*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79416 ***




TEN CENT POCKET SERIES NO. 394
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius

Boswell’s Life of
Johnson

Charles J. Finger

HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS




Copyright, 1923,
Haldeman-Julius Company.




BOSWELL’S LIFE OF JOHNSON.




I.

BOSWELL AND JOHNSON.


It is quite common for people to say that we owe our knowledge of
Doctor Johnson entirely to the fact that James Boswell devoted his
life to a close study of his model. The statement is generally made
by those who have taken Boswell’s Life of Johnson as read; perhaps,
indeed, have gone a step further and placed it on a shelf where it will
be read in that indefinite time “some day,” when ephemeral literature
shall be no more. The statement sounds well but is quite untrue. To
be sure, James Boswell wrote the finest biography that the world
has seen thus far, for he had the ambition to produce a book which
the world would want. Few biographies reach its excellence and none
surpass it. Frank Harris, with his Life of Oscar Wilde, comes nearest.
Of other works of a like character, Leigh Hunt achieved immortality
with his Autobiography, and, being the intimate associate of Shelley,
Byron, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and Carlyle, produced a picture of
contemporary life very valuable indeed. Lockhart’s Memoirs of Sir
Walter Scott must also be mentioned. Nor should there be overlooked as
worthy of a place on the book shelf with Boswell’s masterpiece, Horace
Walpole’s Letters, Pepys’ Diary, Froude’s Carlyle and Isaac Walton’s
Lives. But Boswell has a supremacy which none can deny, and, because
of that supremacy, there are not wanting those who assert that Boswell
made Johnson, rescued Johnson from oblivion, gave Johnson a place to
which his literary efforts do not entitle him, and so on, while others
have talked about self-abnegation, self-surrender and all that kind
of thing, until the conception has arisen among those who talk of
Boswell’s Life of Johnson without having read it, and they are as the
sands of the seashore in number, that Johnson and Boswell went through
life like twin stars bound in the same orbit, while others look upon
Johnson as a kind of Sindbad carrying an Old Man of the Sea.

We know Johnson, not alone because Boswell knew him, but because many
others knew him, just as many articulate men knew and wrote about
Oscar Wilde. In the case of Wilde, besides Frank Harris, there were
friends, publishers, enemies, and some who were all three. In the case
of Johnson, we have Burke, Langton, Garrick, Levett, Miss Burney, Miss
Seward and the inimitable Mrs. Thrale with her chatty “Anecdotes of the
Late Samuel Johnson, LL. D., During the Last Twenty Years of His Life.”
She was no ordinary woman and the worthy Doctor was in love with her
for many years we suppose, for it is a matter of record that he not
only quarreled with her, scolded her and constantly visited her, but he
also wrote to her more than three hundred letters. As for the common
suspicion that Boswell spent his life at Dr. Johnson’s heels, a careful
count will show that Boswell met Johnson on two hundred and seventy-six
days. Still, in that time, Boswell did excellent work. As a biographer
he was free from timidity, painting his model as he actually was. Fear
of unfriendly criticism did not daunt him and he was quite unmoral
in his methods when it came to gathering data. We sometimes suspect
eavesdropping and key-hole activities. At any rate, he was not above
appropriating little things associated with the Doctor’s work, and, as
we shall see, propriety did not prevent him from leaving his place at
a dinner table to hear what the sage was whispering to a young lady.
A story that bears the impress of truth is to be found in Holcroft’s
Life, edited by Hazlitt. Mary Lamb called it “the Life Everlasting”
because Hazlitt was so long seeing it through the press. Here is the
story:

  Lowe, (mentioned by Boswell in his life of Johnson) once gave me a
  humorous picture of him. Lowe had requested Johnson to write him a
  letter, which Johnson did, and Boswell came in while it was writing.
  His attention was immediately fixed; Lowe took the letter, retired,
  and was followed by Boswell. “Nothing,” said Lowe, “could surprise
  me more. Till that moment he had so entirely overlooked me that I
  did not imagine he knew there was such a creature in existence;
  and he now accosted me with the most overstrained and insinuating
  compliments possible. ‘How do you do, Mr. Lowe? I hope you are well
  Mr. Lowe. Pardon my freedom, Mr. Lowe, but I think I saw my dear
  friend, Dr. Johnson, writing a letter for you.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘I hope
  you will not think me rude, but if it would not be too great a
  favor, you would infinitely oblige me if you would just let me have a
  sight of it. Everything from that hand, you know, is so inestimable.’
  ‘Sir, it is on my own private affairs, but----’ ‘I would not pry into
  a person’s affairs my dear Mr. Lowe, by any means. I am sure you
  would not accuse me of such a thing; only, if it were no particular
  secret----’ ‘Sir, you are welcome to read the letter.’ ‘I thank you,
  my dear Mr. Lowe; you are very obliging; I take it exceedingly kind.’
  (Having read) ‘It is nothing, I believe, Mr. Lowe, that you would
  be ashamed of?’ ‘Certainly not!’ ‘Why, then, my dear sir, if you
  would do me another favor, you would make the obligation eternal. If
  you would but step to Peele’s Coffee House with me and just suffer
  me to take a copy of it, I would do anything in my power to oblige
  you.’” “I was overcome,” said Lowe, “by this sudden familiarity and
  condescension, accompanied with bows and grimaces. I had no power
  to refuse; we went to the Coffee House, my letter was presently
  transcribed, and as soon as he had put his document in his pocket Mr.
  Boswell walked away as erect and proud as he was half an hour before,
  and I, ever afterwards, was unnoticed. Nay, I am not sure,” he added
  sarcastically, “whether the Scotchman did not leave me, poor as he
  knew I was, to pay for my own dish of coffee.”

