Samuel Johnson - Leslie Stephen
"The business of a poet," said Imlac, "is to examine not the individual,
but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances; he
does not number the streaks of the tulip or describe the different
shades in the verdure of the forest. He is to exhibit in his portraits
of nature such prominent and striking features as recall the original to
every mind; and must neglect the minute discriminations which one may
have remarked, and another have neglected for those characteristics
which are alike obvious to vigilance and carelessness."
"But the knowledge of nature is only half the task of a poet; he must be
acquainted likewise with all the modes of life. His character requires
that he estimate the happiness and misery of every condition; observe
the power of all the passions in all their combinations, and know the
changes of the human mind as they are modified by various institutions,
and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the sprightliness
of infancy to the despondency of decrepitude. He must divest himself of
the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong
in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws
and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths, which will
always be the same; he must therefore content himself with the slow
progress of his name; contemn the applause of his own time, and commit
his claims to the justice of posterity. He must write as the interpreter
of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as
presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a
being superior to time and place.
"His labours are not yet at an end; he must know many languages and many
sciences; and that his style may be worthy of his thoughts, must by
incessant practice familiarize to himself every delicacy of speech and
grace of harmony."
Imlac now felt the enthusiastic fit and was proceeding to aggrandize his
profession, when the prince cried out, "Enough, thou hast convinced me
that no human being can ever be a poet."
Indeed, Johnson's conception of poetry is not the one which is now
fashionable, and which would rather seem to imply that philosophical
power and moral sensibility are so far disqualifications to the true
poet.
Here, again, is a view of the superfine system of moral philosophy. A
meeting of learned men is discussing the ever-recurring problem of
happiness, and one of them speaks as follows:--
"The way to be happy is to live according to nature, in obedience to
that universal and unalterable law with which every heart is originally
impressed; which is not written on it by precept, but engraven by
destiny, not instilled by education, but infused at our nativity. He
that lives according to nature will suffer nothing from the delusions of
hope, or importunities of desire; he will receive and reject with
equability of temper, and act or suffer as the reason of things shall
alternately prescribe. Other men may amuse themselves with subtle
definitions or intricate ratiocinations. Let him learn to be wise by
easier means: let him observe the hind of the forest, and the linnet of
the grove; let him consider the life of animals whose motions are
regulated by instinct; they obey their guide and are happy.
"Let us, therefore, at length cease to dispute, and learn to live; throw
away the incumbrance of precepts, which they who utter them with so much
pride and pomp do not understand, and carry with us this simple and
intelligible maxim, that deviation from nature is deviation from
happiness."
The prince modestly inquires what is the precise meaning of the advice
just given.
"When I find young men so humble and so docile," said the philosopher,
"I can deny them no information which my studies have enabled me to
afford. To live according to nature, is to act always with due regard to
the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and
effects, to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal
felicity; to co-operate with the general disposition and tendency of the
present system of things.
"The prince soon found that this was one of the sages, whom he should
understand less as he heard him longer."
Here, finally, is a characteristic reflection upon the right mode of
meeting sorrow.
"The state of a mind oppressed with a sudden calamity," said Imlac, "is
like that of the fabulous inhabitants of the new created earth, who,
when the first night came upon them, supposed that day would never
return. When the clouds of sorrow gather over us, we see nothing beyond
them, nor can imagine how they will be dispelled; yet a new day
succeeded to the night, and sorrow is never long without a dawn of ease.
But as they who restrain themselves from receiving comfort, do as the
savages would have done, had they put out their eyes when it was dark.
Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly
lost, and something acquired. To lose much at once is inconvenient to
either, but while the vital powers remain uninjured, nature will find
the means of reparation.
"Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye, and while we
glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave behind us is always
lessening, and that which we approach increasing in magnitude. Do not
suffer life to stagnate; it will grow muddy for want of motion; commit
yourself again to the current of the world; Pekuah will vanish by
degrees; you will meet in your way some other favourite, or learn to
diffuse yourself in general conversation."
