Dr. Johnson\'s Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - Samuel Johnson
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DR. JOHNSON'S WORKS.
LIFE, POEMS, AND TALES.
THE
WORKS
OF
SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
IN NINE VOLUMES.
VOLUME THE FIRST.
MDCCCXXV
ADVERTISEMENT.
It may be asserted, without a partial panegyric of the object of our
praise, that the works of no single author in the wide range of British
literature, not excepting, perhaps, even Addison, contain a richer and
more varied fund of rational entertainment and sound instruction than
those of Dr. Johnson. A correct edition of his works must, therefore, be
an acceptable contribution to the mass of national literature. That the
present edition has, perhaps, fairer claims on public approbation than
most preceding ones, we feel ourselves justified in asserting, without
envious detraction of those who have gone before us. It has been our
wish and diligent endeavour to give as accurate a text as possible, to
which we have subjoined notes, where elucidation seemed to be required.
They have been collected with care, and will prove our impartiality by
their occasional censures of the faults and failings of the writer whose
works it is our office to illustrate, and our more common and more
grateful task to praise. Though, being diffused over a wide space, they
appear less numerous than they really are, it has been our incessant
care to abstain from that method of redundant annotation, which tends to
display the ingenuity or mental resources of an editor, much more than
to illustrate the original writer. Notes have been chiefly introduced
for the purpose of guarding our readers against some political sophisms,
or to correct some hasty error. But happily, in the writings to which we
have devoted our time and attention, the chaff and dross lie so open to
view, and are so easily separated from purer matter, that a hint is
sufficient to protect the most incautious from harm. Accordingly, in our
notes and prefaces we have confined ourselves to simple and succinct
histories of the respective works under consideration, and have avoided,
as much as might be, a burdensome repetition of criticisms or anecdotes,
in almost every person's possession, or an idle pointing out of beauties
which none could fail to recognise. The length of time that has elapsed
since the writings of Johnson were first published, has amply developed
their intrinsic merits, and destroyed the personal and party prejudices
which assail a living author: but the years have been too few to render
the customs and manners alluded to so obsolete as to require much
illustrative research.[a] It may be satisfactory to subjoin, that care
has been exercised in every thing that we have advanced, and that when
we have erred, it has been on the side of caution.
All the usually received works of Dr. Johnson, together with Murphy's
Essay on his Life and Genius, are comprised in this edition. In
pursuance of our plan of brevity, we shall not here give a list of his
minor and unacknowledged productions, but refer our readers to Boswell;
a new, amended, and enlarged edition of whose interesting and
picturesque Memoirs we purpose speedily to present to the public, after
the style and manner of the present work.
One very important addition, however, we conceive that we have made, in
publishing the whole of his sermons. It has been hitherto the practice
to give one or two, with a cursory notice, that Johnson's theological
knowledge was scanty, or unworthy of his general fame. We have acted
under a very different impression; for though Johnson was not, nor
pretended to be, a polemical or controversial divine, he well knew how
to apply to the right regulation of our moral conduct the lessons of
that Christianity which was not promulged for a sect, but for mankind;
which sought not a distinctive garb in the philosopher's grove, nor
secluded itself in the hermit's cell, but entered without reserve every
walk of life, and sympathized with all the instinctive feelings of our
common nature. This high privilege of our religion Johnson felt, and to
the diffusion of its practical, not of its theoretical advantages, he
applied the energies of his heart and mind; and with what success, we
leave to every candid reader to pronounce.
In conclusion, we would express a hope that we shall not inaptly
commence a series of OXFORD ENGLISH CLASSICS with the works of one whose
writings have so enlarged and embellished the science of moral evidence,
which has long constituted a characteristic feature in the literary
discipline of this university. The science of mind and its progress, as
recorded by history, or unfolded by biography, was Johnson's favourite
study, and is still the main object of pursuit in the place whose system
and institutions he so warmly praised, and to which he ever professed
himself so deeply indebted. If the terseness of attic simplicity has
been desiderated by some in the pages of Johnson, they undeniably
display the depth of thought, the weight of argument, the insight into
mind and morals, which are to be found in their native dignity only in
the compositions of those older writers with whose spirit he was so
richly imbued. In this place, then, where those models which Johnson
admired and imitated are still upheld as the only sure guides to sound
learning, his writings can never be laid aside unread and neglected.
