Samuel Johnson - Leslie Stephen
In 1778, Boswell came to London and found Johnson absorbed, to an extent
which apparently excited his jealousy, by his intimacy with the Thrales.
They had, however, several agreeable meetings. One was at the club, and
Boswell's report of the conversation is the fullest that we have of any
of its meetings. A certain reserve is indicated by his using initials
for the interlocutors, of whom, however, one can be easily identified as
Burke. The talk began by a discussion of an antique statue, said to be
the dog of Alcibiades, and valued at 1000_l_. Burke said that the
representation of no animal could be worth so much. Johnson, whose taste
for art was a vanishing quantity, said that the value was proportional
to the difficulty. A statue, as he argued on another occasion, would be
worth nothing if it were cut out of a carrot. Everything, he now said,
was valuable which "enlarged the sphere of human powers." The first man
who balanced a straw upon his nose, or rode upon three horses at once,
deserved the applause of mankind; and so statues of animals should be
preserved as a proof of dexterity, though men should not continue such
fruitless labours.
The conversation became more instructive under the guidance of Burke. He
maintained what seemed to his hearers a paradox, though it would be
interesting to hear his arguments from some profounder economist than
Boswell, that a country would be made more populous by emigration.
"There are bulls enough in Ireland," he remarked incidentally in the
course of the argument. "So, sir, I should think from your argument,"
said Johnson, for once condescending to an irresistible pun. It is
recorded, too, that he once made a bull himself, observing that a horse
was so slow that when it went up hill, it stood still. If he now failed
to appreciate Burke's argument, he made one good remark. Another speaker
said that unhealthy countries were the most populous. "Countries which
are the most populous," replied Johnson, "have the most destructive
diseases. That is the true state of the proposition;" and indeed, the
remark applies to the case of emigration.
A discussion then took place as to whether it would be worth while for
Burke to take so much trouble with speeches which never decided a vote.
Burke replied that a speech, though it did not gain one vote, would have
an influence, and maintained that the House of Commons was not wholly
corrupt. "We are all more or less governed by interest," was Johnson's
comment. "But interest will not do everything. In a case which admits of
doubt, we try to think on the side which is for our interest, and
generally bring ourselves to act accordingly. But the subject must admit
of diversity of colouring; it must receive a colour on that side. In the
House of Commons there are members enough who will not vote what is
grossly absurd and unjust. No, sir, there must always be right enough,
or appearance of right, to keep wrong in countenance." After some
deviations, the conversation returned to this point. Johnson and Burke
agreed on a characteristic statement. Burke said that from his
experience he had learnt to think better of mankind. "From my
experience," replied Johnson, "I have found them worse on commercial
dealings, more disposed to cheat than I had any notion of; but more
disposed to do one another good than I had conceived." "Less just, and
more beneficent," as another speaker suggested. Johnson proceeded to say
that considering the pressure of want, it was wonderful that men would
do so much for each other. The greatest liar is said to speak more truth
than falsehood, and perhaps the worst man might do more good than not.
But when Boswell suggested that perhaps experience might increase our
estimate of human happiness, Johnson returned to his habitual pessimism.
"No, sir, the more we inquire, the more we shall find men less happy."
The talk soon wandered off into a disquisition upon the folly of
deliberately testing the strength of our friend's affection.
The evening ended by Johnson accepting a commission to write to a friend
who had given to the Club a hogshead of claret, and to request another,
with "a happy ambiguity of expression," in the hopes that it might also
be a present.
Some days afterwards, another conversation took place, which has a
certain celebrity in Boswellian literature. The scene was at Dilly's,
and the guests included Miss Seward and Mrs. Knowles, a well-known
Quaker Lady. Before dinner Johnson seized upon a book which he kept in
his lap during dinner, wrapped up in the table-cloth. His attention was
not distracted from the various business of the hour, but he hit upon a
topic which happily combined the two appropriate veins of thought. He
boasted that he would write a cookery-book upon philosophical
principles; and declared in opposition to Miss Seward that such a task
was beyond the sphere of woman. Perhaps this led to a discussion upon
the privileges of men, in which Johnson put down Mrs. Knowles, who had
some hankering for women's rights, by the Shakspearian maxim that if two
men ride on a horse, one must ride behind. Driven from her position in
this world, poor Mrs. Knowles hoped that sexes might be equal in the
next. Boswell reproved her by the remark already quoted, that men might
as well expect to be equal to angels. He enforces this view by an
illustration suggested by the "Rev. Mr. Brown of Utrecht," who had
observed that a great or small glass might be equally full, though not
holding equal quantities. Mr. Brown intended this for a confutation of
Hume, who has said that a little Miss, dressed for a ball, may be as
happy as an orator who has won some triumphant success.[1]
[Footnote 1: Boswell remarks as a curious coincidence that the same
illustration had been used by a Dr. King, a dissenting minister.
