"The proper study of mankind is man."
I now come to speak of that sort of writing which has been so successfully
cultivated in this country by our periodical Essayists, and which consists
in applying the talents and resources of the mind to all that mixed mass
of human affairs, which, though not included under the head of any regular
art, science, or profession, falls under the cognisance of the writer, and
"comes home to the business and bosoms of men." _Quicquid agunt homines
nostri farrago libelli_, is the general motto of this department of
literature. It does not treat of minerals or fossils, of the virtues of
plants, or the influence of planets; it does not meddle with forms of
belief or systems of philosophy, nor launch into the world of spiritual
existences; but it makes familiar with the world of men and women, records
their actions, assigns their motives, exhibits their whims, characterises
their pursuits in all their singular and endless variety, ridicules their
absurdities, exposes their inconsistencies, "holds the mirror up to
nature, and shews the very age and body of the time its form and
pressure;" takes minutes of our dress, air, looks, words, thoughts, and
actions; shews us what we are, and what we are not; plays the whole game
of human life over before us, and by making us enlightened spectators of
its many-coloured scenes, enables us (if possible) to become tolerably
reasonable agents in the one in which we have to perform a part. "The act
and practic part of life is thus made the mistress of our theorique." It
is the best and most natural course of study. It is in morals and manners
what the experimental is in natural philosophy, as opposed to the
dogmatical method. It does not deal in sweeping clauses of proscription
and anathema, but in nice distinction and liberal constructions. It makes
up its general accounts from details, its few theories from many facts. It
does not try to prove all black or all white as it wishes, but lays on the
intermediate colours, (and most of them not unpleasing ones,) as it finds
them blended with "the web of our life, which is of a mingled yarn, good
and ill together." It inquires what human life is and has been, to shew
what it ought to be. It follows it into courts and camps, into town and
country, into rustic sports or learned disputations, into the various
shades of prejudice or ignorance, of refinement or barbarism, into its
private haunts or public pageants, into its weaknesses and littlenesses,
its professions and its practices--before it pretends to distinguish right
from wrong, or one thing from another. How, indeed, should it do so
otherwise?
"Quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,
Plenius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit."
The writers I speak of are, if not moral philosophers, moral historians,
and that's better: or if they are both, they found the one character upon
the other; their premises precede their conclusions; and we put faith in
their testimony, for we know that it is true.
Montaigne was the first person who in his Essays led the way to this kind
of writing among the moderns. The great merit of Montaigne then was, that
he may be said to have been the first who had the courage to say as an
author what he felt as a man. And as courage is generally the effect of
conscious strength, he was probably led to do so by the richness, truth,
and force of his own observations on books and men. He was, in the truest
sense, a man of original mind, that is, he had the power of looking at
things for himself, or as they really were, instead of blindly trusting
to, and fondly repeating what others told him that they were. He got rid
of the go-cart of prejudice and affectation, with the learned lumber that
follows at their heels, because he could do without them. In taking up his
pen he did not set up for a philosopher, wit, orator, or moralist, but he
became all these by merely daring to tell us whatever passed through his
mind, in its naked simplicity and force, that he thought any ways worth
communicating. He did not, in the abstract character of an author,
undertake to say all that could be said upon a subject, but what in his
capacity as an inquirer after truth he happened to know about it. He was
neither a pedant nor a bigot. He neither supposed that he was bound to
know all things, nor that all things were bound to conform to what he had
fancied or would have them to be. In treating of men and manners, he spoke
of them as he found them, not according to preconceived notions and
abstract dogmas; and he began by teaching us what he himself was. In
criticising books he did not compare them with rules and systems, but told
us what he saw to like or dislike in them. He did not take his standard of
excellence "according to an exact scale" of Aristotle, or fall out with a
work that was good for any thing, because "not one of the angles at the
four corners was a right one." He was, in a word, the first author who was
