to raggedness; and his appearance excited a mirth and a pity which
were equally intolerable to his haughty spirit. He was driven from the
quadrangle of Christ Church by the sneering looks which the members of
that aristocratical society cast at the holes in his shoes. Some
charitable person placed a new pair at his door; but he spurned them
away in a fury. Distress made him, not servile, but reckless and
ungovernable. No opulent gentleman commoner panting for one-and-twenty
could have treated the academical authorities with more gross
disrespect. The needy scholar was generally to be seen under the gate
of Pembroke, a gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing a circle
of lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and dirty linen, his
wit and audacity gave him an undisputed ascendancy. In every mutiny
against the discipline of the college he was the ringleader. Much was
pardoned, however, to a youth so highly distinguished by abilities and
acquirements. He had early made himself known by turning Pope's
"Messiah" into Latin verse. The style and rhythm, indeed, were not
exactly Virgilian; but the translation found many admirers, and was
read with pleasure by Pope himself.
The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the ordinary course of
things, have become a Bachelor of Arts; but he was at the end of his
resources. Those promises of support on which he had relied had not
been kept. His family could do nothing for him. His debts to Oxford
tradesmen were small indeed, yet larger than he could pay. In the
autumn of 1731 he was under the necessity of quitting the university
without a degree. In the following winter his father died. The old man
left but a pittance; and of that pittance almost the whole was
appropriated to the support of his widow. The property to which Samuel
succeeded amounted to no more than twenty pounds.
His life, during the thirty years which followed, was one hard
struggle with poverty. The misery of that struggle needed no
aggravation, but was aggravated by the sufferings of an unsound body
and an unsound mind. Before the young man left the university his
hereditary malady had broken forth in a singularly cruel form. He had
become an incurable hypochondriac. He said long after that he had been
mad all his life, or at least not perfectly sane; and, in truth,
eccentricities less strange than his have often been thought grounds
sufficient for absolving felons and for setting aside wills. His
grimaces, his gestures, his mutterings, sometimes diverted and
sometimes terrified people who did not know him.
With such infirmities of body and of mind this celebrated man was
left, at two-and-twenty, to fight his way through the world. He
remained during about five years in the Midland Counties. At
Lichfield, his birthplace and his early home, he had inherited some
friends and acquired others. He was kindly noticed by Henry Hervey, a
gay officer of noble family, who happened to be quartered there.
Gilbert Walmesley, registrar of the ecclesiastical court of the
diocese, a man of distinguished parts, learning, and knowledge of the
world, did himself honor by patronizing the young adventurer, whose
repulsive person, unpolished manners, and squalid garb moved many of
the petty aristocracy of the neighborhood to laughter or to disgust.
At Lichfield, however, Johnson could find no way of earning a
livelihood. He became usher of a grammar-school in Leicestershire; he
resided as a humble companion in the house of a country gentleman; but
a life of dependence was insupportable to his haughty spirit. He
repaired to Birmingham, and there earned a few guineas by literary
drudgery. In that town he printed a translation, little noticed at the
time, and long forgotten, of a Latin book about Abyssinia. He then put
forth proposals for publishing by subscription the poems of Politian,
with notes containing a history of modern Latin verse; but
subscriptions did not come in and the volume never appeared.
While leading this vagrant and miserable life Johnson fell in love.
The object of his passion was Mrs. Elizabeth Porter, a widow, who had
children as old as himself. To ordinary spectators the lady appeared
to be a short, fat, coarse woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed
in gaudy colors, and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graces
which were not exactly those of the Queensberrys and Lepels. To
Johnson, however, whose passions were strong, whose eyesight was too
weak to distinguish ceruse from natural bloom, and who had seldom or
never been in the same room with a woman of real fashion, his Titty,
as he called her, was the most beautiful, graceful, and accomplished
of her sex. That his admiration was unfeigned cannot be doubted; for
she was as poor as himself. She accepted, with a readiness which did
her little honor, the addresses of a suitor who might have been her
son. The marriage, however, in spite of occasional wranglings, proved
happier than might have been expected. The lover continued to be under
the illusions of the wedding-day till the lady died, in her
sixty-fourth year. On her monument he placed an inscription, extolling
the charms of her person and of her manners; and when, long after her
decease, he had occasion to mention her, he exclaimed, with a
tenderness half ludicrous, half pathetic, "Pretty creature!"
