SAMUEL JOHNSON AND HIS TIMES.
Early Life and Career. London. Rambler and Idler. The Dictionary. Other
Works. Lives of the Poets. Person and Character. Style. Junius.
EARLY LIFE AND CAREER.
Doctor Samuel Johnson was poet, dramatist, essayist, lexicographer,
dogmatist, and critic, and, in this array of professional characters,
played so distinguished a part in his day that he was long regarded as a
prodigy in English literature. His influence has waned since his
personality has grown dim, and his learning been superseded or
overshadowed; but he still remains, and must always remain, the most
prominent literary figure of his age; and this is in no small measure due
to his good fortune in having such a champion and biographer as James
Boswell. Johnson's Life by Boswell is without a rival among biographies:
in the words of Macaulay: "Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic
poets; Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists;
Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is
the first of biographers;" and Burke has said that Johnson appears far
greater in Boswell's book than in his own. We thus know everything about
Johnson, as we do not know about any other literary man, and this
knowledge, due to his biographer, is at least one of the elements of
Johnson's immense reputation.
He was born at Lichfield on the 18th of September, 1709. His father was a
bookseller; and after having had a certain amount of knowledge "well
beaten into him" by Mr. Hunter, young Johnson was for two years an
assistant in his father's shop. But such was his aptitude for learning,
that he was sent in 1728 to Pembroke College, Oxford. His youth was not a
happy one: he was afflicted with scrofula, "which disfigured a countenance
naturally well formed, and hurt his visual nerves so much that he did not
see at all with one of his eyes." He had a morbid melancholy,--fits of
dejection which made his life miserable. He was poor; and when, in 1731,
his father died insolvent, he was obliged to leave the university without
a degree. After fruitless attempts to establish a school, he married, in
1736, Mrs. Porter, a widow, who had £800. Rude and unprepossessing to
others, she was sincerely loved by her husband, and deeply lamented when
she died. In 1737 Johnson went to London in company with young Garrick,
who had been one of his few pupils, and who was soon to fill the English
world with his theatrical fame.
LONDON.--Johnson soon began to write for Cave's _Gentleman's Magazine_,
and in 1738 he astonished Pope and the artificial poets by producing, in
their best vein, his imitation of the third Satire of Juvenal, which he
called _London_. This was his usher into the realm of literature. But he
did not become prominent until he had reached his fiftieth year; he
continued to struggle with gloom and poverty, too proud to seek patronage
in an age when popular remuneration had not taken its place. In 1740 he
was a reporter of the debates in parliament for Cave; and it is said that
many of the indifferent speakers were astonished to read the next day the
fine things which the reporter had placed in their mouths, which they had
never uttered.
In 1749 he published his _Vanity of Human Wishes_, an imitation of the
tenth Satire of Juvenal, which was as heartily welcomed as _London_ had
been. It is Juvenal applied to English and European history. It contains
many lines familiar to us all; among them are the following:
Let observation with extended view
Survey mankind from China to Peru.
In speaking of Charles XII., he says:
His fall was destined to a barren strand,
A petty fortress and a dubious hand;
He left a name at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral or adorn a tale.
From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow,
And Swift expires a driveller and a show.
In the same year he published his tragedy of _Irene_, which,
notwithstanding the friendly efforts of Garrick, who was now manager of
Drury Lane Theatre, was not successful. As a poet, Johnson was the
perfection of the artificial school; and this very technical perfection
was one of the causes of the reaction which was already beginning to sweep
it away.
RAMBLER AND IDLER.--In 1750 he commenced _The Rambler_, a periodical like
_The Spectator_, of which he wrote nearly all the articles, and which
lived for two years. Solemn, didactic, and sonorous, it lacked the variety
and genial humor which had characterized Addison and Steele. In 1758 he
started _The Idler_, in the same vein, which also ran its respectable
course for two years. In 1759 his mother died, and, in order to defray the
expenses of her funeral, he wrote his story of _Rasselas_ in the evenings
of one week, for two editions of which he received £125. Full of moral
aphorisms and instruction, this "Abyssinian tale" is entirely English in
philosophy and fancy, and has not even the slight illusion of other
Eastern tales in French and English, which were written about the same
time, and which are very similar in form and matter. Of _Rasselas_,
Hazlitt says: "It is the most melancholy and debilitating moral
speculation that was ever put forth."
THE DICTIONARY.--As early as 1747 he had begun to write his English
Dictionary, which, after eight years of incessant and unassisted labor,
appeared in 1755. It was a noble thought, and produced a noble work--a
work which filled an original vacancy. In France, a National Academy had
undertaken a similar work; but this English giant had accomplished his
labors alone. The amount of reading necessary to fix and illustrate his
definitions was enormous, and the book is especially valuable from the apt
and varied quotations from English authors. He established the language,
as he found it, on a firm basis in signification and orthography. He laid
the foundation upon which future lexicographers were to build; but he was
ignorant of the Teutonic languages, from which so much of the structure
and words of the English are taken, and thus is signally wanting in the
scientific treatment of his subject. This is not to his discredit, for the
science of language has had its origin in a later and modern time.