It was the Boswell method. The good Mr. Lowe was extremely fortunate in
that Boswell took with him the copy of the letter and not the original,
for, of all men, this biographer seems to illustrate the Nietzschean
requirement that he who intends to know, shall be hard, severe, narrow,
cruel, inexorable. However, Boswell applied his method on Johnson
for just one-hundredth part of Johnson’s life, and, loving both
Johnson and himself, and being richly endowed with the rare faculty
of observation, made his man live as no character in literature or
history has lived.

Macaulay quite unjustly called Boswell “one of the smallest men that
ever lived,” and pictures him as a snob and a sycophant, and many
have repeated Macaulay’s words. Any one who will take the trouble to
read Boswell’s book with attention, will be persuaded that the man
himself had great conversational gifts, much good nature and tact, and
prodigious powers of memory. As a record of the manners and customs of
the period, Boswell’s Life of Johnson is as valuable as Pepys’ Diary.

There is one recorded incident which, more than any other, goes to show
that Boswell’s path, even with Johnson himself, was not one of roses.
Boswell had been questioning Johnson until the catechism had become a
torture, and he turned upon his tormenter. “Sir, I will not be put to
the question!” he roared. “Don’t you consider, sir, that these are not
the manners of a gentleman? I will not be baited with _what_ and _why_:
What is this? What is that? Why is a cow’s tail long? Why is a fox’s
tail bushy?” “Why, sir, you are so good that I venture to trouble you,”
answered Boswell. “Sir,” replied the irritated doctor, “my being good
is no reason why you should be so ill.”

On another occasion he turned angrily upon Boswell with this: “You have
but two topics, sir, yourself and me, and I am sick of both.”




II.

THE MAN JOHNSON HIMSELF.


It is both amusing and interesting to look through the index to
Boswell’s Life of Johnson and mark the minuteness with which that most
extraordinary of Scotsmen studied his master. All was fish that came
to his net. No detail was too small to be recorded if it offered the
faintest fragment of evidence as to the sage’s private life, and no
remark was too light to be missed if it seemed to reveal an intimate
thought. James Boswell, like Laurence Sterne, and, in our own day,
James Joyce, perceived the infinitely little and described the almost
imperceptible. The least of things he brings to the light, just as
the microscopist will bring to light the nervous system of a worm or
a feather on a butterfly’s wing, and, consequently, the finished book
is a most marvelous storehouse of information, not only of the man
Johnson, but of all those with whom he came into contact.

Straight to the mark went Boswell. He had but one object in view, and
from that nothing would turn him. Doubtless about him there were those
who accused him of sycophancy, of toadyism; for that he cared nothing.
He had set himself the task of telling posterity about a great man and
there was an end to it. “When in that presence,” says Miss Burney, “he
was unobservant, if not contemptuous, of everyone else. In truth, when
he met with Dr. Johnson, he commonly forbore even answering anything
that was said, or attending to anything that went forward, lest he
should miss the smallest sound from that voice, to which he paid such
exclusive, though merited, homage. But the moment that voice burst
forth, the attention which it excited on Mr. Boswell amounted almost
to pain. His eyes goggled with eagerness; he leaned his ear almost on
the shoulder of the doctor; and his mouth dropped open to catch every
syllable that might be uttered; nay, he seemed not only to dread losing
a word, but to be anxious not to miss a breathing; as if hoping from it
latently, or mystically, some Information.”

Miss Burney spoke from actual observation. Indeed, she was witness of
one extraordinary scene when dining at Mr. Thrale’s and seated next
to Dr. Johnson. The doctor was saying something to Miss Burney, when,
chancing to glance sideways, he saw that Boswell was eavesdropping,
having left his own partner at the other end of the table. “What are
you doing there, sir?” cried the indignant doctor, angrily slapping his
knee. “Go to the table, sir.”

Boswell obeyed, and the doctor resumed his talk. But the restless
Boswell was ill at ease. Soon he rose from his seat again, but the
doctor detected him. Across the table boomed his heavy bass voice.
“What are you thinking of, sir? Why do you get up before the cloth is
removed? Back to your place, sir.” Down sat Boswell then, his eyes
on his master, to receive a last thunderous blow accompanied by the
shaking of an accusing forefinger: “Running about in the middle of
meals!”