His marriage made it necessary for him to exert himself more
strenuously than he had hitherto done. He took a house in the
neighborhood of his native town and advertised for pupils. But
eighteen months passed away, and only three pupils came to his
academy. Indeed, his appearance was so strange, and his temper so
violent, that his school-room must have resembled an ogre's den. Nor
was the tawdry, painted grandmother whom he called his Titty well
qualified to make provision for the comfort of young gentlemen. David
Garrick, who was one of the pupils, used, many years later, to throw
the best company of London into convulsions of laughter by mimicking
the endearments of this extraordinary pair.
At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, determined to
seek his fortune in the capital as a literary adventurer. He set out
with a few guineas, three acts of the tragedy of "Irene" in
manuscript, and two or three letters of introduction from his friend
Walmesley.
Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson was able to form any
literary connection from which he could expect more than bread for the
day which was passing over him. He never forgot the generosity with
which Hervey, who was now residing in London, relieved his wants
during this time of trial. "Harry Hervey," said the old philosopher,
many years later, "was a vicious man; but he was very kind to me. If
you call a dog Hervey, I shall love him." At Hervey's table Johnson
sometimes enjoyed feasts which were made more agreeable by contrast.
But in general he dined, and thought that he dined well, on
sixpenny-worth of meat and a pennyworth of bread at an ale-house near
Drury Lane.
About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in London he was
fortunate enough to obtain regular employment from Cave, an
enterprising and intelligent bookseller, who was proprietor and editor
of the _Gentleman's Magazine_.
A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these obscure labors he
published a work which at once placed him high among the writers of
his age. It is probable that what he had suffered during his first
year in London had often reminded him of some parts of that noble poem
in which Juvenal had described the misery and degradation of a needy
man of letters, lodged among the pigeons' nests in the tottering
garrets which overhung the streets of Rome. Pope's admirable
imitations of Horace's "Satires and Epistles" had recently appeared,
were in every hand, and were by many readers thought superior to the
originals. What Pope had done for Horace, Johnson aspired to do for
Juvenal. The enterprise was bold, and yet judicious. For between
Johnson and Juvenal there was much in common--much more, certainly,
than between Pope and Horace.
Johnson's "London" appeared, without his name, in May, 1738. He
received only ten guineas for this stately and vigorous poem; but the
sale was rapid and the success complete. A second edition was required
within a week. Those small critics who are always desirous to lower
established reputations ran about proclaiming that the anonymous
satirist was superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department of
literature. It ought to be remembered, to the honor of Pope, that he
joined heartily in the applause with which the appearance of a rival
genius was welcomed. He then made inquiries about the author of
"London." Such a man, he said, could not long be concealed. The name
was soon discovered; and Pope, with great kindness, exerted himself to
obtain an academical degree and the mastership of a grammar-school for
the poor young poet. The attempt failed, and Johnson remained a
bookseller's hack.
The fame of his abilities and learning continued to grow. Warburton
pronounced him a man of parts and genius; and the praise of Warburton
was then no light thing. Such was Johnson's reputation that, in 1747,
several eminent booksellers combined to employ him in the arduous work
of preparing a dictionary of the English language, in two folio
volumes. The sum which they agreed to pay him was only fifteen hundred
guineas; and out of this sum he had to pay several poor men of letters
who assisted him in the humbler parts of his task.
Johnson had flattered himself that he should have completed his
dictionary by the end of 1750, but it was not till 1755 that he at
length gave his huge volumes to the world. During the seven years
which he passed in the drudgery of penning definitions and marking
quotations for transcription, he sought for relaxation in literary
labor of a more agreeable kind. In 1749 he published the "Vanity of
Human Wishes," an excellent imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal.
It is, in truth, not easy to say whether the palm belongs to the
ancient or to the modern poet.
About a year after the representation of "Irene" he began to publish a
series of short essays on morals, manners, and literature. This
species of composition had been brought into fashion by the success of
_The Tattler_, and by the still more brilliant success of _The
Spectator_. A crowd of small writers had vainly attempted to rival
Addison. _The Lay Monastery_, _The Censor_, _The Freethinker_, _The
Plain-Dealer_, _The Champion_, and other works of the same kind, had
had their short day. None of them had obtained a permanent place in
our literature, and they are now to be found only in the libraries of
the curious. At length Johnson undertook the adventure in which so
many aspirants had failed. In the thirty-sixth year after the
appearance of the last number of _The Spectator_ appeared the first
number of _The Rambler_. From March, 1750, to March, 1752, this paper
continued to come out every Tuesday and Saturday.
