Transcribed from the 1889 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Book cover]
CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
* * * * *
RASSELAS
PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA
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BY
SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
[Picture: Decorative image]
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
LONDON, PARIS & MELBOURNE.
1889.
INTRODUCTION.
RASSELAS was written by Samuel Johnson in the year 1759, when his age was
fifty. He had written his _London_ in 1738; his _Vanity of Human Wishes_
in 1740; his _Rambler_ between March, 1750, and March, 1752. In 1755 his
_Dictionary_ had appeared, and Dublin, by giving him its honorary LL.D.,
had enabled his friends to call him “Doctor” Johnson. His friends were
many, and his honour among men was great. He owed them to his union of
intellectual power with unflinching probity. But he had worked hard,
battling against the wolf without, and the black dog within—poverty and
hypochondria. He was still poor, though his personal wants did not
exceed a hundred pounds a year. His wife had been seven years dead, and
he missed her sorely. His old mother, who lived to the age of ninety,
died poor in January of this year, 1759. In her old age, Johnson had
sought to help her from his earnings. At her death there were some
little debts, and there were costs of burial. That he might earn enough
to pay them he wrote _Rasselas_.
_Rasselas_ was written in the evenings of one week, and sent to press
while being written. Johnson earned by it a hundred pounds, with
twenty-five pounds more for a second edition. It was published in March
or April; Johnson never read it after it had been published until more
than twenty years afterwards. Then, finding it in a chaise with Boswell,
he took it up and read it eagerly.
This is one of Johnson’s letters to his mother, written after he knew
that her last illness had come upon her. It is dated about ten days
before her death. The “Miss” referred to in it was a faithful friend.
“Miss” was his home name for an affectionate step-daughter, Lucy Porter:—
“HONOURED MADAM,—
“The account which Miss gives me of your health pierces my heart.
God comfort and preserve you, and save you, for the sake of Jesus
Christ.
“I would have Miss read to you from time to time the Passion of our
Saviour; and sometimes the sentences in the Communion Service
beginning—’Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and
I will give you rest.’
“I have just now read a physical book which inclines me to think that
a strong infusion of the bark would do you good. Do, dear mother,
try it.
“Pray, send me your blessing, and forgive all that I have done amiss
to you. And whatever you would have done, and what debts you would
have paid first, or anything else that you would direct, let Miss put
it down; I shall endeavour to obey you.
“I have got twelve guineas to send you” [six were borrowed. There
was a note in Johnson’s Diary of six guineas repaid to Allen, the
printer, who had lent them when he wanted to send money to his dying
mother], “but unhappily am at a loss how to send it to-night. If I
cannot send it to-night, it will come by the next post.
“Pray, do not omit anything mentioned in this letter. God bless you
for ever and ever.
“I am,
“Your dutiful Son,
“SAM. JOHNSON.
“_Jan._ 13, 1759.”
That is the personal side of the tale of _Rasselas_. In that way Johnson
suddenly, on urgent pressure, carried out a design that had been in his
mind. The success of Eastern tales, written as a form of moral essay, in
the _Rambler_ and _Adventurer_, upon suggestion, no doubt, of Addison’s
_Vision of Mirza_, had prompted him to express his view of life more
fully than in essay form by way of Oriental apologue; and his early work
on Father Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia, caused him to choose Abyssinia for
the land in which to lay his fable.
But Johnson’s _Rasselas_ has also a close relation to the time when it
was written, as Johnson himself had to the time in which he lived. From
the beginning of the century—and especially, in England, since the
beginning of the reign of George the Second—there had been a growing
sense of the ills of life, associated in some minds with doubt whether
there could be a just God ruling this unhappy world. Hard problems of
humanity pressed more and more on earnest minds. The feeling expressed
in Johnson’s _Vanity of Human __Wishes_ had deepened everywhere by the
year 1759. This has intense expression in _Rasselas_, where all the joys
of life, without active use of the energies of life, can give no joy; and
where all uses of the energies of men are for the attainment of ideals
worthless or delusive. This life was to Johnson, and to almost all the
earnest thinkers of his time, unhappy in itself—a school-house where the
rod was ever active. But in its unhappiness Johnson found no power that
could overthrow his faith. To him this world was but a place of
education for the happiness that would be to the faithful in the world to
come. There was a great dread for him in the question, Who shall be
found faithful? But there was no doubt in his mind that the happiness of
man is to be found only beyond the grave. This was a feeling spread
through Europe in the darkness gathering before the outburst of the storm
of the great French Revolution. Even Gray, in his _Ode on a Distant
Prospect of Eton College_, regarded Eton boys at their sports as “little
victims,” unconscious of the doom of miseries awaiting them in life.