not a bookmaker, and who wrote not to make converts of others to
established creeds and prejudices, but to satisfy his own mind of the
truth of things. In this respect we know not which to be most charmed
with, the author or the man. There is an inexpressible frankness and
sincerity, as well as power, in what he writes. There is no attempt at
imposition or concealment, no juggling tricks or solemn mouthing, no
laboured attempts at proving himself always in the right, and every body
else in the wrong; he says what is uppermost, lays open what floats at the
top or the bottom of his mind, and deserves Pope's character of him, where
he professes to
"----pour out all as plain
As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne."[128]
He does not converse with us like a pedagogue with his pupil, whom he
wishes to make as great a blockhead as himself, but like a philosopher and
friend who has passed through life with thought and observation, and is
willing to enable others to pass through it with pleasure and profit. A
writer of this stamp, I confess, appears to me as much superior to a
common bookworm, as a library of real books is superior to a mere
book-case, painted and lettered on the outside with the names of
celebrated works. As he was the first to attempt this new way of writing,
so the same strong natural impulse which prompted the undertaking, carried
him to the end of his career. The same force and honesty of mind which
urged him to throw off the shackles of custom and prejudice, would enable
him to complete his triumph over them. He has left little for his
successors to achieve in the way of just and original speculation on human
life. Nearly all the thinking of the two last centuries of that kind which
the French denominate _morale observatrice_, is to be found in Montaigne's
Essays: there is the germ, at least, and generally much more. He sowed the
seed and cleared away the rubbish, even where others have reaped the
fruit, or cultivated and decorated the soil to a greater degree of nicety
and perfection. There is no one to whom the old Latin adage is more
applicable than to Montaigne, "_Pereant isti qui ante nos nostra
dixerunt_." There has been no new impulse given to thought since his time.
Among the specimens of criticisms on authors which he has left us, are
those on Virgil, Ovid, and Boccaccio, in the account of books which he
thinks worth reading, or (which is the same thing) which he finds he can
read in his old age, and which may be reckoned among the few criticisms
which are worth reading at any age.[129]
Montaigne's Essays were translated into English by Charles Cotton, who was
one of the wits and poets of the age of Charles II; and Lord Halifax, one
of the noble critics of that day, declared it to be "the book in the world
he was the best pleased with." This mode of familiar Essay-writing, free
from the trammels of the schools, and the airs of professed authorship,
was successfully imitated, about the same time, by Cowley and Sir William
Temple, in their miscellaneous Essays, which are very agreeable and
learned talking upon paper. Lord Shaftesbury, on the contrary, who aimed
at the same easy, _degage_ mode of communicating his thoughts to the
world, has quite spoiled his matter, which is sometimes valuable, by his
manner, in which he carries a certain flaunting, flowery, figurative,
flirting style of amicable condescension to the reader, to an excess more
tantalising than the most starched and ridiculous formality of the age of
James I. There is nothing so tormenting as the affectation of ease and
freedom from affectation.
The ice being thus thawed, and the barrier that kept authors at a distance
from common-sense and feeling broken through, the transition was not
difficult from Montaigne and his imitators, to our Periodical Essayists.
These last applied the same unrestrained expression of their thoughts to
the more immediate and passing scenes of life, to temporary and local
matters; and in order to discharge the invidious office of _Censor Morum_
more freely, and with less responsibility, assumed some fictitious and
humorous disguise, which, however, in a great degree corresponded to their
own peculiar habits and character. By thus concealing their own name and
person under the title of the Tatler, Spectator, etc. they were enabled to
inform us more fully of what was passing in the world, while the dramatic
contrast and ironical point of view to which the whole is subjected,
added a greater liveliness and _piquancy_ to the descriptions. The
philosopher and wit here commences newsmonger, makes himself master of
"the perfect spy o' th' time," and from his various walks and turns
through life, brings home little curious specimens of the humours,
opinions, and manners of his contemporaries, as the botanist brings home
different plants and weeds, or the mineralogist different shells and
fossils, to illustrate their several theories, and be useful to mankind.
