about the æsthetic tendencies of the _Renaissance_ period, and explain
the necessity of placing one's self at a writer's point of view, and
entering into the spirit of the time. He will add, perhaps, that
'Lycidas' is a test of poetical feeling, and that he who does not
appreciate its exquisite melody has no music in his soul. The same
writer who will tell us all this, and doubtless with perfect truth,
would probably have adopted Pope or Johnson's theory with equal
confidence if he had lived in the last century. 'Lycidas' repelled
Johnson by incongruities, which, from his point of view, were certainly
offensive. Most modern readers, I will venture to suggest, feel the same
annoyances, though they have not the courage to avow them freely. If
poetry is to be judged exclusively by the simplicity and force with
which it expresses sincere emotion, 'Lycidas' would hardly convince us
of Milton's profound sorrow for the death of King, and must be condemned
accordingly. To the purely pictorial or musical effects of a poem
Johnson was nearly blind; but that need not suggest a doubt as to the
sincerity of his love for the poetry which came within the range of his
own sympathies. Every critic is in effect criticising himself as well as
his author; and I confess that to my mind an obviously sincere record of
impressions, however one-sided they may be, is infinitely refreshing, as
revealing at least the honesty of the writer. The ordinary run of
criticism generally implies nothing but the extreme desire of the author
to show that he is open to the very last new literary fashion. I should
welcome a good assault upon Shakespeare which was not prompted by a love
of singularity; and there are half-a-dozen popular idols--I have not the
courage to name them--a genuine attack upon whom I could witness with
entire equanimity, not to say some complacency. If Johnson's blunder in
this case implied sheer stupidity, one can only say that honest
stupidity is a much better thing than clever insincerity or fluent
repetition of second-hand dogmas. But, in fact, this dislike of
'Lycidas,' and a good many instances of critical incapacity might be
added, is merely a misapplication of a very sound principle. The hatred
of cant and humbug and affectation of all vanity is a most salutary
ingredient even in poetical criticism. Johnson, with his natural
ignorance of that historical method, the exaltation of which threatens
to become a part of our contemporary cant, made the pardonable blunder
of supposing that what would have been gross affectation in Gray must
have been affectation in Milton. His ear had been too much corrupted by
the contemporary school to enable him to recognise beauties which would
even have shone through some conscious affectation. He had the rare
courage--for, even then, Milton was one of the tabooed poets--to say
what he thought as forcibly as he could say it; and he has suffered the
natural punishment of plain speaking. It must, of course, be admitted
that a book embodying such principles is doomed to become more or less
obsolete, like his political pamphlets. And yet, as significant of the
writer's own character, as containing many passages of sound judgment,
expressed in forcible language, it is still, if not a great book, really
impressive within the limits of its capacity.
After this imperfect survey of Johnson's writings, it only remains to be
noticed that all the most prominent peculiarities are the very same
which give interest to his spoken utterances. The doctrine is the same,
though the preacher's manner has changed. His melancholy is not so
heavy-eyed and depressing in his talk, for we catch him at moments of
excitement; but it is there, and sometimes breaks out emphatically and
unexpectedly. The prospect of death often clouds his mind, and he bursts
into tears when he thinks of his past sufferings. His hearty love of
truth, and uncompromising hatred of cant in all its innumerable
transmutations, prompt half his most characteristic sayings. His queer
prejudices take a humorous form, and give a delightful zest to his
conversation. His contempt for abstract speculation comes out when he
vanquishes Berkeley, not with a grin, but by 'striking his foot with
mighty force against a large stone.' His arguments, indeed, never seem
to have owed much to such logic as implies systematic and continuous
thought. He scarcely waits till his pistol misses fire to knock you down
with the butt-end. The merit of his best sayings is not that they
compress an argument into a phrase, but that they are vivid expressions
of an intuitive judgment. In other words, they are always humorous
rather than witty. He holds his own belief with so vigorous a grasp that
all argumentative devices for loosening it seem to be thrown away. As
Boswell says, he is through your body in an instant without any
preliminary parade; he gives a deadly lunge, but cares little for skill
of fence. 'We know we are free and there's an end of it,' is his
characteristic summary of a perplexed bit of metaphysics; and he would
evidently have no patience to wander through the labyrinths in which men
like Jonathan Edwards delighted to perplex themselves. We should have
been glad to see a fuller report of one of those conversations in which
Burke 'wound into a subject like a serpent,' and contrast his method
with Johnson's downright hitting. Boswell had not the power, even if he
had the will, to give an adequate account of such a 'wit combat.'