Thus Johnson’s _Rasselas_ is a book doubly typical. We have in it the
spirit of the writer when it best expressed the spirit of his time.
H. M.
CHAPTER I
DESCRIPTION OF A PALACE IN A VALLEY.
YE who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with
eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the
promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be
supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of
Abyssinia.
Rasselas was the fourth son of the mighty Emperor in whose dominions the
father of waters begins his course—whose bounty pours down the streams of
plenty, and scatters over the world the harvests of Egypt.
According to the custom which has descended from age to age among the
monarchs of the torrid zone, Rasselas was confined in a private palace,
with the other sons and daughters of Abyssinian royalty, till the order
of succession should call him to the throne.
The place which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had destined for the
residence of the Abyssinian princes was a spacious valley in the kingdom
of Amhara, surrounded on every side by mountains, of which the summits
overhang the middle part. The only passage by which it could be entered
was a cavern that passed under a rock, of which it had long been disputed
whether it was the work of nature or of human industry. The outlet of
the cavern was concealed by a thick wood, and the mouth which opened into
the valley was closed with gates of iron, forged by the artificers of
ancient days, so massive that no man, without the help of engines, could
open or shut them.
From the mountains on every side rivulets descended that filled all the
valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the middle,
inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every fowl whom
nature has taught to dip the wing in water. This lake discharged its
superfluities by a stream, which entered a dark cleft of the mountain on
the northern side, and fell with dreadful noise from precipice to
precipice till it was heard no more.
The sides of the mountains were covered with trees, the banks of the
brooks were diversified with flowers; every blast shook spices from the
rocks, and every month dropped fruits upon the ground. All animals that
bite the grass or browse the shrubs, whether wild or tame, wandered in
this extensive circuit, secured from beasts of prey by the mountains
which confined them. On one part were flocks and herds feeding in the
pastures, on another all the beasts of chase frisking in the lawns, the
sprightly kid was bounding on the rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in
the trees, and the solemn elephant reposing in the shade. All the
diversities of the world were brought together, the blessings of nature
were collected, and its evils extracted and excluded.
The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants with all the
necessaries of life, and all delights and superfluities were added at the
annual visit which the Emperor paid his children, when the iron gate was
opened to the sound of music, and during eight days every one that
resided in the valley was required to propose whatever might contribute
to make seclusion pleasant, to fill up the vacancies of attention, and
lessen the tediousness of time. Every desire was immediately granted.
All the artificers of pleasure were called to gladden the festivity; the
musicians exerted the power of harmony, and the dancers showed their
activity before the princes, in hopes that they should pass their lives
in blissful captivity, to which those only were admitted whose
performance was thought able to add novelty to luxury. Such was the
appearance of security and delight which this retirement afforded, that
they to whom it was new always desired that it might be perpetual; and as
those on whom the iron gate had once closed were never suffered to
return, the effect of longer experience could not be known. Thus every
year produced new scenes of delight, and new competitors for
imprisonment.
The palace stood on an eminence, raised about thirty paces above the
surface of the lake. It was divided into many squares or courts, built
with greater or less magnificence according to the rank of those for whom
they were designed. The roofs were turned into arches of massive stone,
joined by a cement that grew harder by time, and the building stood from
century to century, deriding the solstitial rains and equinoctial
hurricanes, without need of reparation.
This house, which was so large as to be fully known to none but some
ancient officers, who successively inherited the secrets of the place,
was built as if Suspicion herself had dictated the plan. To every room
there was an open and secret passage; every square had a communication
with the rest, either from the upper storeys by private galleries, or by
subterraneous passages from the lower apartments. Many of the columns
had unsuspected cavities, in which a long race of monarchs had deposited
their treasures. They then closed up the opening with marble, which was
never to be removed but in the utmost exigences of the kingdom, and
recorded their accumulations in a book, which was itself concealed in a
tower, not entered but by the Emperor, attended by the prince who stood
next in succession.