perform. He had received large subscriptions for his promised
edition of Shakspeare; he had lived on those subscriptions
during some years; and he could not without disgrace omit
to perform his part of the contract. His friends repeatedly
exhorted him to make an effort; and he repeatedly resolved
to do so. But, notwithstanding their exhortations and his
resolutions, month followed month, year followed year, and
nothing was done. He prayed fervently against his idleness;
he determined, as often as he received the sacrament, that 5
he would no longer doze away and trifle away his time; but
the spell under which he lay resisted prayer and sacrament.
His private notes at this time are made up of self-reproaches.
"My indolence," he wrote on Easter eve in 1764, "has sunk
into grosser sluggishness. A kind of strange oblivion has 10
overspread me, so that I know not what has become of the last
year." Easter 1765 came, and found him still in the same
state. "My time," he wrote, "has been unprofitably spent,
and seems as a dream that has left nothing behind. My
memory grows confused, and I know not how the days pass 15
over me." Happily for his honour, the charm which held him
captive was at length broken by no gentle or friendly hand.
He had been weak enough to pay serious attention to a story
about a ghost which haunted a house in Cock Lane, and had
actually gone himself with some of his friends, at one in the 20
morning, to St. John's Church, Clerkenwell, in the hope of
receiving a communication from the perturbed spirit. But the
spirit, though adjured with all solemnity, remained obstinately
silent; and it soon appeared that a naughty girl of eleven had
been amusing herself by making fools of so many philosophers. 25
Churchill, who, confident in his powers, drunk with popularity,
and burning with party spirit, was looking for some man of
established fame and Tory politics to insult, celebrated the
Cock Lane Ghost in three cantos, nicknamed Johnson Pomposo,
asked where the book was which had been so long 30
promised and so liberally paid for, and directly accused the
great moralist of cheating. This terrible word proved effectual;
and in October 1765 appeared, after a delay of nine
years, the new edition of Shakspeare.
37. This publication saved Johnson's character for honesty,
but added nothing to the fame of his abilities and learning.
The preface, though it contains some good passages, is not in
his best manner. The most valuable notes are those in which
he had an opportunity of showing how attentively he had 5
during many years observed human life and human nature.
The best specimen is the note on the character of Polonius.
Nothing so good is to be found even in Wilhelm Meister's
admirable examination of Hamlet. But here praise must end.
It would be difficult to name a more slovenly, a more worthless 10
edition of any great classic. The reader may turn over play
after play without finding one happy conjectural emendation,
or one ingenious and satisfactory explanation of a passage
which had baffled preceding commentators. Johnson had, in
his prospectus, told the world that he was peculiarly fitted for 15
the task which he had undertaken, because he had, as a
lexicographer, been under the necessity of taking a wider view of
the English language than any of his predecessors. That his
knowledge of our literature was extensive is indisputable. But,
unfortunately, he had altogether neglected that very part of 20
our literature with which it is especially desirable that an editor
of Shakspeare should be conversant. It is dangerous to assert
a negative. Yet little will be risked by the assertion, that in
the two folio volumes of the English Dictionary there is not a
single passage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan 25
age, except Shakspeare and Ben. Even from Ben the quotations
are few. Johnson might easily, in a few months, have
made himself well acquainted with every old play that was
extant. But it never seems to have occurred to him that this
was a necessary preparation for the work which he had undertaken. 30
He would doubtless have admitted that it would be
the height of absurdity in a man who was not familiar with
the works of Æschylus and Euripides to publish an edition of
Sophocles. Yet he ventured to publish an edition of Shakspeare,
without having ever in his life, as far as can be discovered,
read a single scene of Massinger, Ford, Decker, Webster,
Marlow, Beaumont, or Fletcher. His detractors were noisy
and scurrilous. Those who most loved and honoured him had
little to say in praise of the manner in which he had discharged 5
the duty of a commentator. He had, however, acquitted himself
of a debt which had long lain heavy on his conscience;
and he sank back into the repose from which the sting of satire
had roused him. He long continued to live upon the fame
which he had already won. He was honoured by the University 10
of Oxford with a Doctor's degree, by the Royal Academy
with a professorship, and by the King with an interview, in
which his Majesty most graciously expressed a hope that so
excellent a writer would not cease to write. In the interval,
however, between 1765 and 1775 Johnson published only two 15
or three political tracts, the longest of which he could have
produced in forty-eight hours, if he had worked as he worked
on the Life of Savage and on Rasselas.