OXFORD, JUNE 23, 1825.
[a] See a remark on this subject made by Johnson, with reference to the
Spectator, and all other works of the same class, which describe
manners. Boswell, ii. 218, and Prefatory Notice to Rambler, vol. i.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
ESSAY on the Life and Genius of Dr. Johnson
POEMS.
London
The Vanity of Human Wishes
Prologue, spoken by Mr. Garrick, at the opening of the theatre-royal,
Drury lane
Prefatory Notice to the tragedy of Irene
Prologue
Irene
Epilogue, by sir William Yonge
Prologue to the masque of Comus
Prologue to the comedy of the Good-natured Man
Prologue to the comedy of a Word to the Wise
Spring
Midsummer
Autumn
Winter
The Winter's Walk
To Miss ****, on her giving the author a gold and silk network purse, of
her own weaving
To Miss ****, on her playing upon the harpsichord, in a room hung with
flower-pieces of her own painting
Evening; an ode
To the same
To a friend
Stella in mourning
To Stella
Verses, written at the request of a gentleman, to whom a lady had given
a sprig of myrtle
To lady Firebrace, at Bury assizes
To Lyce, an elderly lady
On the death of Mr. Robert Levet
Epitaph on Claude Phillips
Epitaphium in Thomam Hanmer, baronettum
Paraphrase of the above, by Dr. Johnson
To Miss Hickman, playing on the spinet
Paraphrase of Proverbs, chap. vi. verses 6-11
Horace, lib. iv. ode vii. translated
Anacreon, ode ix
Lines written in ridicule of certain poems published in 1777
Parody of a translation from the Medea of Euripides
Translation from the Medea of Euripides
Translation of the two first stanzas of the song "Rio Verde, Rio Verde"
Imitation of the style of ****
Burlesque of some lines of Lopez de Vega
Translation of some lines at the end of Baretti's Easy Phraseology
Improviso translation of a distich on the duke of Modena's running away
from the comet in 1742 or 1743
Improviso translation of some lines of M. Benserade a son Lit
Epitaph for Mr. Hogarth
Translation of some lines, written under a print representing persons
skating
Impromptu translation of the same
To Mrs. Thrale, on her completing her thirty-fifth year
Impromptu translation of an air in the Clemenza di Tito of Metastasio
Translation of a speech of Aquileio in the Adriano of Metastasio
Burlesque of the modern versifications of ancient legendary tales
Friendship; an ode
On seeing a bust of Mrs. Montague
Improviso on a young heir's coming of age
Epitaphs--on his father
--his wife
--Mrs. Bell
--Mrs. Salusbury
--Dr. Goldsmith
--Mr. Thrale
POEMATA
Prefatory observations to the history of Rasselas
Rasselas, prince of Abissinia
LETTERS.
I. To Mr. James Elphinston
II. to XL. To Mrs. Thrale
XLI. To Mr. Thrale
XLII. to LIII. To Mrs. Thrale
LIV. To Mrs. Piozzi
AN ESSAY
ON
THE LIFE AND GENIUS
OF
SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
When the works of a great writer, who has bequeathed to posterity a
lasting legacy, are presented to the world, it is naturally expected
that some account of his life should accompany the edition. The reader
wishes to know as much as possible of the author. The circumstances that
attended him, the features of his private character, his conversation,
and the means by which he arose to eminence, become the favourite
objects of inquiry. Curiosity is excited; and the admirer of his works
is eager to know his private opinions, his course of study, the
particularities of his conduct, and, above all, whether he pursued the
wisdom which he recommends, and practised the virtue which his writings
inspire. A principle of gratitude is awakened in every generous mind.