Perhaps nothing displays more fully the proud, sturdy, and self-reliant
character of the man, than the eight years of incessant and unassisted
labor upon this work.
His letter to Lord Chesterfield, declining his tardy patronage, after
experiencing his earlier neglect, is a model of severe and yet respectful
rebuke, and is to be regarded as one of the most significant events in his
history. In it he says: "The notice you have been pleased to take of my
labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I
am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart
it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical
asperity not to confess obligation when no benefit has been received, or
to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a
patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself." Living as he did
in an age when the patronage of the great was wearing out, and public
appreciation beginning to reward an author's toils, this manly letter gave
another stab to the former, and hastened the progress of the latter.
OTHER WORKS.--The fame of Johnson was now fully established, and his
labors were rewarded, in 1762, by the receipt of a pension of £300 from
the government, which made him quite independent. It was then, in the very
heyday of his reputation, that, in 1763, he became acquainted with James
Boswell, to whom he at once became a Grand Lama; who took down the words
as they dropped from his lips, and embalmed his fame.
In 1764 he issued his edition of Shakspeare, in eight octavo volumes, of
which the best that can be said is, that it is not valuable as a
commentary. A commentator must have something in common with his author;
there was nothing congenial between Shakspeare and Johnson.
It was in 1773, that, urged by Boswell, he made his famous _Journey to the
Hebrides_, or Western Islands of Scotland, of which he gave delightful
descriptions in a series of letters to his friend Mrs. Thrale, which he
afterwards wrote out in more pompous style for publication. The letters
are current, witty, and simple; the published work is stilted and
grandiloquent.
It is well known that he had no sympathy with the American colonies in
their struggle against British oppression. When, in 1775, the Congress
published their _Resolutions_ and _Address_, he answered them in a
prejudiced and illogical paper entitled _Taxation no Tyranny_.
Notwithstanding its want of argument, it had the weight of his name and of
a large party; but history has construed it by the _animus_ of the writer,
who had not long before declared of the colonists that they were "a race
of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of
hanging."
As early as 1744 he had published a Life of the gifted but unhappy
Savage, whom in his days of penury he had known, and with whom he had
sympathized; but in 1781 appeared his _Lives of the English Poets, with
Critical Observations on their Works_, and _Lives of Sundry Eminent
Persons_.
LIVES OF THE POETS.--These comprise fifty-two poets, most of them little
known at the present day, and thirteen _eminent persons_. Of historical
value, as showing us the estimate of an age in which Johnson was an usher
to the temple of Fame, they are now of little other value; those of his
own school and coterie he could understand and eulogize. To Milton he
accorded carefully measured praise, but could not do him full justice,
from entire want of sympathy; the majesty of blank verse pentameters he
could not appreciate, and from Milton's puritanism he recoiled with
disgust.
Johnson died on the 13th of December, 1784, and was buried in Westminster
Abbey; a flat stone with an inscription was placed over his grave: it was
also designed to erect his monument there, but St. Paul's Cathedral was
afterwards chosen as the place. There, a colossal figure represents the
distinguished author, and a Latin epitaph, written by Dr. Parr, records
his virtues and his achievements in literature.
PERSON AND CHARACTER.--A few words must suffice to give a summary of his
character, and will exhibit some singular contrarieties. He had varied but
not very profound learning; was earnest, self-satisfied, overbearing in
argument, or, as Sir Walter Scott styles it, _despotic_. As distinguished
for his powers of conversation as for his writings, he always talked _ex
cathedra_, and was exceedingly impatient of opposition. Brutal in his word
attacks, he concealed by tone and manner a generous heart. Grandiloquent
in ordinary matters, he "made little fishes talk like whales."
Always swayed by religious influences, he was intolerant of the sects
around him; habitually pious, he was not without superstition; he was not
an unbeliever in ghostly apparitions, and had a great fear of death; he
also had the touching mania--touching every post as he walked along the
street, thereby to avoid some unknown evil.
Although of rural origin, he became a thorough London cockney, and his
hatred of Scotchmen and dissenters is at once pitiful and ludicrous. His
manners and gestures were uncouth and disagreeable. He devoured rather
than eat his food, and was a remarkable tea-drinker; on one occasion,
perhaps for bravado, taking twenty-five cups at a sitting.
Massive in figure, seamed with scrofulous scars and marks, seeing with but
one eye, he had convulsive motions and twitches, and his slovenly dress
added to the uncouthness and oddity of his appearance. In all respects he
was an original, and even his defects and peculiarities seemed to conduce
to make him famous.
Considered the first among the critics of his own day, later judgments
have reversed his decisions; many of those whom he praised have sunk into
obscurity, and those whom he failed to appreciate have been elevated to
the highest pedestals in the literary House of Fame.