38. But, though his pen was now idle, his tongue was active.
The influence exercised by his conversation, directly upon 20
those with whom he lived, and indirectly on the whole literary
world, was altogether without a parallel. His colloquial talents
were indeed of the highest order. He had strong sense, quick
discernment, wit, humour, immense knowledge of literature
and of life, and an infinite store of curious anecdotes. As 25
respected style, he spoke far better than he wrote. Every sentence
which dropped from his lips was as correct in structure
as the most nicely balanced period of the Rambler. But in
his talk there were no pompous triads, and little more than a fair
proportion of words in _osity_ and _ation_. All was simplicity, 30
ease, and vigour. He uttered his short, weighty, and pointed
sentences with a power of voice, and a justness and energy of
emphasis, of which the effect was rather increased than diminished
by the rollings of his huge form, and by the asthmatic
gaspings and puffings in which the peals of his eloquence generally
ended. Nor did the laziness which made him unwilling
to sit down to his desk prevent him from giving instruction or
entertainment orally. To discuss questions of taste, of learning,
of casuistry, in language so exact and so forcible that it might 5
have been printed without the alteration of a word, was to him
no exertion, but a pleasure. He loved, as he said, to fold his
legs and have his talk out. He was ready to bestow the overflowings
of his full mind on anybody who would start a subject,
on a fellow-passenger in a stage coach, or on the person who 10
sate at the same table with him in an eating-house. But his
conversation was nowhere so brilliant and striking as when he
was surrounded by a few friends, whose abilities and knowledge
enabled them, as he once expressed it, to send him back every
ball that he threw. Some of these, in 1764, formed themselves 15
into a club, which gradually became a formidable power in the
commonwealth of letters. The verdicts pronounced by this
conclave on new books were speedily known over all London,
and were sufficient to sell off a whole edition in a day, or to
condemn the sheets to the service of the trunk-maker and the 20
pastry-cook. Nor shall we think this strange when we consider
what great and various talents and acquirements met in the
little fraternity. Goldsmith was the representative of poetry
and light literature, Reynolds of the arts, Burke of political
eloquence and political philosophy. There, too, were Gibbon, 25
the greatest historian, and Jones, the greatest linguist, of the
age. Garrick brought to the meetings his inexhaustible pleasantry,
his incomparable mimicry, and his consummate knowledge
of stage effect. Among the most constant attendants
were two high-born and high-bred gentlemen, closely bound 30
together by friendship, but of widely different characters and
habits; Bennet Langton, distinguished by his skill in Greek
literature, by the orthodoxy of his opinions, and by the sanctity
of his life; and Topham Beauclerk, renowned for his amours,
his knowledge of the gay world, his fastidious taste, and his
sarcastic wit. To predominate over such a society was not
easy. Yet even over such a society Johnson predominated.
Burke might indeed have disputed the supremacy to which
others were under the necessity of submitting. But Burke, 5
though not generally a very patient listener, was content to
take the second part when Johnson was present; and the
club itself, consisting of so many eminent men, is to this
day popularly designated as Johnson's Club.
39. Among the members of this celebrated body was one 10
to whom it has owed the greater part of its celebrity, yet who
was regarded with little respect by his brethren, and had not
without difficulty obtained a seat among them. This was
James Boswell, a young Scotch lawyer, heir to an honourable
name and a fair estate. That he was a coxcomb and a bore, 15
weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous, was obvious to all who
were acquainted with him. That he could not reason, that
he had no wit, no humour, no eloquence, is apparent from
his writings. And yet his writings are read beyond the
Mississippi, and under the Southern Cross, and are likely to be 20
read as long as the English exists, either as a living or as a
dead language. Nature had made him a slave and an idolater.