Doubtless it has been used often enough. For one instance see _Donne's
Sermons_ (Alford's Edition), vol. i., p. 5.]
The conversation thus took a theological turn, and Mrs. Knowles was
fortunate enough to win Johnson's high approval. He defended a doctrine
maintained by Soame Jenyns, that friendship is a Christian virtue. Mrs.
Knowles remarked that Jesus had twelve disciples, but there was _one_
whom he _loved_. Johnson, "with eyes sparkling benignantly," exclaimed,
"Very well indeed, madam; you have said very well!"
So far all had gone smoothly; but here, for some inexplicable reason,
Johnson burst into a sudden fury against the American rebels, whom he
described as "rascals, robbers, pirates," and roared out a tremendous
volley, which might almost have been audible across the Atlantic.
Boswell sat and trembled, but gradually diverted the sage to less
exciting topics. The name of Jonathan Edwards suggested a discussion
upon free will and necessity, upon which poor Boswell was much given to
worry himself. Some time afterwards Johnson wrote to him, in answer to
one of his lamentations: "I hoped you had got rid of all this hypocrisy
of misery. What have you to do with liberty and necessity? Or what more
than to hold your tongue about it?" Boswell could never take this
sensible advice; but he got little comfort from his oracle. "We know
that we are all free, and there's an end on't," was his statement on one
occasion, and now he could only say, "All theory is against the freedom
of the will, and all experience for it."
Some familiar topics followed, which play a great part in Boswell's
reports. Among the favourite topics of the sentimentalists of the day
was the denunciation of "luxury," and of civilized life in general.
There was a disposition to find in the South Sea savages or American
Indians an embodiment of the fancied state of nature. Johnson heartily
despised the affectation. He was told of an American woman who had to be
bound in order to keep her from savage life. "She must have been an
animal, a beast," said Boswell. "Sir," said Johnson, "she was a speaking
cat." Somebody quoted to him with admiration the soliloquy of an
officer who had lived in the wilds of America: "Here am I, free and
unrestrained, amidst the rude magnificence of nature, with the Indian
woman by my side, and this gun, with which I can procure food when I
want it! What more can be desired for human happiness?" "Do not allow
yourself, sir," replied Johnson, "to be imposed upon by such gross
absurdity. It is sad stuff; it is brutish. If a bull could speak, he
might as well exclaim, 'Here am I with this cow and this grass; what
being can enjoy greater felicity?'" When Johnson implored Boswell to
"clear his mind of cant," he was attacking his disciple for affecting a
serious depression about public affairs; but the cant which he hated
would certainly have included as its first article an admiration for the
state of nature.
On the present occasion Johnson defended luxury, and said that he had
learnt much from Mandeville--a shrewd cynic, in whom Johnson's hatred
for humbug is exaggerated into a general disbelief in real as well as
sham nobleness of sentiment. As the conversation proceeded, Johnson
expressed his habitual horror of death, and caused Miss Seward's
ridicule by talking seriously of ghosts and the importance of the
question of their reality; and then followed an explosion, which seems
to have closed this characteristic evening. A young woman had become a
Quaker under the influence of Mrs. Knowles, who now proceeded to
deprecate Johnson's wrath at what he regarded as an apostasy. "Madam,"
he said, "she is an odious wench," and he proceeded to denounce her
audacity in presuming to choose a religion for herself. "She knew no
more of the points of difference," he said, "than of the difference
between the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems." When Mrs. Knowles said
that she had the New Testament before her, he said that it was the
"most difficult book in the world," and he proceeded to attack the
unlucky proselyte with a fury which shocked the two ladies. Mrs. Knowles
afterwards published a report of this conversation, and obtained another
report, with which, however, she was not satisfied, from Miss Seward.