The first of these papers that was attempted in this country was set up by
Steele in the beginning of the last century; and of all our Periodical
Essayists, the Tatler (for that was the name he assumed) has always
appeared to me the most amusing and agreeable. Montaigne, whom I have
proposed to consider as the father of this kind of personal authorship
among the moderns, in which the reader is admitted behind the curtain, and
sits down with the writer in his gown and slippers, was a most magnanimous
and undisguised egotist; but Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. was the more
disinterested gossip of the two. The French author is contented to
describe the peculiarities of his own mind and constitution, which he does
with a copious and unsparing hand. The English journalist good-naturedly
lets you into the secret both of his own affairs and those of others. A
young lady, on the other side Temple Bar, cannot be seen at her glass for
half a day together, but Mr. Bickerstaff takes due notice of it; and he
has the first intelligence of the symptoms of the _belle_ passion
appearing in any young gentleman at the West-end of the town. The
departures and arrivals of widows with handsome jointures, either to bury
their grief in the country, or to procure a second husband in town, are
punctually recorded in his pages. He is well acquainted with the
celebrated beauties of the preceding age at the court of Charles II; and
the old gentleman (as he feigns himself) often grows romantic in
recounting "the disastrous strokes which his youth suffered" from the
glances of their bright eyes, and their unaccountable caprices. In
particular, he dwells with a secret satisfaction on the recollection of
one of his mistresses, who left him for a richer rival, and whose constant
reproach to her husband, on occasion of any quarrel between them, was "I,
that might have married the famous Mr. Bickerstaff, to be treated in this
manner!" The club at the Trumpet consists of a set of persons almost as
well worth knowing as himself. The cavalcade of the justice of the peace,
the knight of the shire, the country squire, and the young gentleman, his
nephew, who came to wait on him at his chambers, in such form and
ceremony, seem not to have settled the order of their precedence to this
hour;[130] and I should hope that the upholsterer and his companions, who
used to sun themselves in the Green Park, and who broke their rest and
fortunes to maintain the balance of power in Europe, stand as fair a
chance for immortality as some modern politicians. Mr. Bickerstaff himself
is a gentleman and a scholar, a humourist, and a man of the world; with a
great deal of nice easy _naivete_ about him. If he walks out and is caught
in a shower of rain, he makes amends for this unlucky accident by a
criticism on the shower in Virgil, and concludes with a burlesque copy of
verses on a city-shower. He entertains us, when he dates from his own
apartment, with a quotation from Plutarch, or a moral reflection; from the
Grecian coffee-house with politics; and from Wills', or the Temple, with
the poets and players, the beaux and men of wit and pleasure about town.
In reading the pages of the Tatler, we seem as if suddenly carried back to
the age of Queen Anne, of toupees and full-bottomed periwigs. The whole
appearance of our dress and manners undergoes a delightful metamorphosis.
The beaux and the belles are of a quite different species from what they
are at present; we distinguish the dappers, the smarts, and the pretty
fellows, as they pass by Mr. Lilly's shop-windows in the Strand; we are
introduced to Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield behind the scenes; are made
familiar with the persons and performances of Will Estcourt or Tom Durfey;
we listen to a dispute at a tavern, on the merits of the Duke of
Marlborough, or Marshal Turenne; or are present at the first rehearsal of
a play by Vanbrugh, or the reading of a new poem by Mr. Pope. The
privilege of thus virtually transporting ourselves to past times, is even
greater than that of visiting distant places in reality. London, a hundred
years ago, would be much better worth seeing than Paris at the present
moment.
It will be said, that all this is to be found, in the same or a greater
degree, in the Spectator. For myself, I do not think so; or at least,
there is in the last work a much greater proportion of commonplace matter.
I have, on this account, always preferred the Tatler to the Spectator.