In one respect _Rasselas_ is curiously contrasted with _Candide_.
Voltaire's story is aimed at the doctrine of theological optimism, and,
whether that doctrine be well or ill understood, has therefore an openly
sceptical tendency. Johnson, to whom nothing could be more abhorrent
than an alliance with any assailant of orthodoxy, draws no inference
from his pessimism. He is content to state the fact of human misery
without perplexing himself with the resulting problem as to the final
cause of human existence. If the question had been explicitly brought
before him, he would, doubtless, have replied that the mystery was
insoluble. To answer either in the sceptical or the optimistic sense was
equally presumptuous. Johnson's religious beliefs in fact were not such
as to suggest that kind of comfort which is to be obtained by explaining
away the existence of evil. If he, too, would have said that in some
sense all must be for the best in a world ruled by a perfect Creator,
the sense must be one which would allow of the eternal misery of
indefinite multitudes of his creatures.
But, in truth, it was characteristic of Johnson to turn away his mind
from such topics. He was interested in ethical speculations, but on the
practical side, in the application to life, not in the philosophy on
which it might be grounded. In that direction, he could see nothing but
a "milking of the bull"--a fruitless or rather a pernicious waste of
intellect. An intense conviction of the supreme importance of a moral
guidance in this difficult world, made him abhor any rash inquiries by
which the basis of existing authority might be endangered.
This sentiment is involved in many of those prejudices which have been
so much, and in some sense justifiably ridiculed. Man has been wretched
and foolish since the race began, and will be till it ends; one chorus
of lamentation has ever been rising, in countless dialects but with a
single meaning; the plausible schemes of philosophers give no solution
to the everlasting riddle; the nostrums of politicians touch only the
surface of the deeply-rooted evil; it is folly to be querulous, and as
silly to fancy that men are growing worse, as that they are much better
than they used to be. The evils under which we suffer are not skin-deep,
to be eradicated by changing the old physicians for new quacks. What is
to be done under such conditions, but to hold fast as vigorously as we
can to the rules of life and faith which have served our ancestors, and
which, whatever their justifications, are at least the only consolation,
because they supply the only guidance through this labyrinth of
troubles? Macaulay has ridiculed Johnson for what he takes to be the
ludicrous inconsistency of his intense political prejudice, combined
with his assertion of the indifference of all forms of government.
"If," says Macaulay, "the difference between two forms of government be
not worth half a guinea, it is not easy to see how Whiggism can be viler
than Toryism, or the Crown can have too little power." The answer is
surely obvious. Whiggism is vile, according to the doctor's phrase,
because Whiggism is a "negation of all principle;" it is in his view,
not so much the preference of one form to another, as an attack upon the
vital condition of all government. He called Burke a "bottomless Whig"
in this sense, implying that Whiggism meant anarchy; and in the next
generation a good many people were led, rightly or wrongly, to agree
with him by the experience of the French revolution.
This dogged conservatism has both its value and its grotesque side. When
Johnson came to write political pamphlets in his later years, and to
deal with subjects little familiar to his mind, the results were
grotesque enough. Loving authority, and holding one authority to be as
good as another, he defended with uncompromising zeal the most
preposterous and tyrannical measures. The pamphlets against the Wilkite
agitators and the American rebels are little more than a huge
"rhinoceros" snort of contempt against all who are fools enough or
wicked enough to promote war and disturbance in order to change one form
of authority for another. Here is a characteristic passage, giving his
view of the value of such demonstrators:--
"The progress of a petition is well known. An ejected placeman goes down
to his county or his borough, tells his friends of his inability to
serve them and his constituents, of the corruption of the government.
His friends readily understand that he who can get nothing, will have
nothing to give. They agree to proclaim a meeting. Meat and drink are
plentifully provided, a crowd is easily brought together, and those who
think that they know the reason of the meeting undertake to tell those
who know it not. Ale and clamour unite their powers; the crowd,
condensed and heated, begins to ferment with the leaven of sedition. All
see a thousand evils, though they cannot show them, and grow impatient
for a remedy, though they know not what.