Both of them represent the poor doctor as hopelessly confuted by the
mild dignity and calm reason of Mrs. Knowles, though the triumph is
painted in far the brightest colours by Mrs. Knowles herself. Unluckily,
there is not a trace of Johnson's manner, except in one phrase, in
either report, and they are chiefly curious as an indirect testimony to
Boswell's superior powers. The passage, in which both the ladies agree,
is that Johnson, on the expression of Mrs. Knowles's hope that he would
meet the young lady in another world, retorted that he was not fond of
meeting fools anywhere.
Poor Boswell was at this time a water-drinker by Johnson's
recommendation, though unluckily for himself he never broke off his
drinking habits for long. They had a conversation at Paoli's, in which
Boswell argued against his present practice. Johnson remarked "that wine
gave a man nothing, but only put in motion what had been locked up in
frost." It was a key, suggested some one, which opened a box, but the
box might be full or empty. "Nay, sir," said Johnson, "conversation is
the key, wine is a picklock, which forces open the box and injures it. A
man should cultivate his mind, so as to have that confidence and
readiness without wine which wine gives." Boswell characteristically
said that the great difficulty was from "benevolence." It was hard to
refuse "a good, worthy man" who asked you to try his cellar. This,
according to Johnson, was mere conceit, implying an exaggerated
estimate of your importance to your entertainer. Reynolds gallantly took
up the opposite side, and produced the one recorded instance of a
Johnsonian blush. "I won't argue any more with you, sir," said Johnson,
who thought every man to be elevated who drank wine, "you are too far
gone." "I should have thought so indeed, sir, had I made such a speech
as you have now done," said Reynolds; and Johnson apologized with the
aforesaid blush.
The explosion was soon over on this occasion. Not long afterwards,
Johnson attacked Boswell so fiercely at a dinner at Reynolds's, that the
poor disciple kept away for a week. They made it up when they met next,
and Johnson solaced Boswell's wounded vanity by highly commending an
image made by him to express his feelings. "I don't care how often or
how high Johnson tosses me, when only friends are present, for then I
fall upon soft ground; but I do not like falling on stones, which is the
case when enemies are present." The phrase may recall one of Johnson's
happiest illustrations. When some one said in his presence that a _conge
d'elire_ might be considered as only a strong recommendation: "Sir,"
replied Johnson, "it is such a recommendation as if I should throw you
out of a two-pair of stairs window, and recommend you to fall soft."
It is perhaps time to cease these extracts from Boswell's reports. The
next two years were less fruitful. In 1779 Boswell was careless, though
twice in London, and in 1780, he did not pay his annual visit. Boswell
has partly filled up the gap by a collection of sayings made by Langton,
some passages from which have been quoted, and his correspondence gives
various details. Garrick died in January of 1779, and Beauclerk in
March, 1780. Johnson himself seems to have shown few symptoms of
increasing age; but a change was approaching, and the last years of his
life were destined to be clouded, not merely by physical weakness, but
by a change of circumstances which had great influence upon his
happiness.
CHAPTER V.
THE CLOSING YEARS OF JOHNSON'S LIFE.
In following Boswell's guidance we have necessarily seen only one side
of Johnson's life; and probably that side which had least significance
for the man himself.
Boswell saw in him chiefly the great dictator of conversation; and
though the reports of Johnson's talk represent his character in spite of
some qualifications with unusual fulness, there were many traits very
inadequately revealed at the Mitre or the Club, at Mrs. Thrale's, or in
meetings with Wilkes or Reynolds. We may catch some glimpses from his
letters and diaries of that inward life which consisted generally in a
long succession of struggles against an oppressive and often paralysing
melancholy. Another most noteworthy side to his character is revealed in
his relations to persons too humble for admission to the tables at which
he exerted a despotic sway. Upon this side Johnson was almost entirely
loveable. We often have to regret the imperfection of the records of
That best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.