Whether it is owing to my having been earlier or better acquainted with
the one than the other, my pleasure in reading these two admirable works
is not in proportion to their comparative reputation. The Tatler contains
only half the number of volumes, and, I will venture to say, nearly an
equal quantity of sterling wit and sense. "The first sprightly runnings"
are there: it has more of the original spirit, more of the freshness and
stamp of nature. The indications of character and strokes of humour are
more true and frequent; the reflections that suggest themselves arise more
from the occasion, and are less spun out into regular dissertations. They
are more like the remarks which occur in sensible conversation, and less
like a lecture. Something is left to the understanding of the reader.
Steele seems to have gone into his closet chiefly to set down what he
observed out of doors. Addison seems to have spent most of his time in his
study, and to have spun out and wire-drawn the hints, which he borrowed
from Steele, or took from nature, to the utmost. I am far from wishing to
depreciate Addison's talents, but I am anxious to do justice to Steele,
who was, I think, upon the whole, a less artificial and more original
writer. The humorous descriptions of Steele resemble loose sketches, or
fragments of a comedy; those of Addison are rather comments or ingenious
paraphrases on the genuine text. The characters of the club, not only in
the Tatler, but in the Spectator, were drawn by Steele. That of Sir Roger
de Coverley is among the number. Addison has, however, gained himself
immortal honour by his manner of filling up this last character. Who is
there that can forget, or be insensible to, the inimitable nameless graces
and varied traits of nature and of old English character in it--to his
unpretending virtues and amiable weaknesses--to his modesty, generosity,
hospitality, and eccentric whims--to the respect of his neighbours, and
the affection of his domestics--to his wayward, hopeless, secret passion
for his fair enemy, the widow, in which there is more of real romance and
true delicacy than in a thousand tales of knight-errantry--(we perceive
the hectic flush of his cheek, the faltering of his tongue in speaking of
her bewitching airs and "the whiteness of her hand")--to the havoc he
makes among the game in his neighbourhood--to his speech from the bench,
to shew the Spectator what is thought of him in the country--to his
unwillingness to be put up as a sign-post, and his having his own likeness
turned into the Saracen's head--to his gentle reproof of the baggage of a
gipsy that tells him "he has a widow in his line of life"--to his doubts
as to the existence of witchcraft, and protection of reputed witches--to
his account of the family pictures, and his choice of a chaplain--to his
falling asleep at church, and his reproof of John Williams, as soon as he
recovered from his nap, for talking in sermon-time. The characters of
Will. Wimble and Will. Honeycomb are not a whit behind their friend, Sir
Roger, in delicacy and felicity. The delightful simplicity and
good-humoured officiousness in the one, are set off by the graceful
affectation and courtly pretension in the other. How long since I first
became acquainted with these two characters in the Spectator! What
old-fashioned friends they seem, and yet I am not tired of them, like so
many other friends, nor they of me! How airy these abstractions of the
poet's pen stream over the dawn of our acquaintance with human life! how
they glance their fairest colours on the prospect before us! how pure they
remain in it to the last, like the rainbow in the evening-cloud, which the
rude hand of time and experience can neither soil nor dissipate! What a
pity that we cannot find the reality, and yet if we did, the dream would
be over. I once thought I knew a Will. Wimble, and a Will. Honeycomb, but
they turned out but indifferently; the originals in the Spectator still
read, word for word, the same that they always did. We have only to turn
to the page, and find them where we left them!--Many of the most exquisite
pieces in the Tatler, it is to be observed, are Addison's, as the Court of
Honour, and the Personification of Musical Instruments, with almost all
those papers that form regular sets or series. I do not know whether the
picture of the family of an old college acquaintance, in the Tatler, where
the children run to let Mr. Bickerstaff in at the door, and where the one
that loses the race that way, turns back to tell the father that he is
come; with the nice gradation of incredulity in the little boy who is got
into Guy of Warwick, and the Seven Champions, and who shakes his head at
the improbability of AEsop's Fables, is Steele's or Addison's, though I
believe it belongs to the former. The account of the two sisters, one of
whom held up her head higher than ordinary, from having on a pair of
flowered garters, and that of the married lady who complained to the
Tatler of the neglect of her husband, with her answers to some _home_
questions that were put to her, are unquestionably Steele's.--If the
Tatler is not inferior to the Spectator as a record of manners and
character, it is superior to it in the interest of many of the stories.