"A speech is then made by the Cicero of the day; he says much and
suppresses more, and credit is equally given to what he tells and what
he conceals. The petition is heard and universally approved. Those who
are sober enough to write, add their names, and the rest would sign it
if they could.
"Every man goes home and tells his neighbour of the glories of the day;
how he was consulted, and what he advised; how he was invited into the
great room, where his lordship caressed him by his name; how he was
caressed by Sir Francis, Sir Joseph, and Sir George; how he ate turtle
and venison, and drank unanimity to the three brothers.
"The poor loiterer, whose shop had confined him or whose wife had locked
him up, hears the tale of luxury with envy, and at last inquires what
was their petition. Of the petition nothing is remembered by the
narrator, but that it spoke much of fears and apprehensions and
something very alarming, but that he is sure it is against the
government.
"The other is convinced that it must be right, and wishes he had been
there, for he loves wine and venison, and resolves as long as he lives
to be against the government.
"The petition is then handed from town to town, and from house to house;
and wherever it comes, the inhabitants flock together that they may see
that which must be sent to the king. Names are easily collected. One man
signs because he hates the papists; another because he has vowed
destruction to the turnpikes; one because it will vex the parson;
another because he owes his landlord nothing; one because he is rich;
another because he is poor; one to show that he is not afraid; and
another to show that he can write."
The only writing in which we see a distinct reflection of Johnson's talk
is the _Lives of the Poets_. The excellence of that book is of the same
kind as the excellence of his conversation. Johnson wrote it under
pressure, and it has suffered from his characteristic indolence. Modern
authors would fill as many pages as Johnson has filled lines, with the
biographies of some of his heroes. By industriously sweeping together
all the rubbish which is in any way connected with the great man, by
elaborately discussing the possible significance of infinitesimal bits
of evidence, and by disquisition upon general principles or the whole
mass of contemporary literature, it is easy to swell volumes to any
desired extent. The result is sometimes highly interesting and valuable,
as it is sometimes a new contribution to the dust-heaps; but in any case
the design is something quite different from Johnson's. He has left much
to be supplied and corrected by later scholars. His aim is simply to
give a vigorous summary of the main facts of his heroes' lives, a pithy
analysis of their character, and a short criticism of their productions.
The strong sense which is everywhere displayed, the massive style, which
is yet easier and less cumbrous than in his earlier work, and the
uprightness and independence of the judgments, make the book agreeable
even where we are most inclined to dissent from its conclusions.
The criticism is that of a school which has died out under the great
revolution of modern taste. The booksellers decided that English poetry
began for their purposes with Cowley, and Johnson has, therefore,
nothing to say about some of the greatest names in our literature. The
loss is little to be regretted, since the biographical part of earlier
memoirs must have been scanty, and the criticism inappreciative.
Johnson, it may be said, like most of his contemporaries, considered
poetry almost exclusively from the didactic and logical point of view.
He always inquires what is the moral of a work of art. If he does not
precisely ask "what it proves," he pays excessive attention to the
logical solidity and coherence of its sentiments. He condemns not only
insincerity and affectation of feeling, but all such poetic imagery as
does not correspond to the actual prosaic belief of the writer. For the
purely musical effects of poetry he has little or no feeling, and allows
little deviation from the alternate long and short syllables neatly
bound in Pope's couplets.
To many readers this would imply that Johnson omits precisely the poetic
element in poetry. I must be here content to say that in my opinion it
implies rather a limitation than a fundamental error. Johnson errs in
supposing that his logical tests are at all adequate; but it is, I
think, a still greater error to assume that poetry has no connexion,
because it has not this kind of connexion, with philosophy. His
criticism has always a meaning, and in the case of works belonging to
his own school a very sound meaning. When he is speaking of other
poetry, we can only reply that his remarks may be true, but that they
are not to the purpose.