For the entertainment and instruction which genius and diligence have
provided for the world, men of refined and sensible tempers are ready to
pay their tribute of praise, and even to form a posthumous friendship
with the author.
In reviewing the life of such a writer, there is, besides, a rule of
justice to which the public have an undoubted claim. Fond admiration and
partial friendship should not be suffered to represent his virtues with
exaggeration; nor should malignity be allowed, under a specious
disguise, to magnify mere defects, the usual failings of human nature,
into vice or gross deformity. The lights and shades of the character
should be given; and if this be done with a strict regard to truth, a
just estimate of Dr. Johnson will afford a lesson, perhaps, as valuable
as the moral doctrine that speaks with energy in every page of his
works.
The present writer enjoyed the conversation and friendship of that
excellent man more than thirty years. He thought it an honour to be so
connected, and to this hour he reflects on his loss with regret; but
regret, he knows, has secret bribes, by which the judgment may be
influenced, and partial affection may be carried beyond the bounds of
truth. In the present case, however, nothing needs to be disguised, and
exaggerated praise is unnecessary. It is an observation of the younger
Pliny, in his epistle to his friend Tacitus, that history ought never to
magnify matters of fact, because worthy actions require nothing but the
truth: "nam nec historia debet egredi veritatem, et honeste factis
veritas sufficit." This rule, the present biographer promises, shall
guide his pen throughout the following narrative.
It may be said, the death of Dr. Johnson kept the public mind in
agitation beyond all former example. No literary character ever excited
so much attention; and, when the press has teemed with anecdotes,
apophthegms, essays, and publications of every kind, what occasion now
for a new tract on the same thread-bare subject? The plain truth shall
be the answer. The proprietors of Johnson's works thought the life,
which they prefixed to their former edition, too unwieldy for
republication. The prodigious variety of foreign matter, introduced into
that performance, seemed to overload the memory of Dr. Johnson, and, in
the account of his own life, to leave him hardly visible. They wished to
have a more concise, and, for that reason, perhaps, a more satisfactory
account, such as may exhibit a just picture of the man, and keep him the
principal figure in the foreground of his own picture. To comply with
that request is the design of this essay, which the writer undertakes
with a trembling hand. He has no discoveries, no secret anecdotes, no
occasional controversy, no sudden flashes of wit and humour, no private
conversation, and no new facts, to embellish his work. Every thing has
been gleaned. Dr. Johnson said of himself, "I am not uncandid, nor
severe: I sometimes say more than I mean, in jest, and people are apt to
think me serious[a]." The exercise of that privilege, which is enjoyed
by every man in society, has not been allowed to him. His fame has given
importance even to trifles; and the zeal of his friends has brought
every thing to light. What should be related, and what should not, has
been published without distinction: "dicenda tacenda locuti!" Every
thing that fell from him has been caught with eagerness by his admirers,
who, as he says in one of his letters, have acted with the diligence of
spies upon his conduct. To some of them the following lines, in Mallet's
poem on verbal criticism, are not inapplicable:
"Such that grave bird in northern seas is found.
Whose name a Dutchman only knows to sound;
Where'er the king of fish moves on before,
This humble friend attends from shore to shore;
With eye still earnest, and with bill inclined,
He picks up what his patron drops behind,
With those choice cates his palate to regale,
And is the careful Tibbald of a whale."
After so many essays and volumes of Johnsoniana, what remains for the
present writer? Perhaps, what has not been attempted; a short, yet full,
a faithful, yet temperate, history of Dr. Johnson.
SAMUEL JOHNSON was born at Lichfield, September 7, 1709, O. S[b]. His
father, Michael Johnson, was a bookseller in that city; a man of large,
athletic make, and violent passions; wrong-headed, positive, and, at
times, afflicted with a degree of melancholy, little short of madness.