Several of the incidents related there by Steele have never been surpassed
in the heart-rending pathos of private distress. I might refer to those of
the lover and his mistress, when the theatre, in which they were, caught
fire; of the bridegroom, who by accident kills his bride on the day of
their marriage; the story of Mr. Eustace and his wife; and the fine dream
about his own mistress when a youth. What has given its superior
reputation to the Spectator, is the greater gravity of its pretensions,
its moral dissertations and critical reasonings, by which I confess myself
less edified than by other things, which are thought more lightly of.
Systems and opinions change, but nature is always true. It is the moral
and didactic tone of the Spectator which makes us apt to think of Addison
(according to Mandeville's sarcasm) as "a parson in a tie-wig." Many of
his moral Essays are, however, exquisitely beautiful and quite happy. Such
are the reflections on cheerfulness, those in Westminster Abbey, on the
Royal Exchange, and particularly some very affecting ones on the death of
a young lady in the fourth volume. These, it must be allowed, are the
perfection of elegant sermonising. His critical Essays are not so good. I
prefer Steele's occasional selection of beautiful poetical passages,
without any affectation of analysing their beauties, to Addison's
finer-spun theories. The best criticism in the Spectator, that on the
Cartoons of Raphael, of which Mr. Fuseli has availed himself with great
spirit in his Lectures, is by Steele.[131] I owed this acknowledgment to a
writer who has so often put me in good humour with myself, and every thing
about me, when few things else could, and when the tomes of casuistry and
ecclesiastical history, with which the little duodecimo volumes of the
Tatler were overwhelmed and surrounded, in the only library to which I had
access when a boy, had tried their tranquillising effects upon me in vain.
I had not long ago in my hands, by favour of a friend, an original copy of
the quarto edition of the Tatler, with a list of the subscribers. It is
curious to see some names there which we should hardly think of (that of
Sir Isaac Newton is among them,) and also to observe the degree of
interest excited by those of the different persons, which is not
determined according to the rules of the Herald's College. One literary
name lasts as long as a whole race of heroes and their descendants! The
Guardian, which followed the Spectator, was, as may be supposed, inferior
to it.
The dramatic and conversational turn which forms the distinguishing
feature and greatest charm of the Spectator and Tatler, is quite lost in
the Rambler by Dr. Johnson. There is no reflected light thrown on human
life from an assumed character, nor any direct one from a display of the
author's own. The Tatler and Spectator are, as it were, made up of notes
and memorandums of the events and incidents of the day, with finished
studies after nature, and characters fresh from the life, which the writer
moralises upon, and turns to account as they come before him: the Rambler
is a collection of moral Essays, or scholastic theses, written on set
subjects, and of which the individual characters and incidents are merely
artificial illustrations, brought in to give a pretended relief to the
dryness of didactic discussion. The Rambler is a splendid and imposing
common-place-book of general topics, and rhetorical declamation on the
conduct and business of human life. In this sense, there is hardly a
reflection that has been suggested on such subjects which is not to be
found in this celebrated work, and there is, perhaps, hardly a reflection
to be found in it which had not been already suggested and developed by
some other author, or in the common course of conversation. The mass of
intellectual wealth here heaped together is immense, but it is rather the
result of gradual accumulation, the produce of the general intellect,
labouring in the mine of knowledge and reflection, than dug out of the
quarry, and dragged into the light by the industry and sagacity of a
single mind. I am not here saying that Dr. Johnson was a man without
originality, compared with the ordinary run of men's minds, but he was not
a man of original thought or genius, in the sense in which Montaigne or
Lord Bacon was. He opened no new vein of precious ore, nor did he light
upon any single pebbles of uncommon size and unrivalled lustre. We seldom
meet with anything to "give us pause;" he does not set us thinking for the
first time. His reflections present themselves like reminiscences; do not
disturb the ordinary march of our thoughts; arrest our attention by the
stateliness of their appearance, and the costliness of their garb, but
pass on and mingle with the throng of our impressions. After closing the
volumes of the Rambler, there is nothing that we remember as a new truth
gained to the mind, nothing indelibly stamped upon the memory; nor is
there any passage that we wish to turn to as embodying any known
principle or observation, with such force and beauty that justice can only
be done to the idea in the author's own words. Such, for instance, are
many of the passages to be found in Burke, which shine by their own light,