STYLE.--His style is full-sounding and antithetic, his periods are
carefully balanced, his manner eminently respectable and good; but his
words, very many of them of Latin derivation, constitute what the later
critics have named _Johnsonese_, which is certainly capable of translation
into plainer Saxon English, with good results. Thus, in speaking of
Addison's style, he says: "It is pure without scrupulosity, and exact
without apparent elaboration; ... he seeks no ambitious ornaments, and
tries no hazardous innovations; his page is always luminous, but never
blazes in unexpected splendor." Very numerous examples might be given of
sentences most of the words in which might be replaced by simpler
expressions with great advantage to the sound and to the sense.
As a critic, his word was law: his opinion was clearly and often severely
expressed on literary men and literary subjects, and no great writer of
his own or a past age escaped either his praise or his censure. Authors
wrote with the fear of his criticism before their eyes; and his pompous
diction was long imitated by men who, without this influence, would have
written far better English. But, on the other hand, his honesty, his
scholarship, his piety, and his championship of what was good and true, as
depicted in his writings, made him a blessing to his time, and an honored
and notable character in the noble line of English authors.
JUNIUS.--Among the most significant and instructive writings to the
student of English history, in the earlier part of the reign of George
III., is a series of letters written by a person, or by several persons in
combination, whose _nom de plume_ was Junius. These letters specified the
errors and abuses of the government, were exceedingly bold in denunciation
and bitter in invective. The letters of Junius were forty-four in number,
and were addressed to Mr. Woodfall, the proprietor of _The Public
Advertiser_, a London newspaper, in which they were published. Fifteen
others in the same vein were signed Philo-Junius; and there are besides
sixty-two notes addressed by Junius to his publisher.
The principal letters signed Junius were addressed to ministers directly,
and the first, on the _State of the Nation_, was a manifesto of the
grounds of his writing and his purpose. It was evident that a bold censor
had sprung forth; one acquainted with the secret movements of the
government, and with the foibles and faults of the principal statesmen:
they writhed under his lash. Some of the more gifted attempted to answer
him, and, as in the case of Sir William Draper, met with signal
discomfiture. Vigorous efforts were made to discover the offender, but
without success; and as to his first patriotic intentions he soon added
personal spite, the writer found that his life would not be safe if his
secret were discovered. The rage of parties has long since died away, and
the writer or writers have long been in their graves, but the curious
secret still remains, and has puzzled the brains of students to the
present day. Allibone gives a list of forty-two persons to whom the
letters were in whole or in part ascribed, among whom are Colonel Barré,
Burke, Lord Chatham, General Charles Lee, Horne Tooke, Wilkes, Horace
Walpole, Lord Lyttleton, Lord George Sackville, and Sir Philip Francis.
Pamphlets and books have been written by hundreds upon this question of
authorship, and it is not yet by any means definitely settled. The
concurrence of the most intelligent investigators is in favor of Sir
Philip Francis, because of the handwriting being like his, but slightly
disguised; because he and Junius were alike intimate with the government
workings in the state department and in the war department, and took notes
of speeches in the House of Lords; because the letters came to an end just
before Francis was sent to India; and because, indecisive as these claims
are, they are stronger than those of any other suspected author. Macaulay
adds to these: "One of the strongest reasons for believing that Francis
was Junius is the _moral_ resemblance between the two men."
It is interesting to notice that the ministry engaged Dr. Johnson to
answer the _forty-second_ letter, in which the king is especially
arraigned. Johnson's answer, published in 1771, is entitled _Thoughts on
the Late Transactions respecting Falkland's Islands_. Of Junius he says:
"He cries havoc without reserve, and endeavors to let slip the dogs of
foreign and civil war, ignorant whither they are going, and careless what
maybe their prey." "It is not hard to be sarcastic in a mask; while he
walks like Jack the giant-killer, in a coat of darkness, he may do much
mischief with little strength." "Junius is an unusual phenomenon, on which
some have gazed with wonder and some with terror; but wonder and terror
are transitory passions. He will soon be more closely viewed, or more
attentively examined, and what folly has taken for a comet, that from its
flaming hair shook pestilence and war, inquiry will find to be only a
meteor formed by the vapors of putrefying democracy, and kindled into
flame by the effervescence of interest struggling with conviction, which,
after having plunged its followers into a bog, will leave us inquiring why
we regarded it."
Whatever the moral effect of the writings of Junius, as exhibited by
silent influence in the lapse of years, the schemes he proposed and the
party he championed alike failed of success. His farewell letter to
Woodfall bears date the 19th of January, 1773. In that letter he declared
that "he must be an idiot to write again; that he had meant well by the
cause and the public; that both were given up; that there were not ten men
who would act steadily together on any question."[35] But one thing is
sure: he has enriched the literature with public letters of rare sagacity,
extreme elegance of rhetoric and great logical force, and has presented a
problem always curious and interesting for future students,--not yet
solved, in spite of Mr. Chabot's recent book,[36] and every day becoming
more difficult of solution,--_Who was Junius_?