His mother was sister to Dr. Ford, a practising physician, and father of
Cornelius Ford, generally known by the name of parson Ford, the same who
is represented near the punch-bowl in Hogarth's Midnight Modern
Conversation. In the life of Fenton, Johnson says, that "his abilities,
instead of furnishing convivial merriment to the voluptuous and
dissolute, might have enabled him to excel among the virtuous and the
wise." Being chaplain to the earl of Chesterfield, he wished to attend
that nobleman on his embassy to the Hague. Colley Cibber has recorded
the anecdote. "You should go," said the witty peer, "if to your many
vices you would add one more." "Pray, my lord, what is that?"
"Hypocrisy, my dear doctor." Johnson had a younger brother named
Nathaniel, who died at the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Michael
Johnson, the father, was chosen, in the year 1718, under bailiff of
Lichfield; and, in the year 1725, he served the office of the senior
bailiff. He had a brother of the name of Andrew, who, for some years,
kept the ring at Smithfield, appropriated to wrestlers and boxers. Our
author used to say, that he was never thrown or conquered. Michael, the
father, died December 1731, at the age of seventy-six: his mother at
eighty-nine, of a gradual decay, in the year 1759. Of the family nothing
more can be related worthy of notice. Johnson did not delight in talking
of his relations. "There is little pleasure," he said to Mrs. Piozzi,
"in relating the anecdotes of beggary."
Johnson derived from his parents, or from an unwholesome nurse, the
distemper called the king's evil. The Jacobites at that time believed in
the efficacy of the royal touch, and, accordingly, Mrs. Johnson
presented her son, when two years old, before queen Anne, who, for the
first time, performed that office, and communicated to her young patient
all the healing virtue in her power[c]. He was afterwards cut for that
scrophulous humour, and the under part of his face was seamed and
disfigured by the operation. It is supposed, that this disease deprived
him of the sight of his left eye, and also impaired his hearing. At
eight years old, he was placed under Mr. Hawkins, at the free school in
Lichfield, where he was not remarkable for diligence or regular
application. Whatever he read, his tenacious memory made his own. In the
fields, with his schoolfellows, he talked more to himself than with his
companions. In 1725, when he was about sixteen years old, he went on a
visit to his cousin Cornelius Ford, who detained him for some months,
and, in the mean time, assisted him in the classics. The general
direction for his studies, which he then received, he related to Mrs.
Piozzi. "Obtain," says Ford, "some general principles of every science:
he who can talk only on one subject, or act only in one department, is
seldom wanted, and, perhaps, never wished for; while the man of general
knowledge can often benefit, and always please." This advice Johnson
seems to have pursued with a good inclination. His reading was always
desultory, seldom resting on any particular author, but rambling from
one book to another, and, by hasty snatches, hoarding up a variety of
knowledge. It may be proper, in this place, to mention another general
rule laid down by Ford for Johnson's future conduct: "You will make your
way the more easily in the world, as you are contented to dispute no
man's claim to conversation excellence: they will, therefore, more
willingly allow your pretensions as a writer." "But," says Mrs. Piozzi,
"the features of peculiarity, which mark a character to all succeeding
generations, are slow in coming to their growth." That ingenious lady
adds, with her usual vivacity, "Can one, on such an occasion, forbear
recollecting the predictions of Boileau's father, who said, stroking the
head of the young satirist, 'This little man has too much wit, but he
will never speak ill of any one.'"
On Johnson's return from Cornelius Ford, Mr. Hunter, then master of the
free school at Lichfield, refused to receive him again on that
foundation. At this distance of time, what his reasons were, it is vain
to inquire; but to refuse assistance to a lad of promising genius must
be pronounced harsh and illiberal. It did not, however, stop the
progress of the young student's education. He was placed at another
school, at Stourbridge in Worcestershire, under the care of Mr.
