Samuel Johnson - Leslie Stephen
The years 1768 and 1769 were a period of great excitement for Boswell.
He was carrying on various love affairs, which ended with his marriage
in the end of 1769. He was publishing his book upon Corsica and paying
homage to Paoli, who arrived in England in the autumn of the same year.
The book appeared in the beginning of 1768, and he begs his friend
Temple to report all that is said about it, but with the restriction
that he is to conceal _all censure_. He particularly wanted Gray's
opinion, as Gray was a friend of Temple's. Gray's opinion, not conveyed
to Boswell, was expressed by his calling it "a dialogue between a green
goose and a hero." Boswell, who was cultivating the society of various
eminent people, exclaims triumphantly in a letter to Temple (April 26,
1768), "I am really the great man now." Johnson and Hume had called upon
him on the same day, and Garrick, Franklin, and Oglethorpe also partook
of his "admirable dinners and good claret." "This," he says, with the
sense that he deserved his honours, "is enjoying the fruit of my
labours, and appearing like the friend of Paoli." Johnson in vain
expressed a wish that he would "empty his head of Corsica, which had
filled it too long." "Empty my head of Corsica! Empty it of honour,
empty it of friendship, empty it of piety!" exclaims the ardent youth.
The next year accordingly saw Boswell's appearance at the Stratford
Jubilee, where he paraded to the admiration of all beholders in a
costume described by himself (apparently) in a glowing article in the
_London Magazine_. "Is it wrong, sir," he took speedy opportunity of
inquiring from the oracle, "to affect singularity in order to make
people stare?" "Yes," replied Johnson, "if you do it by propagating
error, and indeed it is wrong in any way. There is in human nature a
general inclination to make people stare, and every wise man has himself
to cure of it, and does cure himself. If you wish to make people stare
by doing better than others, why make them stare till they stare their
eyes out. But consider how easy it is to make people stare by being
absurd"--a proposition which he proceeds to illustrate by examples
perhaps less telling than Boswell's recent performance.
The sage was less communicative on the question of marriage, though
Boswell had anticipated some "instructive conversation" upon that topic.
His sole remark was one from which Boswell "humbly differed." Johnson
maintained that a wife was not the worse for being learned. Boswell, on
the other hand, defined the proper degree of intelligence to be desired
in a female companion by some verses in which Sir Thomas Overbury says
that a wife should have some knowledge, and be "by nature wise, not
learned much by art." Johnson said afterwards that Mrs. Boswell was in a
proper degree inferior to her husband. So far as we can tell, she seems
to have been a really sensible, and good woman, who kept her husband's
absurdities in check, and was, in her way, a better wife than he
deserved. So, happily, are most wives.
Johnson and Boswell had several meetings in 1769. Boswell had the honour
of introducing the two objects of his idolatry, Johnson and Paoli, and
on another occasion entertained a party including Goldsmith and Garrick
and Reynolds, at his lodgings in Old Bond Street. We can still see the
meeting more distinctly than many that have been swallowed by a few days
of oblivion. They waited for one of the party, Johnson kindly
maintaining that six ought to be kept waiting for one, if the one would
suffer more by the others sitting down than the six by waiting.
Meanwhile Garrick "played round Johnson with a fond vivacity, taking
hold of the breasts of his coat, looking up in his face with a lively
archness," and complimenting him on his good health. Goldsmith strutted
about bragging of his dress, of which Boswell, in the serene
consciousness of superiority to such weakness, thought him seriously
vain. "Let me tell you," said Goldsmith, "when my tailor brought home my
bloom-coloured coat, he said, 'Sir, I have a favour to beg of you; when
anybody asks you who made your clothes, be pleased to mention John
Filby, at the Harrow, Water Lane.'" "Why, sir," said Johnson, "that was
because he knew that the strange colour would attract crowds to gaze at
it, and thus they might hear of him, and see how well he could make a
coat even of so absurd a colour." Mr. Filby has gone the way of all
tailors and bloom-coloured coats, but some of his bills are preserved.
On the day of this dinner he had delivered to Goldsmith a half-dress
suit of ratteen lined with satin, costing twelve guineas, a pair of silk
stocking-breeches for L2 5_s_. and a pair of bloom-coloured ditto for L1
4_s_. 6_d_. The bill, including other items, was paid, it is
satisfactory to add, in February, 1771.
