads, 282;

——, reception of, 272 ff.;

——, reviewed in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 274;

——, selection from, 274-76;

treatment of his contemporaries, 278.

Boufflers, Mme. de, 53;

relations with Gibbon, 77;

—— with Hume, 27;

—— with Johnson, 53, 104.

_bouts rimés_, 117, 119, 120.

breakfasts, literary, 105 ff.

Buffon, Georges de, 52.

Burke, Edmund, 123, 139 _n._;

indebtedness to Johnson’s conversation, 234;

quoted, 5;

visits Parisian salons, 66-68.

Burney, Dr. Charles, 159, 189.

Burney, Fanny, character, 255, 257;

_Diary_, art of, 254 ff.;

——, dramatic quality in, 265;

——, selection from, 262-64;

——, truthfulness of, 265;

_Evelina_, reception of, 257;

friends, 258;

love of boisterous scenes, 262;

luck, 256;

relations with Mrs. Ord, 159-60;

relations with Mrs. Thrale, 163;

self-consciousness, 267;

sensibility, 266;

sojourn at Court, as Dresser to the Queen, 257, 259 ff.

Cardigan Priory, salon at, 91.

card-playing, in salons, 106.

Carlisle, Countess of, 88.

Carter, Elizabeth, 172-77;

catholicity of taste, 176-77;

Johnson’s opinion of, 174;

learning, 157, 173;

_Poems_, 174;

relations with Gray, 144;

—— with Mrs. Montagu, 173;

romanticism, 175;

translation of Epictetus, 173-74.

Cartwright, William, 89.

Castiglione, Baldassare, his _Cortegiano_ cited, 18 ff.

Centlivre, Susannah, 100.

Chapman, George, 85-86.

Chapone, Mrs. Hester, 177-80;

_Essays_, 138, 157;

familiar letters, 180;

_Letters_, 177 ff., 202;

poems, 179;

quoted, 132;

referred to, 124, 179;

relations with Mrs. Carter, 178;

—— with Mrs. Montagu, 178;

—— with Richardson, 177, 180.

Charles II, relations of, with the Duchess of Mazarin, 97.

Charlotte, Queen, 259, 261.

Chesterfield, Lord, opinion of the salon, 46;

relations with Mme. de Tencin, 45 ff.

Cholmondeley, Mrs. Mary, 135, 153.

Church, of England, 9;

of Rome, hatred of, in salons, 37.

circle, seating of guests in, 111, 126, 139, 159.

Clarence, Duke of, 262 ff.

Clubs, literary, 5-7.

Colman, George, 102 _n._

conversation, chief amusement in salons, 25, 135;

Goldsmith’s, 220, 221;

ideal of, 7, 20, 25, 223;

Johnson’s, 217 ff.;

—— Boswell’s influence on, 222, 227.

_conversazione_, nature and office of, 102 ff., 108 ff., 152.

‘Cophthi,’ Walpole’s name for bluestockings, 147.

Cornaro, Caterina, 17.

cosmopolitanism, of salons, 43, 144, 147 _n._

court of love, 17.

courts, Renaissance, as predecessors of the salon, 16 ff., 84.

Cowley, Abraham, verses to Mrs. Phillips, 92.

Cowper, William, correspondence, charm of, 249-50;

—— compared with Mme. de Sévigné, 239-40;

relations with Mrs. Montagu, 197-99;

translation of Homer, submitted to Mrs. Montagu, 198.

Crewe, Lady, 131, 135.

Daniel, Samuel, 84, 85, 86.

Davies, Sir John, 85.

_Decameron_, Boccaccio’s, 18 _n._

declamation, fashionable entertainment in salons, 106.

Deffand, Mme. du, blindness, 61;

career and salon, 59-64;

described by Walpole, 59-60;

ennui, 60, 63;

letter to Walpole in manner of Mme. de Sévigné, 238;

opinion of Burke, 67;

—— of Gibbon, 77;

—— of Hume, 51;

—— of Walpole, 57;

quoted, 7, 13, 62 _n._, 64, 75, 238;

relations with Mlle. de Lespinasse, 61;

—— with Montesquieu, 60 _n._;

—— with Walpole, 27, 63-65;

type of her century, 34;

wit, 29.

Delany, Mrs. Mary, 160-63;

friendship with Swift, 161;

interest in Mrs. Yearsley, 205;

relations with Miss Burney, 162;

verses, Miss More’s to, 161.

democracy, in salons, 25;

theory of, 9.

Denham, Sir John, 92.

diary, as a literary type, 254 ff.