The remarks on the poetry of Dryden, Addison, and Pope are generally
excellent, and always give the genuine expression of an independent
judgment. Whoever thinks for himself, and says plainly what he thinks,
has some merit as a critic. This, it is true, is about all that can be
said for such criticism as that on _Lycidas_, which is a delicious
example of the wrong way of applying strong sense to inappropriate
topics. Nothing can be truer in a sense, and nothing less relevant.
"In this poem," he says, "there is no nature, for there is no truth;
there is no art, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a
pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting; whatever images it can
supply are easily exhausted, and its inherent improbability always
forces dissatisfaction on the mind. When Cowley tells of Hervey that
they studied together, it is easy to suppose how much he must miss the
companion of his labours and the partner of his discoveries; but what
image of tenderness can be excited by these lines?--
We drove afield, and both together heard
What time the gray fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night.
We know that they never drove a-field and had no flocks to batten; and
though it be allowed that the representation may be allegorical, the
true meaning is so uncertain and remote that it is never sought, because
it cannot be known when it is found.
"Among the flocks and copses and flowers appear the heathen deities:
Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and Aeolus, with a long train of mythological
imagery such as a college easily supplies. Nothing can less display
knowledge or less exercise invention than to tell how a shepherd has
lost his companion, and must now feed his flocks alone, without any
judge of his skill in piping; how one god asks another god what has
become of Lycidas, and neither god can tell. He who thus grieves will
excite no sympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour."
This is of course utterly outrageous, and yet much of it is undeniably
true. To explain why, in spite of truth, _Lycidas_ is a wonderful poem,
would be to go pretty deeply into the theory of poetic expression. Most
critics prefer simply to shriek, being at any rate safe from the errors
of independent judgment.
The general effect of the book, however, is not to be inferred from this
or some other passages of antiquated and eccentric criticism. It is the
shrewd sense everywhere cropping up which is really delightful. The keen
remarks upon life and character, though, perhaps, rather too severe in
tone, are worthy of a vigorous mind, stored with much experience of many
classes, and braced by constant exercise in the conversational arena.
Passages everywhere abound which, though a little more formal in
expression, have the forcible touch of his best conversational sallies.
Some of the prejudices, which are expressed more pithily in _Boswell_,
are defended by a reasoned exposition in the _Lives_. Sentence is passed
with the true judicial air; and if he does not convince us of his
complete impartiality, he at least bases his decisions upon solid and
worthy grounds. It would be too much, for example, to expect that
Johnson should sympathize with the grand republicanism of Milton, or
pardon a man who defended the execution of the blessed Martyr. He
failed, therefore, to satisfy the ardent admirers of the great poet. Yet
his judgment is not harsh or ungenerous, but, at worst, the judgment of
a man striving to be just, in spite of some inevitable want of sympathy.
The quality of Johnson's incidental remarks may be inferred from one or
two brief extracts. Here is an observation which Johnson must have had
many chances of verifying. Speaking of Dryden's money difficulties, he
says, "It is well known that he seldom lives frugally who lives by
chance. Hope is always liberal, and they that trust her promises, make
little scruple of revelling to-day on the profits of the morrow."
Here is another shrewd comment upon the compliments paid to Halifax, of
whom Pope says in the character of Bufo,--
Fed with soft dedications all day long,
Horace and he went hand and hand in song.
"To charge all unmerited praise with the guilt of flattery, or to
suppose that the encomiast always knows and feels the falsehoods of his
assertions, is surely to discover great ignorance of human nature and of
human life. In determinations depending not on rules, but on reference
and comparison, judgment is always in some degree subject to affection.
Very near to admiration is the wish to admire.
"Every man willingly gives value to the praise which he receives, and
considers the sentence passed in his favour as the sentence of
discernment. We admire in a friend that understanding that selected us
for confidence; we admire more in a patron that bounty which, instead of
scattering bounty indiscriminately, directed it to us; and if the patron
be an author, those performances which gratitude forbids us to blame,
affection will easily dispose us to exalt.
"To these prejudices, hardly culpable, interest adds a power always
operating, though not always, because not willingly, perceived. The
modesty of praise gradually wears away; and, perhaps, the pride of
patronage may be in time so increased that modest praise will no longer
please.