Everywhere in Johnson's letters and in the occasional anecdotes, we come
upon indications of a tenderness and untiring benevolence which would
make us forgive far worse faults than have ever been laid to his
charge. Nay, the very asperity of the man's outside becomes endeared to
us by the association. His irritability never vented itself against the
helpless, and his rough impatience of fanciful troubles implied no want
of sympathy for real sorrow. One of Mrs. Thrale's anecdotes is intended
to show Johnson's harshness:--"When I one day lamented the loss of a
first cousin killed in America, 'Pr'ythee, my dear,' said he, 'have done
with canting; how would the world be the worse for it, I may ask, if all
your relations were at once spitted like larks and roasted for Presto's
supper?' Presto was the dog that lay under the table while we talked."
The counter version, given by Boswell is, that Mrs. Thrale related her
cousin's death in the midst of a hearty supper, and that Johnson,
shocked at her want of feeling, said, "Madam, it would give _you_ very
little concern if all your relations were spitted like those larks, and
roasted for Presto's supper." Taking the most unfavourable version, we
may judge how much real indifference to human sorrow was implied by
seeing how Johnson was affected by a loss of one of his humblest
friends. It is but one case of many. In 1767, he took leave, as he notes
in his diary, of his "dear old friend, Catherine Chambers," who had been
for about forty-three years in the service of his family. "I desired all
to withdraw," he says, "then told her that we were to part for ever,
and, as Christians, we should part with prayer, and that I would, if she
was willing, say a short prayer beside her. She expressed great desire
to hear me, and held up her poor hands as she lay in bed, with great
fervour, while I prayed, kneeling by her, in nearly the following
words"--which shall not be repeated here--"I then kissed her," he adds.
"She told me that to part was the greatest pain that she had ever felt,
and that she hoped we should meet again in a better place. I expressed,
with swelled eyes, and great emotion of kindness, the same hopes. We
kissed and parted--I humbly hope to meet again and part no more."
A man with so true and tender a heart could say serenely, what with some
men would be a mere excuse for want of sympathy, that he "hated to hear
people whine about metaphysical distresses when there was so much want
and hunger in the world." He had a sound and righteous contempt for all
affectation of excessive sensibility. Suppose, said Boswell to him,
whilst their common friend Baretti was lying under a charge of murder,
"that one of your intimate friends were apprehended for an offence for
which he might be hanged." "I should do what I could," replied Johnson,
"to bail him, and give him any other assistance; but if he were once
fairly hanged, I should not suffer." "Would you eat your dinner that
day, sir?" asks Boswell. "Yes, sir; and eat it as if he were eating with
me. Why there's Baretti, who's to be tried for his life to-morrow.
Friends have risen up for him upon every side; yet if he should be
hanged, none of them will eat a slice of plum-pudding the less. Sir,
that sympathetic feeling goes a very little way in depressing the mind."
Boswell illustrated the subject by saying that Tom Davies had just
written a letter to Foote, telling him that he could not sleep from
concern about Baretti, and at the same time recommending a young man who
kept a pickle-shop. Johnson summed up by the remark: "You will find
these very feeling people are not very ready to do you good. They _pay_
you by _feeling_." Johnson never objected to feeling, but to the waste
of feeling.
In a similar vein he told Mrs. Thrale that a "surly fellow" like
himself had no compassion to spare for "wounds given to vanity and
softness," whilst witnessing the common sight of actual want in great
cities. On Lady Tavistock's death, said to have been caused by grief for
her husband's loss, he observed that her life might have been saved if
she had been put into a small chandler's shop, with a child to nurse.
When Mrs. Thrale suggested that a lady would be grieved because her
friend had lost the chance of a fortune, "She will suffer as much,
perhaps," he replied, "as your horse did when your cow miscarried." Mrs.