The conversation was chiefly literary. Johnson repeated the concluding
lines of the _Dunciad_; upon which some one (probably Boswell) ventured
to say that they were "too fine for such a poem--a poem on what?" "Why,"
said Johnson, "on dunces! It was worth while being a dunce then. Ah,
sir, hadst _thou_ lived in those days!" Johnson previously uttered a
criticism which has led some people to think that he had a touch of the
dunce in him. He declared that a description of a temple in Congreve's
_Mourning Bride_ was the finest he knew--finer than anything in
Shakspeare. Garrick vainly protested; but Johnson was inexorable. He
compared Congreve to a man who had only ten guineas in the world, but
all in one coin; whereas Shakspeare might have ten thousand separate
guineas. The principle of the criticism is rather curious. "What I mean
is," said Johnson, "that you can show me no passage where there is
simply a description of material objects, without any admixture of moral
notions, which produces such an effect." The description of the night
before Agincourt was rejected because there were men in it; and the
description of Dover Cliff because the boats and the crows "impede yon
fall." They do "not impress your mind at once with the horrible idea of
immense height. The impression is divided; you pass on by computation
from one stage of the tremendous space to another."
Probably most people will think that the passage in question deserves a
very slight fraction of the praise bestowed upon it; but the criticism,
like most of Johnson's, has a meaning which might be worth examining
abstractedly from the special application which shocks the idolaters of
Shakspeare. Presently the party discussed Mrs. Montagu, whose Essay upon
Shakspeare had made some noise. Johnson had a respect for her, caused in
great measure by a sense of her liberality to his friend Miss Williams,
of whom more must be said hereafter. He paid her some tremendous
compliments, observing that some China plates which had belonged to
Queen Elizabeth and to her, had no reason to be ashamed of a possessor
so little inferior to the first. But he had his usual professional
contempt for her amateur performances in literature. Her defence of
Shakspeare against Voltaire did her honour, he admitted, but it would do
nobody else honour. "No, sir, there is no real criticism in it: none
showing the beauty of thought, as formed on the workings of the human
heart." Mrs. Montagu was reported once to have complimented a modern
tragedian, probably Jephson, by saying, "I tremble for Shakspeare."
"When Shakspeare," said Johnson, "has got Jephson for his rival and Mrs.
Montagu for his defender, he is in a poor state indeed." The
conversation went on to a recently published book, _Kames's Elements of
Criticism_, which Johnson praised, whilst Goldsmith said more truly, "It
is easier to write that book than to read it." Johnson went on to speak
of other critics. "There is no great merit," he said, "in telling how
many plays have ghosts in them, and how this ghost is better than that.
You must show how terror is impressed on the human heart. In the
description of night in _Macbeth_ the beetle and the bat detract from
the general idea of darkness--inspissated gloom."
After Boswell's marriage he disappeared for some time from London, and
his correspondence with Johnson dropped, as he says, without coldness,
from pure procrastination. He did not return to London till 1772. In the
spring of that and the following year he renewed his old habits of
intimacy, and inquired into Johnson's opinion upon various subjects
ranging from ghosts to literary criticism. The height to which he had
risen in the doctor's good opinion was marked by several symptoms. He
was asked to dine at Johnson's house upon Easter day, 1773; and observes
that his curiosity was as much gratified as by a previous dinner with
Rousseau in the "wilds of Neufchatel." He was now able to report, to the
amazement of many inquirers, that Johnson's establishment was quite
orderly. The meal consisted of very good soup, a boiled leg of lamb with
spinach, a veal pie, and a rice pudding. A stronger testimony of
good-will was his election, by Johnson's influence, into the Club. It
ought apparently to be said that Johnson forced him upon the Club by
letting it be understood that, till Boswell was admitted, no other
candidate would have a chance. Boswell, however, was, as his proposer
said, a thoroughly "clubable" man, and once a member, his good humour
secured his popularity. On the important evening Boswell dined at
Beauclerk's with his proposer and some other members. The talk turned
upon Goldsmith's merits; and Johnson not only defended his poetry, but
preferred him as a historian to Robertson. Such a judgment could be
explained in Boswell's opinion by nothing but Johnson's dislike to the
Scotch. Once before, when Boswell had mentioned Robertson in order to
meet Johnson's condemnation of Scotch literature in general, Johnson had
evaded him; "Sir, I love Robertson, and I won't talk of his book." On
the present occasion he said that he would give to Robertson the advice
offered by an old college tutor to a pupil; "read over your
compositions, and whenever you meet with a passage which you think
particularly fine, strike it out." A good anecdote of Goldsmith
followed. Johnson had said to him once in the Poet's Corner at
Westminster,--
Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.