Obviously, so faithful a follower might well be expected to do
extraordinary things, and the result of his fidelity has been a
perfect biography. Boswell tells us everything. He tells us about the
inscription on Johnson’s watch and the why and the wherefore of it: the
manner of his laugh which was “a kind of good humored growl”; that he
had the habit of talking to himself; that he did not like clean linen;
that he never got entirely rid of his provincial pronunciation; that
“while talking, or even musing, as he sat in his chair he commonly held
his head to one side towards his right shoulder, and shook it in a
tremulous manner, moving his body backwards and forwards, and rubbing
his left knee in the same direction with the palm of his hand.”

Boswell, we know, was not unaware of that “sneering jocularity” to
be expected from those who had no relish for an exact likeness.
Nevertheless, he kept at his task. Patiently he recorded all kinds
of things: good and bad: painful and pleasant: incidents that showed
pettiness as well as greatness. So well, indeed, was the task
performed, that we know Johnson as we know no other man in history.
Even those men of our own time who have achieved fame are less familiar
to us than is Dr. Johnson. We see him stout, round bodied, almost
“unwieldy from corpulency,” thick-lipped, near-sighted and blinking,
“countenance disfigured from the king’s evil,” often when in company,
“a good deal exhausted by violence and vociferation,” and, having said
something, “blowing out his breath like a whale.” Seeing the man thus,
and adding for good measure, an ill-fitting, ill-kempt wig more often
than not burnt in front from his habit of reading with head close to
the candle; suit of rusty brown with breeches unlaced at the knees; old
and ill-fitting shoes; month old linen--one marvels at the forbearance
of the cultured who overlooked appearance.

We get a brief glimpse, by accident as it were, of the regard with
which the doctor was held by some who entertained him. There is Mrs.
Boswell, for instance, annoyed that her husband should find pleasure in
the company of such a fellow. “I have seen,” she tells a friend, “many
a bear led by a man, but never before a man led by a bear.” In that you
detect a certain asperity. It is her husband who quotes the remark and
he explains that some of the habits of the sage were such that “they
could not but be disagreeable to a lady.” There is a mild hint that
Johnson’s unfortunate habit of turning the candles upside down so that
the hot wax running to the wick would make them burn the brighter, made
Mrs. Boswell very impatient, for melted wax on a carpet displeased her.

Other things were annoying. For instance, Johnson refused to assume
indifference to the pleasures of the table and even boasted of his
pleasure in eating. “I mind my belly very studiously,” said he, “for
I look upon it that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind
anything else.” So, at the homes of those who lionized him, he took
care to let it be known that certain kinds of foods pleased him, and
a certain and very liberal allowance was necessary for his comfort.
Seven or eight peaches before breakfast; twenty-five cups of tea at a
sitting; solid, satisfying dishes of boiled pork and veal pie stuffed
with plums and sugar; heavy pastry supported with roast joints of
meat--such things he called for. A very Gargantua, he. As for drink,
in his younger days he was a very Falstaff. When the mighty feat was
mentioned of a Dr. Campbell who could drink thirteen bottles of port
at a sitting, the sage spoke, saying: “If a man drinks very slowly and
lets one glass evaporate before he takes another, I know not how long
he may drink.” And this: “Claret is the drink for boys, and port for
men: but he who aspires to be a hero, must drink brandy.”

Obviously, so doughty a table knight would be very apt to cause
consternation in a well ordered household. But there were other things
to contend with besides his enormous appetite. No sooner was dinner
announced than he would find his way to the table, and, sans ceremony,
tackle the food. “His looks seemed riveted to his plate; nor would he,
except when in very high company, say one word, or even pay the least
attention to what was said by others.” So intent did he become upon his
meal, that “the veins on his forehead swelled, and generally a strong
perspiration was visible.”

All this, his ravenous eating, his grunting, his carelessness and
boorishness, people put up with for the sake of the inimitable powers
of conversation of the man. Of conversation he was a master and he was
the oracle of a literary circle. His naturally retentive memory was
stored with a vast variety of facts, odd things, little known things,
important trifles encountered while reading and consulting books
for the compilation of his dictionary. So, a dinner being finished,
the lion roared to the delight of the hearers; the colloquial giant
displayed his strength.

“I do not care,” said Orme, the historian of Hindustan, “on what
subject Johnson talks: but I love better to hear him talk than anybody.
He either gives you new thoughts or a new coloring.”

Said Boswell: “He had all his life habituated himself to consider
conversation as a trial of intellectual vigor and skill. He had
disciplined himself as a talker as well as a writer, making it a rule
to impart whatever he knew in the most forcible language he could put
it in, so that by constant practice and never suffering any careless
expression to escape him, he had attained an extraordinary accuracy and
command of language.”

It may well be that Johnson was spoiled by the homage of society.
Reading Boswell’s Life of Johnson it becomes clear that there were
times when the dictionary maker was overbearing, even if not actually
insulting. “Having recourse to some sudden mode of robust sophistry,”
Boswell terms it, and gives an instance, thus: “Once, when I was
pressing upon him with visible advantage, he stopped me thus, ‘My dear
Boswell, let’s have no more of this; you’ll make nothing of it. I’d
rather hear you whistle a Scotch tune.’” But Goldsmith summed up the
Johnson, when cornered, in far happier mode. “There is no arguing with
Johnson,” he said, “for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down
with the butt end of it.”