belong to no class, have neither equal nor counterpart, and of which we
say that no one but the author could have written them! There is neither
the same boldness of design, nor mastery of execution in Johnson. In the
one, the spark of genius seems to have met with its congenial matter: the
shaft is sped; the forked lightning dresses up the face of nature in
ghastly smiles, and the loud thunder rolls far away from the ruin that is
made. Dr. Johnson's style, on the contrary, resembles rather the rumbling
of mimic thunder at one of our theatres; and the light he throws upon a
subject is like the dazzling effect of phosphorus, or an _ignis fatuus_ of
words. There is a wide difference, however, between perfect originality
and perfect common-place: neither ideas nor expressions are trite or
vulgar because they are not quite new. They are valuable, and ought to be
repeated, if they have not become quite common; and Johnson's style both
of reasoning and imagery holds the middle rank between startling novelty
and vapid common-place. Johnson has as much originality of thinking as
Addison; but then he wants his familiarity of illustration, knowledge of
character, and delightful humour. What most distinguishes Dr. Johnson from
other writers is the pomp and uniformity of his style. All his periods are
cast in the same mould, are of the same size and shape, and consequently
have little fitness to the variety of things he professes to treat of. His
subjects are familiar, but the author is always upon stilts. He has
neither ease nor simplicity, and his efforts at playfulness, in part,
remind one of the lines in Milton:--
"----The elephant
To make them sport wreath'd his proboscis lithe."
His Letters from Correspondents, in particular, are more pompous and
unwieldy than what he writes in his own person. This want of relaxation
and variety of manner has, I think, after the first effects of novelty and
surprise were over, been prejudicial to the matter. It takes from the
general power, not only to please, but to instruct. The monotony of style
produces an apparent monotony of ideas. What is really striking and
valuable, is lost in the vain ostentation and circumlocution of the
expression; for when we find the same pains and pomp of diction bestowed
upon the most trifling as upon the most important parts of a sentence or
discourse, we grow tired of distinguishing between pretension and reality,
and are disposed to confound the tinsel and bombast of the phraseology
with want of weight in the thoughts. Thus, from the imposing and oracular
nature of the style, people are tempted at first to imagine that our
author's speculations are all wisdom and profundity: till having found out
their mistake in some instances, they suppose that there is nothing but
common-place in them, concealed under verbiage and pedantry; and in both
they are wrong. The fault of Dr. Johnson's style is, that it reduces all
things to the same artificial and unmeaning level. It destroys all shades
of difference, the association between words and things. It is a perpetual
paradox and innovation. He condescends to the familiar till we are ashamed
of our interest in it: he expands the little till it looks big. "If he
were to write a fable of little fishes," as Goldsmith said of him, "he
would make them speak like great whales." We can no more distinguish the
most familiar objects in his descriptions of them, than we can a
well-known face under a huge painted mask. The structure of his sentences,
which was his own invention, and which has been generally imitated since
his time, is a species of rhyming in prose, where one clause answers to
another in measure and quantity, like the tagging of syllables at the end
of a verse; the close of the period follows as mechanically as the
oscillation of a pendulum, the sense is balanced with the sound; each
sentence, revolving round its centre of gravity, is contained with itself
like a couplet, and each paragraph forms itself into a stanza. Dr. Johnson
is also a complete balance-master in the topics of morality. He never
encourages hope, but he counteracts it by fear; he never elicits a truth,
but he suggests some objection in answer to it. He seizes and alternately
quits the clue of reason, lest it should involve him in the labyrinths of
endless error: he wants confidence in himself and his fellows. He dares
not trust himself with the immediate impressions of things, for fear of
compromising his dignity; or follow them into their consequences, for fear
of committing his prejudices. His timidity is the result, not of
ignorance, but of morbid apprehension. "He runs the great circle, and is
still at home." No advance is made by his writings in any sentiment, or
mode of reasoning. Out of the pale of established authority and received
dogmas, all is sceptical, loose, and desultory: he seems in imagination to
strengthen the dominion of prejudice, as he weakens and dissipates that of
reason; and round the rock of faith and power, on the edge of which he
slumbers blindfold and uneasy, the waves and billows of uncertain and
dangerous opinion roar and heave for evermore. His Rasselas is the most
melancholy and debilitating moral speculation that ever was put forth.