When they got to Temple Bar Goldsmith pointed to the heads of the
Jacobites upon it and slily suggested,--
Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur _istis_.
Johnson next pronounced a critical judgment which should be set against
many sins of that kind. He praised the _Pilgrim's Progress_ very warmly,
and suggested that Bunyan had probably read Spenser.
After more talk the gentlemen went to the Club; and poor Boswell
remained trembling with an anxiety which even the claims of Lady Di
Beauclerk's conversation could not dissipate. The welcome news of his
election was brought; and Boswell went to see Burke for the first time,
and to receive a humorous charge from Johnson, pointing out the conduct
expected from him as a good member. Perhaps some hints were given as to
betrayal of confidence. Boswell seems at any rate to have had a certain
reserve in repeating Club talk.
This intimacy with Johnson was about to receive a more public and even
more impressive stamp. The antipathy to Scotland and the Scotch already
noticed was one of Johnson's most notorious crotchets. The origin of the
prejudice was forgotten by Johnson himself, though he was willing to
accept a theory started by old Sheridan that it was resentment for the
betrayal of Charles I. There is, however, nothing surprising in
Johnson's partaking a prejudice common enough from the days of his
youth, when each people supposed itself to have been cheated by the
Union, and Englishmen resented the advent of swarms of needy
adventurers, talking with a strange accent and hanging together with
honourable but vexatious persistence. Johnson was irritated by what was,
after all, a natural defence against English prejudice. He declared that
the Scotch were always ready to lie on each other's behalf. "The Irish,"
he said, "are not in a conspiracy to cheat the world by false
representations of the merits of their countrymen. No, sir, the Irish
are a fair people; they never speak well of one another." There was
another difference. He always expressed a generous resentment against
the tyranny exercised by English rulers over the Irish people. To some
one who defended the restriction of Irish trade for the good of English
merchants, he said, "Sir, you talk the language of a savage. What! sir,
would you prevent any people from feeding themselves, if by any honest
means they can do it?" It was "better to hang or drown people at once,"
than weaken them by unrelenting persecution. He felt some tenderness for
Catholics, especially when oppressed, and a hearty antipathy towards
prosperous Presbyterians. The Lowland Scotch were typified by John Knox,
in regard to whom he expressed a hope, after viewing the ruins of St.
Andrew's, that he was buried "in the highway."
This sturdy British and High Church prejudice did not prevent the worthy
doctor from having many warm friendships with Scotchmen, and helping
many distressed Scotchmen in London. Most of the amanuenses employed for
his _Dictionary_ were Scotch. But he nourished the prejudice the more as
giving an excellent pretext for many keen gibes. "Scotch learning," he
said, for example, "is like bread in a besieged town. Every man gets a
mouthful, but no man a bellyful." Once Strahan said in answer to some
abusive remarks, "Well, sir, God made Scotland." "Certainly," replied
Johnson, "but we must always remember that He made it for Scotchmen; and
comparisons are odious, Mr. Strahan, but God made hell."
Boswell, therefore, had reason to feel both triumph and alarm when he
induced the great man to accompany him in a Scotch tour. Boswell's
journal of the tour appeared soon after Johnson's death. Johnson himself
wrote an account of it, which is not without interest, though it is in
his dignified style, which does not condescend to Boswellian touches of
character. In 1773 the Scotch Highlands were still a little known
region, justifying a book descriptive of manners and customs, and
touching upon antiquities now the commonplaces of innumerable guide
books. Scott was still an infant, and the day of enthusiasm, real or
affected, for mountain scenery had not yet dawned. Neither of the
travellers, as Boswell remarks, cared much for "rural beauties." Johnson
says quaintly on the shores of Loch Ness, "It will very readily occur
that this uniformity of barrenness can afford very little amusement to
the traveller; that it is easy to sit at home and conceive rocks and
heath and waterfalls; and that these journeys are useless labours, which
neither impregnate the imagination nor enlarge the understanding." And
though he shortly afterwards sits down on a bank "such as a writer of
romance might have delighted to feign," and there conceived the thought
of his book, he does not seem to have felt much enthusiasm. He checked
Boswell for describing a hill as "immense," and told him that it was
only a "considerable protuberance." Indeed it is not surprising if he
sometimes grew weary in long rides upon Highland ponies, or if, when
weatherbound in a remote village in Skye, he declared that this was a
"waste of life."