Wentworth. Having gone through the rudiments of classic literature, he
returned to his father's house, and was probably intended for the trade
of a bookseller. He has been heard to say that he could bind a book. At
the end of two years, being then about nineteen, he went to assist the
studies of a young gentleman, of the name of Corbet, to the university
of Oxford; and on the 31st of October, 1728, both were entered of
Pembroke college; Corbet as a gentleman-commoner, and Johnson as a
commoner. The college tutor, Mr. Jordan, was a man of no genius; and
Johnson, it seems, shewed an early contempt of mean abilities, in one or
two instances behaving with insolence to that gentleman. Of his general
conduct at the university there are no particulars that merit attention,
except the translation of Pope's Messiah, which was a college exercise
imposed upon him as a task by Mr. Jordan. Corbet left the university in
about two years, and Johnson's salary ceased. He was, by consequence,
straitened in his circumstances; but he still remained at college. Mr.
Jordan, the tutor, went off to a living; and was succeeded by Dr. Adams,
who afterwards became head of the college, and was esteemed through life
for his learning, his talents, and his amiable character. Johnson grew
more regular in his attendance. Ethics, theology, and classic
literature, were his favourite studies. He discovered, notwithstanding,
early symptoms of that wandering disposition of mind, which adhered to
him to the end of his life. His reading was by fits and starts,
undirected to any particular science. General philology, agreeably to
his cousin Ford's advice, was the object of his ambition. He received,
at that time, an early impression of piety, and a taste for the best
authors, ancient and modern. It may, notwithstanding, be questioned
whether, except his bible, he ever read a book entirely through. Late in
life, if any man praised a book in his presence, he was sure to ask,
"Did you read it through?" If the answer was in the affirmative, he did
not seem willing to believe it. He continued at the university, till the
want of pecuniary supplies obliged him to quit the place. He obtained,
however, the assistance of a friend, and, returning in a short time, was
able to complete a residence of three years. The history of his exploits
at Oxford, he used to say, was best known to Dr. Taylor and Dr. Adams.
Wonders are told of his memory, and, indeed, all who knew him late in
life can witness, that he retained that faculty in the greatest vigour.
From the university, Johnson returned to Lichfield. His father died soon
after, December, 1731; and the whole receipt out of his effects, as
appeared by a memorandum in the son's handwriting, dated 15th of June,
1732, was no more than twenty pounds[d]. In this exigence, determined
that poverty should neither depress his spirits nor warp his integrity,
he became under-master of a grammar school at Market Bosworth, in
Leicestershire. That resource, however, did not last long. Disgusted by
the pride of sir Wolstan Dixie, the patron of that little seminary, he
left the place in discontent, and ever after spoke of it with
abhorrence. In 1733, he went on a visit to Mr. Hector, who had been his
schoolfellow, and was then a surgeon at Birmingham, lodging at the house
of Warren, a bookseller. At that place Johnson translated a Voyage to
Abyssinia, written by Jerome Lobo, a Portuguese missionary. This was the
first literary work from the pen of Dr. Johnson. His friend, Hector, was
occasionally his amanuensis. The work was, probably, undertaken at the
desire of Warren, the bookseller, and was printed at Birmingham; but it
appears, in the Literary Magazine, or history of the works of the
learned, for March, 1735, that it was published by Bettesworth and
Hitch, Paternoster row. It contains a narrative of the endeavours of a
company of missionaries to convert the people of Abyssinia to the church
of Rome. In the preface to this work, Johnson observes, "that the
Portuguese traveller, contrary to the general view of his countrymen,
has amused his readers with no romantick absurdities, or incredible
fictions. He appears, by his modest and unaffected narration, to have
described things, as he saw them; to have copied nature from the life;
and to have consulted his senses, not his imagination. He meets with no
basilisks, that destroy with their eyes; his crocodiles devour their
prey, without tears; and his cataracts fall from the rock, without
deafening the neighbouring inhabitants. The reader will here find no
regions cursed with irremediable barrenness, or blessed with spontaneous
fecundity; no perpetual gloom, or unceasing sunshine; nor are the
nations, here described, either void of all sense of humanity, or
consummate in all private and social virtues; here are no Hottentots
without religion, polity or articulate language; no Chinese perfectly
polite, and completely skilled in all sciences; he will discover, what
will always be discovered by a diligent and impartial inquirer, that,
wherever human nature is to be found, there is a mixture of vice and
virtue, a contest of passion and reason; and that the Creator doth not
appear partial in his distributions, but has balanced, in most
countries, their particular inconveniencies, by particular favours."--We
have here an early specimen of Johnson's manner; the vein of thinking,
and the frame of the sentences, are manifestly his: we see the infant
Hercules. The translation of Lobo's narrative has been reprinted lately
in a separate volume, with some other tracts of Dr. Johnson's, and,
therefore, forms no part of this edition; but a compendious account of
so interesting a work, as father Lobo's discovery of the head of the
Nile, will not, it is imagined, be unacceptable to the reader.