"Many a blandishment was practised upon Halifax, which he would never
have known had he no other attractions than those of his poetry, of
which a short time has withered the beauties. It would now be esteemed
no honour by a contributor to the monthly bundles of verses, to be told
that, in strains either familiar or solemn, he sings like Halifax."
I will venture to make a longer quotation from the life of Pope, which
gives, I think, a good impression of his manner:--
"Of his social qualities, if an estimate be made from his letters, an
opinion too favourable cannot easily be formed; they exhibit a perpetual
and unclouded effulgence of general benevolence and particular fondness.
There is nothing but liberality, gratitude, constancy, and tenderness.
It has been so long said as to be commonly believed, that the true
characters of men may be found in their letters, and that he who writes
to his friend lays his heart open before him.
"But the truth is, that such were the simple friendships of the Golden
Age, and are now the friendships only of children. Very few can boast of
hearts which they dare lay open to themselves, and of which, by whatever
accident exposed, they do not shun a distinct and continued view; and
certainly what we hide from ourselves, we do not show to our friends.
There is, indeed, no transaction which offers stronger temptations to
fallacy and sophistication than epistolary intercourse.
"In the eagerness of conversation, the first emotions of the mind often
burst out before they are considered. In the tumult of business,
interest and passion have their genuine effect; but a friendly letter is
a calm and deliberate performance in the cool of leisure, in the
stillness of solitude, and surely no man sits down by design to
depreciate his own character.
"Friendship has no tendency to secure veracity; for by whom can a man so
much wish to be thought better than he is, as by him whose kindness he
desires to gain or keep? Even in writing to the world there is less
constraint; the author is not confronted with his reader, and takes his
chance of approbation among the different dispositions of mankind; but a
letter is addressed to a single mind, of which the prejudices and
partialities are known, and must therefore please, if not by favouring
them, by forbearing to oppose them. To charge those favourable
representations which men give of their own minds, with the guilt of
hypocritical falsehood, would show more severity than knowledge. The
writer commonly believes himself. Almost every man's thoughts while they
are general are right, and most hearts are pure while temptation is
away. It is easy to awaken generous sentiments in privacy; to despise
death when there is no danger; to glow with benevolence when there is
nothing to be given. While such ideas are formed they are felt, and
self-love does not suspect the gleam of virtue to be the meteor of
fancy.
"If the letters of Pope are considered merely as compositions, they seem
to be premeditated and artificial. It is one thing to write, because
there is something which the mind wishes to discharge; and another to
solicit the imagination, because ceremony or vanity requires something
to be written. Pope confesses his early letters to be vitiated with
_affectation and ambition_. To know whether he disentangles himself
from these perverters of epistolary integrity, his book and his life
must be set in comparison. One of his favourite topics is contempt of
his own poetry. For this, if it had been real, he would deserve no
commendation; and in this he was certainly not sincere, for his high
value of himself was sufficiently observed; and of what could he be
proud but of his poetry? He writes, he says, when 'he has just nothing
else to do,' yet Swift complains that he was never at leisure for
conversation, because he 'had always some poetical scheme in his head.'
It was punctually required that his writing-box should be set upon his
bed before he rose; and Lord Oxford's domestic related that, in the
dreadful winter of '40, she was called from her bed by him four times in
one night, to supply him with paper lest he should lose a thought.
"He pretends insensibility to censure and criticism, though it was
observed by all who knew him that every pamphlet disturbed his quiet,
and that his extreme irritability laid him open to perpetual vexation;
but he wished to despise his critics, and therefore hoped he did despise
them. As he happened to live in two reigns when the court paid little
attention to poetry, he nursed in his mind a foolish disesteem of kings,
and proclaims that 'he never sees courts.' Yet a little regard shown him
by the Prince of Wales melted his obduracy; and he had not much to say
when he was asked by his Royal Highness, 'How he could love a prince
while he disliked kings.'"