On the whole, however, Johnson bore his fatigues well, preserved his
temper, and made sensible remarks upon men and things. The pair started
from Edinburgh in the middle of August, 1773; they went north along the
eastern coast, through St. Andrew's, Aberdeen, Banff, Fort George, and
Inverness. There they took to horses, rode to Glenelg, and took boat for
Skye, where they landed on the 2nd of September. They visited Rothsay,
Col, Mull, and Iona, and after some dangerous sailing got to the
mainland at Oban on October 2nd. Thence they proceeded by Inverary and
Loch Lomond to Glasgow; and after paying a visit to Boswell's paternal
mansion at Auchinleck in Ayrshire, returned to Edinburgh in November. It
were too long to narrate their adventures at length, or to describe in
detail how Johnson grieved over traces of the iconoclastic zeal of
Knox's disciples, seriously investigated stories of second-sight,
cross-examined and brow-beat credulous believers in the authenticity of
_Ossian_, and felt his piety grow warm among the ruins of Iona. Once or
twice, when the temper of the travellers was tried by the various
worries incident to their position, poor Boswell came in for some severe
blows. But he was happy, feeling, as he remarks, like a dog who has run
away with a large piece of meat, and is devouring it peacefully in a
corner by himself. Boswell's spirits were irrepressible. On hearing a
drum beat for dinner at Fort George, he says, with a Pepys-like touch,
"I for a little while fancied myself a military man, and it pleased me."
He got scandalously drunk on one occasion, and showed reprehensible
levity on others. He bored Johnson by inquiring too curiously into his
reasons for not wearing a nightcap--a subject which seems to have
interested him profoundly; he permitted himself to say in his journal
that he was so much pleased with some pretty ladies' maids at the Duke
of Argyll's, that he felt he could "have been a knight-errant for them,"
and his "venerable fellow-traveller" read the passage without censuring
his levity. The great man himself could be equally volatile. "I _have
often thought_," he observed one day, to Boswell's amusement, "that if I
kept a seraglio, the ladies should all wear linen gowns"--as more
cleanly. The pair agreed in trying to stimulate the feudal zeal of
various Highland chiefs with whom they came in contact, and who were
unreasonable enough to show a hankering after the luxuries of
civilization.
Though Johnson seems to have been generally on his best behaviour, he
had a rough encounter or two with some of the more civilized natives.
Boswell piloted him safely through a visit to Lord Monboddo, a man of
real ability, though the proprietor of crochets as eccentric as
Johnson's, and consequently divided from him by strong mutual
prejudices. At Auchinleck he was less fortunate. The old laird, who was
the staunchest of Whigs, had not relished his son's hero-worship. "There
is nae hope for Jamie, mon; Jamie is gaen clean gyte. What do you think,
mon? He's done wi' Paoli--he's off wi' the land-louping scoundrel of a
Corsican, and who's tail do you think he's pinned himself to now, mon?"
"Here," says Sir Walter Scott, the authority for the story, "the old
judge summoned up a sneer of most sovereign contempt. 'A dominie,
mon--an auld dominie--he keeped a schule and caauld it an acaademy.'"
The two managed to keep the peace till, one day during Johnson's visit,
they got upon Oliver Cromwell. Boswell suppresses the scene with obvious
reluctance, his openness being checked for once by filial respect. Scott
has fortunately preserved the climax of Old Boswell's argument. "What
had Cromwell done for his country?" asked Johnson. "God, doctor, he gart
Kings ken that they had a _lith_ in their necks" retorted the laird, in
a phrase worthy of Mr. Carlyle himself. Scott reports one other scene,
at which respectable commentators, like Croker, hold up their hands in
horror. Should we regret or rejoice to say that it involves an obvious
inaccuracy? The authority, however, is too good to allow us to suppose
that it was without some foundation. Adam Smith, it is said, met Johnson
at Glasgow and had an altercation with him about the well-known account
of Hume's death. As Hume did not die till three years later, there must
be some error in this. The dispute, however, whatever its date or
subject, ended by Johnson saying to Smith, "_You lie_." "And what did
you reply?" was asked of Smith. "I said, 'you are a son of a -----.'"
"On such terms," says Scott, "did these two great moralists meet and
part, and such was the classical dialogue between these two great
teachers of morality."