His mind resembled those creepers which the botanists call
parasites, and which can subsist only by clinging round the
stems and imbibing the juices of stronger plants. He must 25
have fastened himself on somebody. He might have fastened
himself on Wilkes, and have become the fiercest patriot in the
Bill of Rights Society. He might have fastened himself on
Whitfield, and have become the loudest field preacher among
the Calvinistic Methodists. In a happy hour he fastened himself 30
on Johnson. The pair might seem ill matched. For
Johnson had early been prejudiced against Boswell's country.
To a man of Johnson's strong understanding and irritable
temper, the silly egotism and adulation of Boswell must have
been as teasing as the constant buzz of a fly. Johnson hated
to be questioned; and Boswell was eternally catechising him
on all kinds of subjects, and sometimes propounded such
questions as "What would you do, sir, if you were locked up
in a tower with a baby?" Johnson was a water drinker; and 5
Boswell was a wine-bibber, and indeed little better than a
habitual sot. It was impossible that there should be perfect
harmony between two such companions. Indeed, the great
man was sometimes provoked into fits of passion in which he
said things which the small man, during a few hours, seriously 10
resented. Every quarrel, however, was soon made up. During
twenty years the disciple continued to worship the master:
the master continued to scold the disciple, to sneer at him, and
to love him. The two friends ordinarily resided at a great
distance from each other. Boswell practised in the Parliament 15
House of Edinburgh, and could pay only occasional
visits to London. During those visits his chief business was
to watch Johnson, to discover all Johnson's habits, to turn the
conversation to subjects about which Johnson was likely to
say something remarkable, and to fill quarto note books with 20
minutes of what Johnson had said. In this way were gathered
the materials out of which was afterwards constructed the most
interesting biographical work in the world.
40. Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson formed a
connection less important indeed to his fame, but much more 25
important to his happiness, than his connection with Boswell.
Henry Thrale, one of the most opulent brewers in the kingdom,
a man of sound and cultivated understanding, rigid principles,
and liberal spirit, was married to one of those clever,
kind-hearted, engaging, vain, pert young women, who are 30
perpetually doing or saying what is not exactly right, but who, do
or say what they may, are always agreeable. In 1765 the
Thrales became acquainted with Johnson, and the acquaintance
ripened fast into friendship. They were astonished and
delighted by the brilliancy of his conversation. They were
flattered by finding that a man so widely celebrated, preferred
their house to any other in London. Even the peculiarities
which seemed to unfit him for civilised society, his gesticulations,
his rollings, his puffings, his mutterings, the strange way 5
in which he put on his clothes, the ravenous eagerness with
which he devoured his dinner, his fits of melancholy, his fits of
anger, his frequent rudeness, his occasional ferocity, increased
the interest which his new associates took in him. For these
things were the cruel marks left behind by a life which had 10
been one long conflict with disease and with adversity. In a
vulgar hack writer such oddities would have excited only disgust.