"Father Lobo, the Portuguese missionary, embarked, in 1622, in the same
fleet with the count Vidigueira, who was appointed, by the king of
Portugal, viceroy of the Indies. They arrived at Goa; and, in January
1624, father Lobo set out on the mission to Abyssinia. Two of the
Jesuits, sent on the same commission, were murdered in their attempt to
penetrate into that empire. Lobo had better success; he surmounted all
difficulties, and made his way into the heart of the country. Then
follows a description of Abyssinia, formerly the largest empire of which
we have an account in history. It extended from the Red sea to the
kingdom of Congo, and from Egypt to the Indian sea, containing no less
than forty provinces. At the time of Lobo's mission, it was not much
larger than Spain, consisting then but of five kingdoms, of which part
was entirely subject to the emperour, and part paid him a tribute, as an
acknowledgment. The provinces were inhabited by Moors, Pagans, Jews, and
Christians. The last was, in Lobo's time, the established and reigning
religion. The diversity of people and religion is the reason why the
kingdom was under different forms of government, with laws and customs
extremely various. Some of the people neither sowed their lands, nor
improved them by any kind of culture, living upon milk and flesh, and,
like the Arabs, encamping without any settled habitation. In some places
they practised no rites of worship, though they believed that, in the
regions above, there dwells a being that governs the world. This deity
they call, in their language, Oul. The christianity, professed by the
people in some parts, is so corrupted with superstitions, errours, and
heresies, and so mingled with ceremonies borrowed from the Jews, that
little, besides the name of christianity, is to be found among them. The
Abyssins cannot properly be said to have either cities or houses; they
live in tents or cottages made of straw or clay, very rarely building
with stone. Their villages, or towns, consist of these huts; yet even of
such villages they have but few, because the grandees, the viceroys, and
the emperour himself, are always in camp, that they may be prepared,
upon the most sudden alarm, to meet every emergence in a country, which
is engaged, every year, either in foreign wars or intestine commotions.
Aethiopia produces very near the same kinds of provision as Portugal,
though, by the extreme laziness of the inhabitants, in a much less
quantity. What the ancients imagined of the torrid zone being a part of
the world uninhabitable, is so far from being true, that the climate is
very temperate. The blacks have better features than in other countries,
and are not without wit and ingenuity. Their apprehension is quick, and
their judgment sound. There are, in this climate, two harvests in the
year; one in winter, which lasts through the months of July, August, and
September; the other in the spring. They have, in the greatest plenty,
raisins peaches pomegranates, sugar-canes, and some figs. Most of these
are ripe about lent, which the Abyssins keep with great strictness. The
animals of the country are the lion, the elephant, the rhinoceros, the
unicorn, horses, mules, oxen, and cows without number. They have a very
particular custom, which obliges every man, that has a thousand cows, to
save every year one day's milk of all his herd, and make a bath with it
for his relations. This they do so many days in each year, as they have
thousands of cattle; so that, to express how rich a man is, they tell
you, 'he bathes so many times.'