In the year 1774 Boswell found it expedient to atone for his long
absence in the previous year by staying at home. Johnson managed to
complete his account of the _Scotch Tour_, which was published at the
end of the year. Among other consequences was a violent controversy with
the lovers of _Ossian_. Johnson was a thorough sceptic as to the
authenticity of the book. His scepticism did not repose upon the
philological or antiquarian reasonings, which would be applicable in the
controversy from internal evidence. It was to some extent the expression
of a general incredulity which astonished his friends, especially when
contrasted with his tenderness for many puerile superstitions. He could
scarcely be induced to admit the truth of any narrative which struck
him as odd, and it was long, for example, before he would believe even
in the Lisbon earthquake. Yet he seriously discussed the truth of
second-sight; he carefully investigated the Cock-lane ghost--a goblin
who anticipated some of the modern phenomena of so-called
"spiritualism," and with almost equal absurdity; he told stories to
Boswell about a "shadowy being" which had once been seen by Cave, and
declared that he had once heard his mother call "Sam" when he was at
Oxford and she at Lichfield. The apparent inconsistency was in truth
natural enough. Any man who clings with unreasonable pertinacity to the
prejudices of his childhood, must be alternately credulous and sceptical
in excess. In both cases, he judges by his fancies in defiance of
evidence; and accepts and rejects according to his likes and dislikes,
instead of his estimates of logical proof. _Ossian_ would be naturally
offensive to Johnson, as one of the earliest and most remarkable
manifestations of that growing taste for what was called "Nature," as
opposed to civilization, of which Rousseau was the great mouthpiece.
Nobody more heartily despised this form of "cant" than Johnson. A man
who utterly despised the scenery of the Hebrides as compared with
Greenwich Park or Charing Cross, would hardly take kindly to the
Ossianesque version of the mountain passion. The book struck him as
sheer rubbish. I have already quoted the retort about "many men, many
women, and many children." "A man," he said, on another occasion, "might
write such stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to it."
The precise point, however, upon which he rested his case, was the
tangible one of the inability of Macpherson to produce the manuscripts
of which he had affirmed the existence. MacPherson wrote a furious
letter to Johnson, of which the purport can only be inferred from
Johnson's smashing retort,--
"Mr. James MacPherson, I have received your foolish and impudent letter.
Any violence offered me I shall do my best to repel; and what I cannot
do for myself, the law shall do for me. I hope I shall never be deterred
from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian.
"What would you have me retract? I thought your book an imposture: I
think it an imposture still. For this opinion I have given my reasons to
the public, which I here dare you to refute. Your rage I defy. Your
abilities, since your _Homer_, are not so formidable; and what I hear of
your morals inclines me to pay regard not to what you shall say, but to
what you shall prove. You may print this if you will.
"SAM. JOHNSON."
And so laying in a tremendous cudgel, the old gentleman (he was now
sixty-six) awaited the assault, which, however, was not delivered.
In 1775 Boswell again came to London, and renewed some of the Scotch
discussions. He attended a meeting of the Literary Club, and found the
members disposed to laugh at Johnson's tenderness to the stories about
second-sight. Boswell heroically avowed his own belief. "The evidence,"
he said, "is enough for me, though not for his great mind. What will not
fill a quart bottle, will fill a pint bottle. I am filled with belief."
"Are you?" said Colman; "then cork it up."
It was during this and the next few years that Boswell laboured most
successfully in gathering materials for his book. In 1777 he only met
Johnson in the country. In 1779, for some unexplained reason, he was
lazy in making notes; in 1780 and 1781 he was absent from London; and in
the following year, Johnson was visibly declining. The tenour of
Johnson's life was interrupted during this period by no remarkable
incidents, and his literary activity was not great, although the
composition of the _Lives of the Poets_ falls between 1777 and 1780. His
mind, however, as represented by his talk, was in full vigour. I will
take in order of time a few of the passages recorded by Boswell, which
may serve for various reasons to afford the best illustration of his
character. Yet it may be worth while once more to repeat the warning
that such fragments moved from their context must lose most of their
charm.
On March 26th (1775), Boswell met Johnson at the house of the publisher,
Strahan. Strahan reminded Johnson of a characteristic remark which he
had formerly made, that there are "few ways in which a man can be more
innocently employed than in getting money." On another occasion Johnson
observed with equal truth, if less originality, that cultivating
kindness was an important part of life, as well as money-making. Johnson
then asked to see a country lad whom he had recommended to Strahan as an
apprentice. He asked for five guineas on account, that he might give one
to the boy. "Nay, if a man recommends a boy and does nothing for him, it
is sad work." A "little, thick short-legged boy" was accordingly brought
into the courtyard, whither Johnson and Boswell descended, and the
lexicographer bending himself down administered some good advice to the
awestruck lad with "slow and sonorous solemnity," ending by the
presentation of the guinea.