Goldsmith and Johnson were in the same literary circle and reading
between lines one is inclined to the conclusion that often Johnson
became heavily pontifical. The average man is so constituted that he
could not hear thunders from Mount Sinai for long without yawning.
Goldsmith and Johnson were at times conversational rivals, Johnson slow
and huge like the magnificent ships of the Spanish Armada and Goldsmith
swift in attack, getting under the mighty one’s counter to harass him,
as it were. There leaps to mind the incident of the talk on fable
making, with Goldsmith holding that animals introduced into fables
rarely talked in character. “For instance,” said Goldsmith, “the fable
of the little fishes, who saw birds fly over their heads, and, envying
them, petitioned Jupiter to be changed into birds. The skill comes in
making them talk like little fishes.” That set Dr. Johnson off into
one of his fits of laughter, the laughter intended to overawe. Then
Goldsmith launched his shaft. “Why, Dr. Johnson, this is not so easy
as you seem to think; for if you were to make little fishes talk, they
would talk like whales.”

It is evident that Johnson resented the Goldsmith method of attack
and retreat. “Goldsmith,” said he, “should not be forever attempting
to shine in conversation; he has not temper for it, he is so much
mortified when he fails. Sir, a game of jokes is composed partly of
skill, partly of chance; a man may be beat at times by one who has not
the tenth part of his wit. Now, Goldsmith, putting himself against
another, is like a man laying a hundred to one, who cannot spare the
hundred. It is not worth a man’s while. A man should not lay a hundred
to one unless he can easily spare it, though he has a hundred chances
for him; he can get but a guinea, and he may lose a hundred. Goldsmith
is in this state. When he contends, if he gets the better, it is a very
little addition to a man of his literary reputation; if he does not get
the better, he is miserably vexed.” Again, Johnson, in the character
of a Sir Oracle, says: “The misfortune of Goldsmith in conversation is
this, he goes on without knowing how he is to get off. His genius is
great, but his knowledge is small. As they say of a generous man it is
a pity he is not rich, we may say of Goldsmith it is a pity he is not
knowing. He would not keep his knowledge to himself.”

Call Johnson a man of orthodox prejudice and we come near the truth.
He was conservative of the conservatives, a Tory of Tories. As a
straw will show which way the wind blows, so will a reference to his
dictionary reveal the unbending rigidity and granite immobility of
the man. Turn to his definition of the word Freethinker. You have his
answer in four words. _A contemner of religion; a libertine._ Follow a
little deeper and turn to Libertine. You read: _One who pays no regard
to the precepts of religion_, with an explanatory quotation which runs:

    “They say this town is full of cozenage,
    Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,
    And many such-like libertines of sin.”

In that you have a key to much. Like Stendhal, or H. L. Mencken of
our own day, Johnson had his prejudices and paraded them. He disliked
Scotland as the school boy disliked Dr. Fell and his antipathy was
sufficient. “Mr. Johnson,” said Boswell apologetically on the occasion
of their first meeting, “I do indeed come from Scotland; but I cannot
help it.” “That sir, is what a great many of your countrymen cannot
help,” was the reply. Again, when a fellow countryman and friend of
Boswell’s claimed for Scotland a great many “noble, wild prospects,”
the sage made reply: “I believe sir you have a great many. Norway,
too, has noble, wild prospects. But sir, let me tell you the noblest
prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him
to England.” His definition of the word Freethinker would be enough
to lead to the belief that he had but small love for the historian
Hume and all who, like him, did not hold fast to a belief in revealed
religion. That Hume had created a new era of thought, that he
profoundly influenced European thought, that he introduced a new and
higher method of writing history than had previously been practised
was as nothing to Johnson. Hume was of the black squad known as
Freethinkers and that out-weighed everything else. “Hume,” he said to
Boswell, “Hume, and other sceptical innovators, are vain men, and will
gratify themselves at any expense. Truth will not afford sufficient
food for their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to error. Truth,
sir, is a cow which will yield such people no milk and so they are gone
to milk the bull.”

On one occasion the discussion of Hume led into a talk of death, a
subject which always greatly annoyed Johnson. The passage that follows,
throws a strong sidelight on Johnson’s character, especially on his
testiness when cornered in an argument. I copy from the first volume of
Boswell’s Life of Johnson, page 401, J. M. Dent edition, London, MCMI,
used in all quotations here:

  “When we were alone, I introduced the subject of death, and
  endeavored to maintain that the fear of it might be got over. I told
  him that David Hume said to me, he was no more uneasy to think he
  should _not_ be after his life, than that he _had not been_ before he
  began to exist.

  “JOHNSON. ‘Sir, if he really thinks so, his perceptions are
  disturbed; he is mad; if he does not think so, he lies. He may tell
  you, he holds his finger in the flame of a candle, without feeling
  pain; would you believe him? When he dies, he at least gives up all
  he has.’