But in a man of genius, learning, and virtue their effect
was to add pity to admiration and esteem. Johnson soon had
an apartment at the brewery in Southwark, and a still more 15
pleasant apartment at the villa of his friends on Streatham
Common. A large part of every year he passed in those
abodes, abodes which must have seemed magnificent and luxurious
indeed, when compared with the dens in which he had
generally been lodged. But his chief pleasures were derived 20
from what the astronomer of his Abyssinian tale called "the
endearing elegance of female friendship." Mrs. Thrale rallied
him, soothed him, coaxed him, and, if she sometimes provoked
him by her flippancy, made ample amends by listening to his
reproofs with angelic sweetness of temper. When he was 25
diseased in body and in mind, she was the most tender of
nurses. No comfort that wealth could purchase, no contrivance
that womanly ingenuity, set to work by womanly compassion,
could devise, was wanting to his sick-room. He
requited her kindness by an affection pure as the affection of 30
a father, yet delicately tinged with a gallantry which, though
awkward, must have been more flattering than the attentions
of a crowd of the fools who gloried in the names, now obsolete,
of Buck and Maccaroni. It should seem that a full half of
Johnson's life, during about sixteen years, was passed under
the roof of the Thrales. He accompanied the family sometimes
to Bath, and sometimes to Brighton, once to Wales, and once
to Paris. But he had at the same time a house in one of the
narrow and gloomy courts on the north of Fleet Street. In 5
the garrets was his library, a large and miscellaneous collection
of books, falling to pieces and begrimed with dust. On
a lower floor he sometimes, but very rarely, regaled a friend
with a plain dinner, a veal pie, or a leg of lamb and spinage,
and a rice pudding. Nor was the dwelling uninhabited during 10
his long absences. It was the home of the most extraordinary
assemblage of inmates that ever was brought together. At
the head of the establishment Johnson had placed an old
lady named Williams, whose chief recommendations were her
blindness and her poverty. But, in spite of her murmurs and 15
reproaches, he gave an asylum to another lady who was as poor
as herself, Mrs. Desmoulins, whose family he had known many
years before in Staffordshire. Room was found for the daughter
of Mrs. Desmoulins, and for another destitute damsel, who was
generally addressed as Miss Carmichael, but whom her generous 20
host called Polly. An old quack doctor named Levett,
who bled and dosed coal-heavers and hackney coachmen, and
received for fees crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin,
and sometimes a little copper, completed this strange menagerie.
All these poor creatures were at constant war with each 25
other, and with Johnson's negro servant Frank. Sometimes,
indeed, they transferred their hostilities from the servant to
the master, complained that a better table was not kept for
them, and railed or maundered till their benefactor was glad to
make his escape to Streatham, or to the Mitre Tavern. And 30
yet he, who was generally the haughtiest and most irritable
of mankind, who was but too prompt to resent anything which
looked like a slight on the part of a purse-proud bookseller,
or of a noble and powerful patron, bore patiently from
mendicants, who, but for his bounty, must have gone to the
workhouse, insults more provoking than those for which he had
knocked down Osborne and bidden defiance to Chesterfield.
Year after year Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Desmoulins, Polly, and
Levett continued to torment him and to live upon him. 5
41. The course of life which has been described was
interrupted in Johnson's sixty-fourth year by an important
event. He had early read an account of the Hebrides, and
had been much interested by learning that there was so near
him a land peopled by a race which was still as rude and 10
simple as in the middle ages. A wish to become intimately
acquainted with a state of society so utterly unlike all that he
had ever seen frequently crossed his mind. But it is not
probable that his curiosity would have overcome his habitual
sluggishness, and his love of the smoke, the mud, and the 15
cries of London, had not Boswell importuned him to attempt
the adventure, and offered to be his squire. At length, in
August 1773, Johnson crossed the Highland line, and plunged
courageously into what was then considered, by most Englishmen,
as a dreary and perilous wilderness. After wandering 20
about two months through the Celtic region, sometimes in
rude boats which did not protect him from the rain, and
sometimes on small shaggy ponies which could hardly bear
his weight, he returned to his old haunts with a mind full of
new images and new theories. During the following year he 25
employed himself in recording his adventures. About the
beginning of 1775, his Journey to the Hebrides was published,
and was, during some weeks, the chief subject of conversation
in all circles in which any attention was paid to literature.