From the first _The Rambler_ was enthusiastically admired by a few
eminent men. Richardson, when only five numbers had appeared, pronounced
it equal if not superior to _The Spectator_. Young and Hartley expressed
their approbation not less warmly. Bubb Dodington, among whose faults
indifference to the claims of genius and learning cannot be reckoned,
solicited the acquaintance of the writer. In consequence probably of the
good offices of Dodington, who was then the confidential adviser of
Prince Frederick, two of his Royal Highness's gentlemen carried a
gracious message to the printing-office, and ordered seven copies for
Leicester House.
The last _Rambler_ was written in a sad and gloomy hour. Mrs. Johnson
had been given over by the physicians. Three days later she died. She
left her husband almost broken-hearted. Many people had been surprised
to see a man of his genius and learning stooping to every drudgery and
denying himself almost every comfort, for the purpose of supplying a
silly, affected old woman with superfluities which she accepted with
but little gratitude. But all his affection had been concentrated on
her. He had neither brother nor sister, neither son nor daughter. To
him she was as beautiful as the Gunnings, and witty as Lady Mary. Her
opinion of his writings was more important to him than the voice of
the pit of Drury Lane Theatre, or the judgment of the _Monthly
Review_. The chief support which had sustained him through the most
arduous labor of his life was the hope that she would enjoy the fame
and the profit which he anticipated from his Dictionary. She was gone;
and in that vast labyrinth of streets, peopled by eight hundred
thousand human beings, he was alone. Yet it was necessary for him to
set himself, as he expressed it, doggedly to work. After three more
laborious years the Dictionary was at length complete.
In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of a series of
essays entitled _The Idler_. During two years these essays continued
to appear weekly. They were eagerly read, widely circulated, and,
indeed, impudently pirated while they were still in the original
form, and had a large sale when collected into volumes. _The Idler_
may be described as a second part of _The Rambler_, somewhat livelier
and somewhat weaker than the first part.
While Johnson was busied with his _Idlers_, his mother, who had
accomplished her ninetieth year, died at Lichfield. It was long since
he had seen her; but he had not failed to contribute largely out of
his small means to her comfort. In order to defray the charges of her
funeral, and to pay some debts which she had left, he wrote a little
book in a single week, and sent off the sheets to the press without
reading them over. A hundred pounds were paid him for the copyright;
and the purchasers had great cause to be pleased with their bargain,
for the book was "Rasselas."
By such exertions as have been described Johnson supported himself
till the year 1762. In that year a great change in his circumstances
took place. He had from a child been an enemy of the reigning dynasty.
His Jacobite prejudices had been exhibited with little disguise both
in his works and in his conversation. Even in his massy and elaborate
Dictionary he had, with a strange want of taste and judgment, inserted
bitter and contumelious reflections on the Whig party. The excise,
which was a favorite resource of Whig financiers, he had designated as
a hateful tax. He had railed against the Commissioners of Excise in
language so coarse that they had seriously thought of prosecuting him.
He had with difficulty been prevented from holding up the Lord Privy
Seal by name as an example of the meaning of the word "renegade." A
pension he had defined as a pay given to a state hireling to betray
his country; a pensioner as a slave of state hired by a stipend to
obey a master. It seemed unlikely that the author of these definitions
would himself be pensioned. But that was a time of wonders. George the
Third had ascended the throne, and had, in the course of a few months,
disgusted many of the old friends, and conciliated many of the old
enemies of his house. The city was becoming mutinous. Oxford was
becoming loyal. Cavendishes and Bentincks were murmuring. Somersets
and Wyndhams were hastening to kiss hands. The head of the treasury
was now Lord Bute, who was a Tory, and could have no objection to
Johnson's Toryism. Bute wished to be thought a patron of men of
letters, and Johnson was one of the most eminent, and one of the most
needy men of letters in Europe. A pension of three hundred a year was
graciously offered, and with very little hesitation accepted.
This event produced a change in Johnson's whole way of life. For the
first time since his boyhood he no longer felt the daily goad urging
him to the daily toil. He was at liberty, after thirty years of
anxiety and drudgery, to indulge his constitutional indolence, to lie
in bed till two in the afternoon, and to sit up talking till four in
the morning, without fearing either the printer's devil or the
sheriff's officer.