  “BOSWELL. ‘Foote, sir, told me, that when he was very ill he was not
  afraid to die.’

  “JOHNSON. ‘It is not true sir. Hold a pistol to Foote’s breast, or to
  Hume’s breast, and threaten to kill them and see how they behave.’

  “BOSWELL. ‘But may we not fortify our minds for the approach of
  death?’... He answered, in a passion, ‘No, sir, let it alone. It
  matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying
  is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.’ He added with an
  earnest look, ‘A man knows it must be so, and submits. It will do him
  no good to whine.’

  “I attempted the conversation. He was so provoked, that he said:
  ‘Give us no more of this;’ and was thrown into such a state of
  agitation, that he expressed himself in a way that alarmed and
  distressed me; shewed an impatience that I should leave him, and when
  I was going away, called to me sternly, ‘Don’t let us meet tomorrow.’

  “I went home exceedingly uneasy. All the harsh observations which I
  had ever heard made upon his character, crowded into my mind; and I
  seemed to myself like the man who had put his head into the lion’s
  mouth a great many times with perfect safety, but at last had it bit
  off.”

A man of strangely susceptible nerves cowering under a deadly fear
was Johnson. Of strong, sturdy good sense, yet he seemed at times to
become paralyzed at the thought that all about him were dark demoniac
powers. He is disturbed when a question as to the future state of man
is pressed and he worries about the different degrees of happiness
in heaven. He is positive that the better the life a man leads, the
more he must fear death. He worries about predestination and infant
salvation, and breaks into a furious tirade against anyone who comes
under the ban as a philosophical innovator. Speaking of Rousseau
and Voltaire, he says: “It is difficult to settle the proportion of
iniquity between them.” Again of Rousseau:

  “I think him one of the worst of men; a rascal who ought to be hunted
  out of society, as he has been.... I would sooner sign a sentence for
  his transportation, than that of any felon who has gone from the old
  Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the
  plantations....”

In short according to the Johnson creed, there was no health, no truth,
outside of the Established Church.

Naturally, a man thus constituted must break out in an unexpected
direction. Other great souls, learned scholars, benevolent hearts
have leaped into the gulf of strange superstition. So Johnson, the
hard-headed, hearing of a tormented spirit haunting the Church of St.
John, Clerkenwell, sets off at one in the morning to see what is to
be seen, for the disembodied one had promised to “give a token of her
presence there by a knock upon her coffin.” To give the Doctor due
credit he was not foolishly credulous, although some writers have made
him appear so. In the case of the Cock-Lane Ghost he himself wrote
an account for the Gentleman’s Magazine saying that there was not
sufficient ground to justify belief in the tale. But again:

  “Talking of ghosts, he said, he knew one friend, who was an honest
  man and a sensible man, who told him he had seen a ghost; old Mr.
  Edward Cave, the printer at St. John’s Gate. He said, Mr. Cave did
  not like to talk of it, and seemed to be in great horror whenever it
  was mentioned.

  “BOSWELL. ‘Pray, sir, what did he say was the appearance?’

  “JOHNSON. ‘Why, sir, something of a shadowy being.’”

On the subject of the existence of witches he was dogmatic. “You have
not only the general report,” said he, “but you have many voluntary
confessions.”

Again as to ghosts:

  “It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the
  creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there
  has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after
  death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.”

When Charles Wesley examined a haunted house without what Johnson
thought sufficient care, the sage was solemnly vehement and again
adduced his 5,000-year-old world argument. He has his own curious
experience too, for when a young man at Oxford, as he was turning the
key of his chamber, he heard his mother distinctly call him by name,
although she was then miles away at Lichfield. But the man was too
sincere, too much given to independent verification to go wholly over
to the spiritualists. Yet, it can be clearly seen, the wish to believe
was in him. All kinds of wonderful things were possible, he held, so
why not the appearance of a departed spirit, and the thought worried
him throughout his long life. A man, as he saw it, might even have
attained heavenly bliss and yet not be safe. “We do not know that even
the angels are quite in a state of security; nay, we know that some of
them have fallen.”

Strange indeed it seems that this staunch Tory, this hide bound
conservative and supporter of things as they were should have been so
sound on the question of slavery and slave holding, in a time when the
vast majority of men of his acquaintance were firmly convinced that
slave holding was right and proper. The old man, aged 68, at a banquet
in Oxford, in which were “some very grave men,” rose up and gave the
toast: “Here’s to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West
Indies.” Then again, on another occasion, referring to the Americans in
1777, “How is it that we hear the greatest _yelps_ for liberty among
the drivers of negroes?” There are other gems, too. For instance: “No
man is by nature the property of another.” “The laws of Jamaica afford
a negro no redress. His color is considered a sufficient testimony
against him.” “It is to be lamented that moral right should ever give
way to political consideration.” “Inhabitants of this island can
neither gain riches nor power by taking away the liberty of any part of
the human species.”