Doubtful of the faculties of his mind, as of his organs of vision, Johnson
trusted only to his feelings and his fears. He cultivated a belief in
witches as an out-guard to the evidences of religion; and abused Milton,
and patronised Lauder, in spite of his aversion to his countrymen, as a
step to secure the existing establishment in church and state. This was
neither right feeling nor sound logic.
The most triumphant record of the talents and character of Johnson is to
be found in Boswell's Life of him. The man was superior to the author.
When he threw aside his pen, which he regarded as an incumbrance, he
became not only learned and thoughtful, but acute, witty, humorous,
natural, honest; hearty and determined, "the king of good fellows and wale
of old men." There are as many smart repartees, profound remarks, and keen
invectives to be found in Boswell's "inventory of all he said," as are
recorded of any celebrated man. The life and dramatic play of his
conversation forms a contrast to his written works. His natural powers and
undisguised opinions were called out in convivial intercourse. In public,
he practised with the foils on: in private, he unsheathed the sword of
controversy, and it was "the Ebro's temper." The eagerness of opposition
roused him from his natural sluggishness and acquired timidity; he
returned blow for blow; and whether the trial were of argument or wit,
none of his rivals could boast much of the encounter. Burke seems to have
been the only person who had a chance with him; and it is the unpardonable
sin of Boswell's work, that he has purposely omitted their combats of
strength and skill. Goldsmith asked, "Does he wind into a subject like a
serpent, as Burke does?" And when exhausted with sickness, he himself
said, "If that fellow Burke were here now, he would kill me." It is to be
observed, that Johnson's colloquial style was as blunt, direct, and
downright, as his style of studied composition was involved and
circuitous. As when Topham Beauclere and Langton knocked him up at his
chambers, at three in the morning, and he came to the door with the poker
in his hand, but seeing them, exclaimed, "What, is it you, my lads? then
I'll have a frisk with you!" and he afterwards reproaches Langton, who
was a literary milksop, for leaving them to go to an engagement "with some
_un-idead_ girls." What words to come from the mouth of the great moralist
and lexicographer! His good deeds were as many as his good sayings. His
domestic habits, his tenderness to servants, and readiness to oblige his
friends; the quantity of strong tea that he drank to keep down sad
thoughts; his many labours reluctantly begun, and irresolutely laid aside;
his honest acknowledgment of his own, and indulgence to the weaknesses of
others; his throwing himself back in the post-chaise with Boswell, and
saying, "Now I think I am a good-humoured fellow," though nobody thought
him so, and yet he was; his quitting the society of Garrick and his
actresses, and his reason for it; his dining with Wilkes, and his kindness
to Goldsmith; his sitting with the young ladies on his knee at the Mitre,
to give them good advice, in which situation, if not explained, he might
be taken for Falstaff; and last and noblest, his carrying the unfortunate
victim of disease and dissipation on his back up through Fleet Street, (an
act which realises the parable of the good Samaritan)--all these, and
innumerable others, endear him to the reader, and must be remembered to
his lasting honour. He had faults, but they lie buried with him. He had
his prejudices and his intolerant feelings; but he suffered enough in the
conflict of his own mind with them. For if no man can be happy in the free
exercise of his reason, no wise man can be happy without it. His were not
time-serving, heartless, hypocritical prejudices; but deep, inwoven, not
to be rooted out but with life and hope, which he found from old habit
necessary to his own peace of mind, and thought so to the peace of
mankind. I do not hate, but love him for them. They were between himself
and his conscience; and should be left to that higher tribunal, "where
they in trembling hope repose, the bosom of his Father and his God." In a
word, he has left behind him few wiser or better men.