That such a mind should express itself most forcibly in speech is
intelligible enough. Conversation was to him not merely a contest, but a
means of escape from himself. 'I may be cracking my joke,' he said to
Boswell,'and cursing the sun: Sun, how I hate thy beams!' The phrase
sounds exaggerated, but it was apparently his settled conviction that
the only remedy for melancholy, except indeed the religious remedy, was
in hard work or in the rapture of conversational strife. His little
circle of friends called forth his humour as the House of Commons
excited Chatham's eloquence; and both of them were inclined to mouth too
much when deprived of the necessary stimulus. Chatham's set speeches
were as pompous as Johnson's deliberate writing. Johnson and Chatham
resemble the chemical bodies which acquire entirely new properties when
raised beyond a certain degree of temperature. Indeed, we frequently
meet touches of the conversational Johnson in his controversial writing.
'Taxation no Tyranny' is at moments almost as pithy as Swift, though the
style is never so simple. The celebrated Letter to Chesterfield, and the
letter in which he tells MacPherson that he will not be 'deterred from
detecting what he thinks a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian,' are as
good specimens of the smashing repartee as anything in Boswell's
reports. Nor, indeed, does his pomposity sink to mere verbiage so often
as might be supposed. It is by no means easy to translate his ponderous
phrases into simple words without losing some of their meaning. The
structure of the sentences is compact, though they are too elaborately
balanced and stuffed with superfluous antitheses. The language might be
simpler, but it is not a mere sham aggregation of words. His written
style, however faulty in other respects, is neither slipshod nor
ambiguous, and passes into his conversational style by imperceptible
degrees. The radical identity is intelligible, though the superficial
contrast is certainly curious. We may perhaps say that his century,
unfavourable to him as a writer, gave just what he required for talking.
If, as is sometimes said, the art of conversation is disappearing, it is
because society has become too large and diffuse. The good talker, as
indeed the good artist of every kind, depends upon the tacit
co-operation of the social medium. The chorus, as Johnson has himself
shown very well in one of the 'Ramblers,' is quite as essential as the
main performer. Nobody talks well in London, because everybody has
constantly to meet a fresh set of interlocutors, and is as much put out
as a musician who has to be always learning a new instrument. A literary
dictator has ceased to be a possibility, so far as direct personal
influence is concerned. In the club, Johnson knew how every blow would
tell, and in the rapid thrust and parry dropped the heavy style which
muffled his utterances in print. He had to deal with concrete
illustrations, instead of expanding into platitudinous generalities. The
obsolete theories which impair the value of his criticism and his
politics, become amusing in the form of pithy sayings, though they weary
us when asserted in formal expositions. His greatest literary effort,
the 'Dictionary,' has of necessity become antiquated in use, and, in
spite of the intellectual vigour indicated, can hardly be commended for
popular reading. And thus but for the inimitable Boswell, it must be
admitted that Johnson would probably have sunk very deeply into
oblivion. A few good sayings would have been preserved by Mrs. Thrale
and others, or have been handed down by tradition, and doubtless
assigned in process of time to Sydney Smith and other conversational
celebrities. A few couplets from the 'Vanity of Human Wishes' would not
yet have been submerged, and curious readers would have recognised the
power of 'Rasselas,' and been delighted with some shrewd touches in the
'Lives of the Poets.' But with all desire to magnify critical insight,
it must be admitted that that man would have shown singular penetration,
and been regarded as an eccentric commentator, who had divined the
humour and the fervour of mind which lay hid in the remains of the huge
lexicographer. And yet when we have once recognised his power, we can
see it everywhere indicated in his writings, though by an unfortunate
fatality the style or the substance was always so deeply affected by the
faults of the time, that the product is never thoroughly sound. His
tenacious conservatism caused him to cling to decaying materials for the
want of anything better, and he has suffered the natural penalty. He was
a great force half wasted, so far as literature was concerned, because
the fashionable costume of the day hampered the free exercises of his
powers, and because the only creeds to which he could attach himself
were in the phase of decline and inanition. A century earlier or later
he might have succeeded in expressing himself through books as well as
through his talk; but it is not given to us to choose the time of our
birth, and some very awkward consequences follow.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See, for example, the great debate on February 13, 1741.