There is one incident in Johnson’s life which reveals the doughty old
warrior determined to go the way he chooses, though it be a lone way.
It is the tale of Johnson’s fight for Dr. William Dodd, a criminal
under sentence of death. The man was not so great a criminal as we
consider things today, for his offence was only forgery, though it was
then considered a bold transgression of the moral law. Dr. Dodd had
been one of the most popular preachers of his day, a man of pleasing
form, genteel address and lively imagination. Discovering that the life
of a fashionable parson was a very expensive one he got into debt,
and, pressed by his creditors, forged the name of Lord Chesterfield
to a document. The slightest of chances brought the forgery to light
and Dr. Dodd was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. That
was in the year 1777 when Johnson was 68 years old, his fame secure
and his ability recognized, and when the greatest in the land were
thankful enough to be honored among his acquaintances. But wealth,
honor, name, counted for little. The heart of the old man beat strong
and the spirit of the fellow who had carried unfortunates to his
lodging from the streets was unchanged. The dogmatic old bear with
the cultured heart and gentlest, most sympathetic manners under all
his strange uncouthness, had his own notions of right and of wrong.
Learning of the unfortunate Dr. Dodd’s predicament, Johnson fell into
an extraordinary state of agitation. He walked up and down the room
rumbling and grumbling. “I will do what I can,” he said, over and over
again. Then followed days of vast activities. He wrote a petition to
the Court of Common Council and another to the Humane Society, an
organization Dr. Dodd himself had founded. He urged those in power to
consider “whether it would not be more for the interest of religion to
bury such an offender in the obscurity of a perpetual exile than to
expose him in a cart and on the gallows to all who, for any reason,
are enemies to the clergy.” He went further, composing a speech which
the prisoner delivered at the Old Bailey when sentence of death was
about to be imposed upon him. The stout old Tory seemed bent on playing
a part similar to that played a century later by Bakounin and Roekel
who put themselves in jeopardy to aid a law breaker. There were no
half hearted measures. He composed the sermon which the condemned man
preached to his fellow prisoners at Newgate on the Sunday before his
execution. That we have on the authority of Boswell who tells us that
“Dr. Johnson was so good as to mark for me with his own hand on a copy
of this sermon which is now in my possession, such passages as were
added by Dr. Dodd,” and a glance will show that it is quite in the
Johnsonian style:

  “I have fallen from reputation, which ought to have made me cautious;
  and from a former fortune, which ought to have given me content. I
  am sunk at once into poverty and scorn; my name and my crime fill
  the ballads in the streets; the sport of the thoughtless and the
  triumph of the wicked. It may seem strange that, remembering what
  I have lately been, I should still wish to continue what I am.
  But contempt of death, how speciously soever it might mingle with
  Christian virtues, has nothing in it suitable to Christian penitence.
  Many motives compel me to beg earnestly for life. I feel the natural
  horror of a violent death, and the universal dread of untimely
  dissolution. I am desirous to recompense the injury I have done to
  the clergy, to the world, and to religion, and to efface the scandal
  of my crime by the example of my penitence.”

Whether Dr. Johnson was privy to the forlorn hope or not, is not known.
Certainly, secrets traveled fast in London in those days. However that
may be, it can safely be asserted that no more romantic plan was ever
conceived to cheat the gallows. The hangman was bribed to tie the knot
in a certain way and it was arranged that after the hanging, the body
should be rushed with all possible speed to a nearby house, where
the famous Dr. John Hunter, author of a book in which was explained
the method of resuscitating the apparently drowned, was to operate on
the body of Dodd. All went well, but the unforseen intervened, for
the crowd about the gallows was so great that it was two hours before
the body reached Dr. Hunter, by which time all hope was gone. Whether
Johnson was interested in that or not cannot be definitely asserted,
but he certainly knew of other efforts that were being made on behalf
of the luckless clergyman. Boswell records a conversation on the
subject which runs as follows:

  “He (Johnson) told us that Dodd’s city friends stood by him so that
  a thousand pounds were ready to be given to the gaoler if he would
  let him escape. He added, that he knew a friend of Dodd’s who walked
  about Newgate for some time on the evening before the execution with
  some five hundred pounds in his pockets, ready to be paid to any of
  the turnkeys who could get him out; but it was too late; for he was
  watched with much circumspection. He said Dodd’s friends had an image
  of him made of wax, which was to have been left in his place; and he
  believed it was carried into the prison.”

Were I asked to sum up Dr. Johnson’s character, avoiding all
sentimentality and hero-worship, I should say that he was a man of
strong inflexible will, satisfied to be a scholar and a thinker,
utterly careless of notoriety, honors and wealth. He was by no means
free from the small weaknesses of humanity, but he had the inestimable
boon of patience and he was free from cant, pretense and hypocrisy. In
spite of all his shortcomings, habits and tricks that would certainly
annoy those of more delicate sensibilities, he had the redeeming merit
of immense social ardor and the charity that covers a multitude of
sins. For him was the deed rather than the word. Sympathy, he thought,
was all very well, but “you will find these very feeling people are not
very ready to do you good. They pay you by feeling.” Work, he held,
was the great anodyne for human ills. Being told that Lady Tavistock’s
death had been caused by her grief for her husband’s loss, he retorted
that had she had something definite to do, the sting would have been
drawn from her bereavement. Sentimentality annoyed him. When his
friend, Mrs. Thrale, observed that a certain lady would be grieved
because her friend had lost the chance of a fortune, Johnson growled:
“She will suffer as much, perhaps, as your horse did when your cow
miscarried.” Again, there is much of good in this: “Why whine about
metaphysical distresses when there is so much want and hunger in the
world.”