The herd of his imitators shewed what he was by their disproportionate
effects. The Periodical Essayists, that succeeded the Rambler, are, and
deserve to be, little read at present. The Adventurer, by Hawksworth, is
completely trite and vapid, aping all the faults of Johnson's style,
without any thing to atone for them. The sentences are often absolutely
unmeaning; and one half of each might regularly be left blank. The World,
and Connoisseur, which followed, are a little better; and in the last of
these there is one good idea, that of a man in indifferent health, who
judges of every one's title to respect from their possession of this
blessing, and bows to a sturdy beggar with sound limbs and a florid
complexion, while he turns his back upon a lord who is a valetudinarian.
Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, like all his works, bears the stamp of
the author's mind. It does not "go about to cozen reputation without the
stamp of merit." He is more observing, more original, more natural and
picturesque than Johnson. His work is written on the model of the Persian
Letters; and contrives to give an abstracted and somewhat perplexing view
of things, by opposing foreign prepossessions to our own, and thus
stripping objects of their customary disguises. Whether truth is elicited
in this collision of contrary absurdities, I do not know; but I confess
the process is too ambiguous and full of intricacy to be very amusing to
my plain understanding. For light summer reading, it is like walking in a
garden full of traps and pitfalls. It necessarily gives rise to paradoxes,
and there are some very bold ones in the Essays, which would subject an
author less established to no very agreeable sort of _censura literaria_.
Thus the Chinese philosopher exclaims very unadvisedly, "The bonzes and
priests of all religions keep up superstition and imposture: all
reformations begin with the laity." Goldsmith, however, was staunch in his
practical creed, and might bolt speculative extravagances with impunity.
There is a striking difference in this respect between him and Addison,
who, if he attacked authority, took care to have common sense on his side,
and never hazarded anything offensive to the feelings of others, or on the
strength of his own discretional opinion. There is another inconvenience
in this assumption of an exotic character and tone of sentiment, that it
produces an inconsistency between the knowledge which the individual has
time to acquire, and which the author is bound to communicate. Thus the
Chinese has not been in England three days before he is acquainted with
the characters of the three countries which compose this kingdom, and
describes them to his friend at Canton, by extracts from the newspapers of
each metropolis. The nationality of Scotchmen is thus
ridiculed:--"_Edinburgh._ We are positive when we say, that Sanders
Macgregor, lately executed for horse-stealing, is not a native of
Scotland, but born at Carrickfergus." Now this is very good; but how
should our Chinese philosopher find it out by instinct? Beau Tibbs, a
prominent character in this little work, is the best comic sketch since
the time of Addison; unrivalled in his finery, his vanity, and his
poverty.
I have only to mention the names of the Lounger and the Mirror, which are
ranked by the author's admirers with Sterne for sentiment, and with
Addison for humour. I shall not enter into that: but I know that the story
of La Roche is not like the story of Le Fevre, nor one hundredth part so
good. Do I say this from prejudice to the author? No: for I have read his
novels. Of the Man of the World I cannot think so favourably as some
others; nor shall I here dwell on the picturesque and romantic beauties
of Julia de Roubigne, the early favourite of the author of Rosamond Gray;
but of the Man of Feeling I would speak with grateful recollections: nor
is it possible to forget the sensitive, irresolute, interesting Harley;
and that lone figure of Miss Walton in it, that floats in the horizon, dim
and ethereal, the day-dream of her lover's youthful fancy--better, far
better than all the realities of life!