_CRABBE_
It is nearly a century since George Crabbe, then a young man of
five-and-twenty, put three pounds in his pocket and started from his
native town of Aldborough, with a box of clothes and a case of surgical
instruments, to make his fortune in London. Few men have attempted that
adventure with less promising prospects. Any sensible adviser would have
told him to prefer starvation in his native village to starvation in the
back lanes of London. The adviser would, perhaps, have been vexed, but
would not have been confuted, by Crabbe's good fortune. We should still
recommend a youth not to jump into a river, though, of a thousand who
try the experiment, one may happen to be rescued by a benevolent
millionaire, and be put in the road to fortune. The chances against
Crabbe were enormous. Literature, considered as a trade, is a good deal
better at the present day than it was towards the end of the last
century, and yet anyone who has an opportunity of comparing the failures
with the successes, would be more apt to quote Chatterton than Crabbe as
a precedent for youthful aspirants. Crabbe, indeed, might say for
himself that literature was the only path open to him. His father was
collector of salt duties at Aldborough, a position, as one may imagine,
of no very great emolument. He had, however, given his son the chance of
acquiring a smattering of 'scholarship,' in the sense in which that
word is used by the less educated lower classes. To the slender store of
learning acquired in a cheap country school, the lad managed to add such
medical training as could be picked up during an apprenticeship in an
apothecary's shop. With this provision of knowledge he tried to obtain
practice in his native town. He failed to get any patients of the paying
variety. Crabbe was clumsy and absent-minded to the end of his life. He
had, moreover, a taste for botany, and the shrewd inhabitants of
Aldborough, with that perverse tendency to draw inferences which is
characteristic of people who cannot reason, argued that as he picked up
his samples in the ditches, he ought to sell the medicines presumably
compounded from them for nothing. In one way or other, poor Crabbe had
sunk to the verge of distress. Of course, under these circumstances, he
had fallen in love and engaged himself at the age of eighteen to a young
lady, apparently as poor as himself. Of course, too, he called Miss Elmy
'Mira,' and addressed her in verses which occasionally appeared in the
poet's corner of a certain 'Wheble's Magazine.' My Mira, said the young
surgeon, in a style which must have been rather antiquated even in
Aldborough--
My Mira, shepherds, is as fair
As sylvan nymphs who haunt the vale;
As sylphs who dwell in purest air,
As fays who skim the dusky dale.
Moreover, he won a prize for a poem on Hope, and composed an
'Allegorical Fable' and a piece called 'The Atheist reclaimed;' and, in
short, added plentifully to the vast rubbish-heap of old-world verses,
now decayed beyond the industry of the most persevering of Dryasdusts.
Nay, he even succeeded by some mysterious means in getting one of his
poems published separately. It was called 'Inebriety,' and was an
unblushing imitation of Pope. Here is a couplet by way of sample:--
Champagne the courtier drinks the spleen to chase,
The colonel Burgundy, and Port his Grace.
From the satirical the poet diverges into the mock heroic:--
See Inebriety! her wand she waves,
And lo! her pale, and lo! her purple slaves.
The interstices of the box of clothing which went with him from
Aldborough to London were doubtless crammed with much waste paper
scribbled over with these feeble echoes of Pope's Satires, and with
appeals to nymphs, muses, and shepherds. Crabbe was one of those men who
are born a generation after their natural epoch, and was as little
accessible to the change of fashion in poetry as in costume. When,
therefore, he finally resolved to hazard his own fate and Mira's upon
the results of his London adventure, the literary goods at his disposal
were already somewhat musty in character. The year 1780, in which he
reached London, marks the very nadir of English poetry. From the days of
Elizabeth to our own there has never been so absolutely barren a period.