Johnson had a morbid fear of death. As shown in the conversation above
repeated, he singularly failed to see that Hume might have strongly
objected to die a violent death at the hands of another, and yet have
no wish to exist after death. That immortality is not universally
desired, and that five hundred millions of believers in Buddhism regard
the extinction of personal consciousness as a high reward for a life
well lived was not within the sphere of his knowledge.

The following quoted viewpoint of Seneca, as set forth in his letter
to Marcia, Johnson could not understand. “Think this, that the dead
are afflicted with no evils. Those things that make the grave terrible
are no fables. We know that the dead are not enfolded in darkness.
We believe not those floods flaming with fire, neither the lake of
forgetfulness, nor the Judgment Seat. These are poetical, and thus
have they tormented us with vain terrors. _Death reposeth us in that
tranquility wherein we lay before we were born._ Death is neither
good nor evil. That may be either good or evil which is something;
but that which is of itself nothing, and reduceth all things to
nothing, betrayeth us to no fortune.” Johnson, at the age of 69
solemnly declares that “I have made no approaches to a state which
can look on it (death) as not terrible.” As for the extinction of
personal consciousness, in arguing with a Miss Seward who had said
that annihilation was “a pleasing sleep without a dream,” the doctor
solemnly declared, “It is neither pleasing, nor sleep. It is nothing.
Now mere existence is so much better than nothing, that one would
rather exist even in pain than not exist.”




III.

HIS EARLY LIFE.


Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield, England, in 1709, and lived in a
bookish atmosphere. His father, Michael Johnson, was a bookseller and
something of an original character who tended his bookstall on market
days in Lichfield as well as in surrounding towns. There is quite a
Johnsonian ring about the wording of Michael Johnson’s Catalogue of
Choice Books, dated 1717, and addressed to the booklovers of Worcester.
The old gentleman takes people into his confidence and explains matters
in friendly way, in a day when printed lists of books to be sold were
rare. Says he:

  “I have had several auctions in your neighborhood--as Gloucester,
  Tewkesbury, Evesham, etc.--with success, and am now about to address
  myself, and try my fortune with you. You must not wonder that I
  begin every day’s sale with small and common books; the reason is,
  a room is some time a-filling, and persons of address and business
  seldom coming fast, they are entertained till we are full.... (There
  follows a summarized account of the books to be offered, and he adds
  that they are the best of that kind) ... and to please the ladies, I
  have added store of fine pictures and paper-hangings; and by the way
  I would desire them to take notice that the pictures shall always
  be put up by noon of that day they are to be sold, that they may
  be viewed by daylight. I have no more but to wish you pleased, and
  myself a good sale, who am,

                                         Your humble servant,

                                                          M. JOHNSON.”

Once, the son was asked to take his place at the bookstall, the father
being sick. This young Samuel refused to do. Fifty years later the
memory of his snobbishness came to Johnson and, being at Lichfield, the
town in which he had been unfilial, he left his friend’s house after
breakfast and did not return until evening. Then, penance according to
his own notion being done, he worried no more. He tells the story thus:

  “To do away with this sin of disobedience, I this day went in a
  post-chaise to Uttoxeter, and going into the market at the time of
  high business, uncovered my head and stood with it bare an hour
  before the stall which my father had formerly used, exposed to the
  sneers of the standers-by and the inclemency of the weather; a
  penance by which I trust I have propitiated Heaven for this only
  instance, I believe, of contumacy for my father.”

Samuel Johnson inherited hypochondriacal tendencies from his father
and, as a child, was taken by his mother to London to be touched by
the Queen to be cured of the “king’s evil.” So there was a queer
twist in him for which he was in no wise responsible, a certain lack
of co-ordination because of which he sometimes did strange things.
Sometimes it would seem that the man was fighting against himself,
as when he would stop in the middle of a room or in a street, then,
presently continue his course correctly. At other times, as if off his
guard, the hidden impulse had the better of him and there were strange
gesticulations, queer acts. For instance, at dinner, in company, _a
propos_ of nothing at all, he dived under the table and twisted off the
shoe of the lady who sat next him. Then there was the peculiar affair
at Twickenham when he imitated the movements of a jockey riding a
race. His disease too had scarred and distorted his face and destroyed
the sight of one eye. Altogether, the lad was terribly handicapped.
Physically he was a tall, stout fellow. His uncle, who kept a kind of
boxing school at Smithfield, had taught him boxing, wrestling and the
trick of the quarter staff. At times he was a Berserker. Hawkins has
told of the famous quarter staff, six feet in length and tapering from
three inches diameter to one, which he had ready for the reception of
one McPherson. Again there is the tale of a bookseller Osborne who
refused to sell a huge folio to Johnson and who, for his refusal, was
knocked down, the doctor using the book clubwise. Another tale tells of
a scene in the Lichfield theater. Johnson, finding his favorite seat in
the side scenes occupied by a man from Birmingham, pitched both chair
and occupant into the pit.