The book is still read with pleasure. The narrative is 30
entertaining; the speculations, whether sound or unsound, are
always ingenious; and the style, though too stiff and pompous,
is somewhat easier and more graceful than that of his
early writings. His prejudice against the Scotch had at
length become little more than matter of jest; and whatever
remained of the old feeling had been effectually removed by
the kind and respectful hospitality with which he had been
received in every part of Scotland. It was, of course, not to
be expected that an Oxonian Tory should praise the Presbyterian 5
polity and ritual, or that an eye accustomed to the
hedgerows and parks of England should not be struck by the
bareness of Berwickshire and East Lothian. But even in
censure Johnson's tone is not unfriendly. The most enlightened
Scotchmen, with Lord Mansfield at their head, were 10
well pleased. But some foolish and ignorant Scotchmen were
moved to anger by a little unpalatable truth which was
mingled with much eulogy, and assailed him whom they chose
to consider as the enemy of their country, with libels much
more dishonourable to their country than anything that he 15
had ever said or written. They published paragraphs in the
newspapers, articles in the magazines, sixpenny pamphlets,
five-shilling books. One scribbler abused Johnson for being
blear-eyed; another for being a pensioner; a third informed
the world that one of the Doctor's uncles had been convicted 20
of felony in Scotland, and had found that there was in that
country one tree capable of supporting the weight of an
Englishman. Macpherson, whose Fingal had been proved
in the Journey to be an impudent forgery, threatened to take
vengeance with a cane. The only effect of this threat was 25
that Johnson reiterated the charge of forgery in the most
contemptuous terms, and walked about, during some time,
with a cudgel, which, if the impostor had not been too wise
to encounter it, would assuredly have descended upon him,
to borrow the sublime language of his own epic poem, "like 30
a hammer on the red son of the furnace."
42. Of other assailants Johnson took no notice whatever.
He had early resolved never to be drawn into controversy;
and he adhered to his resolution with a steadfastness which
is the more extraordinary, because he was, both intellectually
and morally, of the stuff of which controversialists are made.
In conversation, he was a singularly eager, acute, and pertinacious
disputant. When at a loss for good reasons, he
had recourse to sophistry; and, when heated by altercation, 5
he made unsparing use of sarcasm and invective. But, when
he took his pen in his hand, his whole character seemed
to be changed. A hundred bad writers misrepresented him
and reviled him; but not one of the hundred could boast of
having been thought by him worthy of a refutation, or even 10
of a retort. The Kenricks, Campbells, MacNicols, and Hendersons
did their best to annoy him, in the hope that he would
give them importance by answering them. But the reader will
in vain search his works for any allusion to Kenrick or Campbell,
to MacNicol or Henderson. One Scotchman, bent on 15
vindicating the fame of Scotch learning, defied him to the
combat in a detestable Latin hexameter.
"Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum."
But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had learned,
both from his own observation and from literary history, 20
in which he was deeply read, that the place of books in
the public estimation is fixed, not by what is written about
them, but by what is written in them; and that an author
whose works are likely to live is very unwise if he stoops to
wrangle with detractors whose works are certain to die. He 25
always maintained that fame was a shuttlecock which could
be kept up only by being beaten back, as well as beaten forward,
and which would soon fall if there were only one battledore.
No saying was oftener in his mouth than that fine
apophthegm of Bentley, that no man was ever written down 30
but by himself.
43. Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of the
Journey to the Hebrides, Johnson did what none of his
envious assailants could have done, and to a certain extent
succeeded in writing himself down. The disputes between
England and her American colonies had reached a point at
which no amicable adjustment was possible. Civil war was
evidently impending; and the ministers seem to have thought 5
that the eloquence of Johnson might with advantage be
employed to inflame the nation against the opposition here,
and against the rebels beyond the Atlantic. He had already
written two or three tracts in defence of the foreign and
domestic policy of the government; and those tracts, though 10
hardly worthy of him, were much superior to the crowd of
pamphlets which lay on the counters of Almon and Stockdale.
But his Taxation no Tyranny was a pitiable failure. The very
title was a silly phrase, which can have been recommended
to his choice by nothing but a jingling alliteration which he 15
ought to have despised. The arguments were such as boys
use in debating societies. The pleasantry was as awkward as
the gambols of a hippopotamus. Even Boswell was forced to
own that, in this unfortunate piece, he could detect no trace
of his master's powers. The general opinion was that the 20
strong faculties which had produced the Dictionary and the
Rambler were beginning to feel the effect of time and of
disease, and that the old man would best consult his credit
by writing no more.