Thrale testifies that he once reproached her sternly for complaining of
the dust. When he knew, he said, how many poor families would perish
next winter for want of the bread which the drought would deny, he could
not bear to hear ladies sighing for rain on account of their complexions
or their clothes. While reporting such sayings, she adds, that he loved
the poor as she never saw any one else love them, with an earnest desire
to make them happy. His charity was unbounded; he proposed to allow
himself one hundred a year out of the three hundred of his pension; but
the Thrales could never discover that he really spent upon himself more
than 70_l_., or at most 80_l_. He had numerous dependants, abroad as
well as at home, who "did not like to see him latterly, unless he
brought 'em money." He filled his pockets with small cash which he
distributed to beggars in defiance of political economy. When told that
the recipients only laid it out upon gin or tobacco, he replied that it
was savage to deny them the few coarse pleasures which the richer
disdained. Numerous instances are given of more judicious charity. When,
for example, a Benedictine monk, whom he had seen in Paris, became a
Protestant, Johnson supported him for some months in London, till he
could get a living. Once coming home late at night, he found a poor
woman lying in the street. He carried her to his house on his back, and
found that she was reduced to the lowest stage of want, poverty, and
disease. He took care of her at his own charge, with all tenderness,
until she was restored to health, and tried to have her put into a
virtuous way of living. His house, in his later years, was filled with
various waifs and strays, to whom he gave hospitality and sometimes
support, defending himself by saying that if he did not help them nobody
else would. The head of his household was Miss Williams, who had been a
friend of his wife's, and after coming to stay with him, in order to
undergo an operation for cataract, became a permanent inmate of his
house. She had a small income of some 40_l_. a year, partly from the
charity of connexions of her father's, and partly arising from a little
book of miscellanies published by subscription. She was a woman of some
sense and cultivation, and when she died (in 1783) Johnson said that for
thirty years she had been to him as a sister. Boswell's jealousy was
excited during the first period of his acquaintance, when Goldsmith one
night went home with Johnson, crying "I go to Miss Williams"--a phrase
which implied admission to an intimacy from which Boswell was as yet
excluded. Boswell soon obtained the coveted privilege, and testifies to
the respect with which Johnson always treated the inmates of his family.
Before leaving her to dine with Boswell at the hotel, he asked her what
little delicacy should be sent to her from the tavern. Poor Miss
Williams, however, was peevish, and, according to Hawkins, had been
known to drive Johnson out of the room by her reproaches, and Boswell's
delicacy was shocked by the supposition that she tested the fulness of
cups of tea, by putting her finger inside. We are glad to know that
this was a false impression, and, in fact, Miss Williams, however
unfortunate in temper and circumstances, seems to have been a lady by
manners and education.
The next inmate of this queer household was Robert Levett, a man who had
been a waiter at a coffee-house in Paris frequented by surgeons. They
had enabled him to pick up some of their art, and he set up as an
"obscure practiser in physic amongst the lower people" in London. He
took from them such fees as he could get, including provisions,
sometimes, unfortunately for him, of the potable kind. He was once
entrapped into a queer marriage, and Johnson had to arrange a separation
from his wife. Johnson, it seems, had a good opinion of his medical
skill, and more or less employed his services in that capacity. He
attended his patron at his breakfast; breakfasting, said Percy, "on the
crust of a roll, which Johnson threw to him after tearing out the
crumb." The phrase, it is said, goes too far; Johnson always took pains
that Levett should be treated rather as a friend than as a dependant.
Besides these humble friends, there was a Mrs. Desmoulins, the daughter
of a Lichfield physician. Johnson had had some quarrel with the father
in his youth for revealing a confession of the mental disease which
tortured him from early years. He supported Mrs. Desmoulins none the
less, giving house-room to her and her daughter, and making her an
allowance of half-a-guinea a week, a sum equal to a twelfth part of his
pension. Francis Barker has already been mentioned, and we have a dim
vision of a Miss Carmichael, who completed what he facetiously called
his "seraglio." It was anything but a happy family. He summed up their
relations in a letter to Mrs. Thrale. "Williams," he says, "hates
everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams;
Desmoulins hates them both; Poll (Miss Carmichael) loves none of them."
Frank Barker complained of Miss Williams's authority, and Miss Williams
of Frank's insubordination. Intruders who had taken refuge under his
roof, brought their children there in his absence, and grumbled if their
dinners were ill-dressed. The old man bore it all, relieving himself by
an occasional growl, but reproaching any who ventured to join in the
growl for their indifference to the sufferings of poverty. Levett died
in January, 1782; Miss Williams died, after a lingering illness, in
1783, and Johnson grieved in solitude for the loss of his testy
companions. A poem, composed upon Levett's death, records his feelings
in language which wants the refinement of Goldsmith or the intensity of
Cowper's pathos, but which is yet so sincere and tender as to be more
impressive than far more elegant compositions. It will be a fitting
close to this brief indication of one side of Johnson's character, too
easily overlooked in Boswell's pages, to quote part of what Thackeray
truly calls the "sacred verses" upon Levett:--