But though his pen was now idle, his tongue was active. The influence
exercised by his conversation, directly upon those with whom he lived,
and indirectly on the whole literary world, was altogether without
parallel. His colloquial talents were indeed of the highest order. He
had strong sense, quick discernment, wit, humor, immense knowledge of
literature and of life, and an infinite store of curious anecdotes. As
respected style, he spoke far better than he wrote. Every sentence
which dropped from his lips was as correct in structure as the most
nicely balanced period of _The Rambler_. But in his talk there were no
pompous triads, and little more than a fair proportion of words in
_osity_ and _ation_. All was simplicity, ease, and vigor. 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 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 sat 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.
On Easter eve, 1777, some persons, deputed by a meeting which
consisted of forty of the first booksellers in London, called upon
Johnson. Though he had some scruples about doing business at that
season, he received his visitors with much civility. They came to
inform him that a new edition of the English poets, from Cowley
downward, was in contemplation, and to ask him to furnish short
biographical prefaces. He readily undertook the task, a task for which
he was pre-eminently qualified. His knowledge of the literary history
of England since the Restoration was unrivalled. That knowledge he had
derived partly from books, and partly from sources which had long been
closed; from old Grub-Street traditions; from the talk of forgotten
poetasters and pamphleteers who had long been lying in parish vaults;
from the recollections of such men as Gilbert Walmesley, who had
conversed with the wits of Button; Cibber, who had mutilated the plays
of two generations of dramatists; Orrery, who had been admitted to the
society of Swift; and Savage, who had rendered services of no very
honorable kind to Pope. The biographer, therefore, sat down to his
task with a mind full of matter. He had at first intended to give only
a paragraph to every minor poet, and only four or five pages to the
greatest name. But the flood of anecdote and criticism overflowed the
narrow channel. The work, which was originally meant to consist only
of a few sheets, swelled into ten volumes--small volumes, it is true,
and not closely printed. The first four appeared in 1779, the
remaining six in 1781.
When at length the moment, dreaded through so many years, came close,
the dark cloud passed away from Johnson's mind. His temper became
unusually patient and gentle; he ceased to think with terror of
death, and of that which lies beyond death; and he spoke much of the
mercy of God, and of the propitiation of Christ. In this serene frame
of mind he died, on December 13, 1784. He was laid, a week later, in
Westminster Abbey, among the eminent men of whom he had been the
historian--Cowley and Denham, Dryden and Congreve, Gay, Prior, and
Addison.
THOMAS CHATTERTON[7]
[Footnote 7: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
By COLONEL RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON
(1752-1770)
[Illustration: Thomas Chatterton.]
Thomas Chatterton, whose career among all those of English men of
letters was the most eccentric, was a posthumous son of a poor man
who, besides being a choir-singer, kept the Pyle Street School in the
city of Bristol, England. In a small tenement-house near by he was
born, November 20, 1752. The mother maintained her two children,
Thomas and a daughter two years older, by keeping a small school for
girls. At the age of five years the boy was sent to the Pyle Street
School, where the master, unable to teach him anything and deciding
that he was an idiot, dismissed him. For a year and a half afterward
he was so regarded. During this time he was often subjected to
paroxysms of grief which were expressed generally in silent tears, but
sometimes in cries continued for many hours. By many an expedient of a
parent who understood him not, from frequent serious affectionate
remonstrance to an occasional blow upon his face, he was led or forced
along. One day this parent, while about to destroy an old manuscript
in French, noticed the child looking with intense interest at the
illuminated letters upon its pages. Withholding the paper from its
threatened destruction she briefly succeeded in teaching him therefrom
the alphabet, and in time from a black-letter Bible he learned to
read. Not long afterward the family removed to a house near the Church
of St. Mary Redcliffe, one of the oldest and noblest among the
parochial structures in England. In a room called the Treasury House,
over one of the porches of this church, was a pile of ancient
documents, muniments of title, parish registers, and other things,
which had been removed by the latest Chatterton, and which were kept
in the house now occupied by the family. The boy when eight years old
was sent to the Blue Coat, a charity school, where he learned with
rapidity the elements taught thereat. The time not occupied with
school tasks he devoted to reading whatever books he could borrow or
obtain from a circulating library. While engaged in study he seemed
unaware of everything passing around him. At twelve years of age he
probably had read a larger number of books than any child who ever
lived.