People had become fairly tired of the jingle of Pope's imitators, and
the new era had not dawned. Goldsmith and Gray, both recently dead,
serve to illustrate the condition in which the most exquisite polish and
refinement of language has been developed until there is a danger of
sterility. The 'Elegy' and the 'Deserted Village' are in their way
inimitable poems: but we feel that the intellectual fibre of the poets
has become dangerously delicate. The critical faculty could not be
stimulated further without destroying all spontaneous impulse. The
reaction to a more masculine and passionate school was imminent; and if
the excellent Crabbe could have put into his box a few of Burns's
lyrics, or even a copy of Cowper's 'Task,' one might have augured better
for his prospects. But what chance was there for a man who could still
be contentedly invoking the muse and stringing together mechanic echoes
of Pope's couplets? How could he expect to charm the jaded faculties of
a generation which was already beginning to heave and stir with a
longing for some fresh excitement? For a year the fate which has
overtaken so many rash literary adventurers seemed to be approaching
steadily. One temporary gleam of good fortune cheered him for a time. He
persuaded an enterprising publisher to bring out a poem called 'The
Candidate,' which had some faint success, though ridiculed by the
reviewers. Unluckily the publisher became bankrupt and Crabbe was thrown
upon his resources--the poor three pounds and box of surgical
instruments aforesaid. How he managed to hold out for a year is a
mystery. It was lucky for him, as he intimates, that he had never heard
of the fate of Chatterton, who had poisoned himself just ten years
before. A Journal which he wrote for Mira is published in his Life, and
gives an account of his feelings during three months of his cruel
probation. He applies for a situation as amanuensis offered in an
advertisement, and comforts himself on failing with the reflection that
the advertiser was probably a sharper. He writes piteous letters to
publishers, and gets, of course, the stereotyped reply with which the
most amiable of publishers must damp the ardour of aspiring genius. The
disappointment is not much softened by the publisher's statement that
'he does not mean by this to insinuate any want of merit in the poem,
but rather a want of attention in the public.' Bit by bit his surgical
instruments go to the pawnbroker. When one publisher sends his polite
refusal poor Crabbe has only sixpence-farthing in the world, which, by
the purchase of a pint of porter, is reduced to fourpence-halfpenny. The
exchequer fills again by the disappearance of his wardrobe and his
watch; but ebbs under a new temptation. He buys some odd volumes of
Dryden for three-and-sixpence, and on coming home tears his only coat,
which he manages to patch tolerably with a borrowed needle and thread,
pretending, with a pathetic shift, that they are required to stitch
together manuscripts instead of broadcloth. And so for a year the wolf
creeps nearer the door, whilst Crabbe gallantly keeps up appearances and
spirits, and yet he tries to preserve a show of good spirits in the
Journal to Mira, and continues to labour at his versemaking. Perhaps,
indeed, it may be regarded as a bad symptom that he is reduced to
distracting his mind by making an analysis of a dull sermon. 'There is
nothing particular in it,' he admits, but at least it is better, he
thinks, to listen to a bad sermon than to the blasphemous rant of
deistical societies. Indeed, Crabbe's spirit was totally unlike the
desperate pride of Chatterton. He was of the patient enduring tribe, and
comforts himself by religious meditations, which are, perhaps, rather
commonplace in expression, but when read by the light of the distresses
he was enduring, show a brave unembittered spirit, not to be easily
respected too highly. Starvation seemed to be approaching; or, at least,
the only alternative was the abandonment of his ambition, and
acceptance, if he could get it, of the post of druggist's assistant. He
had but one resource left; and that not of the most promising kind.
Crabbe, amongst his other old-fashioned notions, had a strong belief in
the traditional patron. Johnson might have given him some hints upon the
subject; but luckily, as it turned out, he pursued what Chesterfield's
correspondent would have thought the most hopeless of all courses. He
wrote to Lord North, who was at that moment occupied in contemplating
the final results of the ingenious policy by which America was lost to
England, and probably consigned Crabbe's letter to the waste-paper
basket. Then he tried the effect of a copy of verses, beginning:--
Ah! Shelburne, blest with all that's good or great,
T' adorn a rich or save a sinking State.
He added a letter saying that, as Lord North had not answered him, Lord
Shelburne would probably be glad to supply the needs of a starving
apothecary turned poet. Another copy of verses was enclosed, pointing
out that Shelburne's reputed liberality would be repaid in the usual
coin:
Then shall my grateful strains his ear rejoice,
His name harmonious thrilled on Mira's voice;
Round the reviving bays new sweets shall spring,
And Shelburne's fame through laughing valleys ring!
Nobody can blame North and Shelburne for not acting the part of Good
Samaritans. He, at least, may throw the first stone who has always taken
the trouble to sift the grain from the chaff amidst all the begging
letters which he has received, and who has never lamented that his
benevolence outran his discretion. But there was one man in England at
the time who had the rare union of qualities necessary for Crabbe's
purpose. Burke is a name never to be mentioned without reverence; not
only because Burke was incomparably the greatest of all English
political writers, and a standing refutation of the theory which couples
rhetorical excellence with intellectual emptiness, but also because he
was a man whose glowing hatred of all injustice and sympathy for all
suffering never evaporated in empty words. His fine literary perception
enabled him to detect the genuine excellence which underlay the
superficial triviality of Crabbe's verses. He discovered the genius
where men like North and Shelburne might excusably see nothing but the
mendicant versifier; and a benevolence still rarer than his critical
ability forbade him to satisfy his conscience by the sacrifice of a
five-pound note. When, by the one happy thought of his life, Crabbe
appealed to Burke's sympathy, the poet was desperately endeavouring to
get a poem through the press. But he owed fourteen pounds, and every
application to friends as poor as himself, and to patrons upon whom he
had no claims, had been unsuccessful. Nothing but ruin was before him.
After writing to Burke he spent the night in pacing Westminster Bridge.
The letter on which his fate hung is the more pathetic because it is
free from those questionable poetical flourishes which had failed to
conciliate his former patrons. It tells his story frankly and forcibly.
Burke, however, was not a rich man, and was at one of the most exciting
periods of his political career. His party was at last fighting its way
to power by means of the general resentment against the gross
mismanagement of their antagonists. A perfunctory discharge of the duty
of charity would have been pardonable; but from the moment when Crabbe
addressed Burke the poor man's fortune was made. Burke's glory rests
upon services of much more importance to the world at large than even
the preservation to the country of a man of genuine power. Yet there
are few actions on which he could reflect with more unalloyed
satisfaction; and the case is not a solitary one in Burke's history. A
political triumph may often be only hastened a year or two by the
efforts of even a great leader; but the salvage of a genius which would
otherwise have been hopelessly wrecked in the deep waters of poverty is
so much clear gain to mankind. One circumstance may be added as oddly
characteristic of Crabbe. He always spoke of his benefactor with
becoming gratitude: and many years afterwards Moore and Rogers thought
that they might extract some interesting anecdotes of the great author
from the now celebrated poet. Burke, as we know, was a man whom you
would discover to be remarkable if you stood with him for five minutes
under a haystack in a shower. Crabbe stayed in his house for months
under circumstances most calculated to be impressive. Burke was at the
height of his power and reputation; he was the first man of any
distinction whom the poet had ever seen; the two men had long and
intimate conversations, and Crabbe, it may be added, was a very keen
observer of character. And yet all that Rogers and Moore could extract
from him was a few 'vague generalities.' Moore suggests some
explanation; but the fact seems to be that Crabbe was one of those
simple, homespun characters, whose interests are strictly limited to
their own peculiar sphere. Burke, when he pleased, could talk of oxen as
well as politics, and doubtless adapted his conversation to the taste of
the young poet. Probably, much more was said about the state of Burke's
farm than about the prospects of the Whig party. Crabbe's powers of
vision were as limited as they were keen, and the great qualities to
which Burke owed his reputation could only exhibit themselves in a
sphere to which Crabbe never rose. His attempt to draw a likeness of
Burke under the name of 'Eugenius,' in the 'Borough,' is open to the
objection that it would be nearly as applicable to Wilberforce, Howard,
or Dr. Johnson. It is a mere complimentary daub, in which every
remarkable feature of the original is blurred or altogether omitted.