The boy’s education was a patchwork affair. He attended the Lichfield
schools, first a dame’s school and then a grammar school, but he
was forever reading. It would be quite just to say that he educated
himself. By chance he found his direction, for, looking on the book
shelves for an apple, he took down a volume of Petrarch, became
interested, and from that read outward, as it were, following up this
and that and the other. At nineteen he went to Oxford as a servitor,
working his way, as we would put it, poor indeed but full of personal
independence and self respect, and certainly not the man to be
patronized. When some wealthier, well-meaning fellow student put a new
pair of shoes at Johnson’s door, the man finding them, pitched them
out of the window. The stout hearted Johnson took no man’s pity. There
were other times when he seemed to be wild and scornful of authority.
In later years that being mentioned, he said: “Ah! sir, I was mad
and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolic. I was
miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my
wit; so I disregarded all power and authority.” The words imply quite
enough. He left the University in 1731 without taking a degree; his
father died at the end of the same year, and young Johnson found the
family fortunes amounted to no more than twenty pounds all told. So
there were dark days with a mother to keep.

For a time he tried school teaching, in one case losing a promising
position on the ground that his infirmities would excite the ridicule
of the scholars. There was a little literary work on local papers and,
in 1735, he received five guineas for a translation of Lobo’s Voyage
to Abyssinia, and married Elizabeth, the widow of a mercer who brought
him as dowry some seven or eight hundred pounds with which he set up
a private academy at Edial, in Staffordshire, with David Garrick as
one of his pupils. The wife of his choice was more than twice his age,
very fat and red of complexion, gaudy as to dress and affected as to
manners. She drank and she painted and was lacking in education, but
somehow the pair got on fairly well until she died in 1752. During
their married life, Johnson had on hand a flirtation or two, as is
the manner of men, but it caused no trouble. She on the other hand,
according to Boswell, who quotes Mrs. Desmoulins, “indulged herself
in country air and nice living, at an unsuitable expense, while her
husband was drudging in the smoke of London, and that she by no means
treated him with that complacency which is the most engaging quality in
a wife.” So, taking it all in all, honors were even and by dint of the
exercise of a mutual forbearance, the pair of them got along very well.

The year 1737 saw the Edial private academy on financial rocks and
Johnson and his pupil Garrick setting out together to try their
fortunes in London, the pupil with a tragedy in his pocket and Johnson
with a letter of introduction from a Gilbert Walmsley which set forth
the fact that the bearer was “a very good scholar and poet” and further
added that the writer had great hopes that Johnson would “turn out a
fine tragedy writer.”




IV.

IN GRUB STREET.


Today we call Grub Street by the name Bohemia. There, as in college,
Johnson “fought his way by his literature and his wit.” There were
days of destitution and nights when he and his new-found friend Savage
walked the streets, too poor to pay for a night’s lodging yet both full
of poetry and patriotism. In 1738, Johnson was “enlisted by Mr. Cave
(proprietor of the Gentleman’s Magazine) as a regular coadjutor in his
magazine,” yet, for a time no problem was solved. Indeed, being invited
to dine at Cave’s house one day when there was prosperous company,
Johnson was in such woful case as to raiment, that he could not make
his appearance at table, so sat in the dining room behind a screen
where he had his meal handed to him.

There were other dark days, many of them, and Johnson shared many
queer lodgings. His chief companion for some time was the poet Richard
Savage, already mentioned, who claimed to be the illegitimate son
of the Countess of Macclesfield. To Johnson, Savage was a hero and
he shared part at least of his hero’s miseries: “on a bulk, in a
cellar, or in a glass house, among thieves and beggars.” Savage at
last died in a debtor’s prison. In 1744 Johnson published his Life of
Savage, not only a labor of love, but a work of intrinsic merit and
autobiographical interest.

From November, 1740, to February, 1742, Johnson did much hack work
and actually wrote many of the speeches attributed to the statesman
Pitt and others. The publisher Cave employed men to attend the debates
in the House of Lords and the House of Commons who took notes of the
speeches. These notes were then put into shape by Johnson, and the
putting into shape was in reality composing them. It was a deception
which Johnson regretted to the end of his days, though it would seem
that at first he wrote from a mere delight in authorship. As soon as
he found that the speeches as printed were taken as genuine, he ceased
to write saying that he “would not be accessory to the propagation of
falsehood.” At a dinner, years afterwards, Francis, father of Junius,
mentioned a speech of Pitt’s, saying that it was the most eloquent he
had ever read, and superior to anything in Demosthenes. “I wrote that
speech, in a garret in Exeter Street,” said Johnson. Someone in the
company then praised Johnson for his impartiality. “That is not true,”
said he. “I saved appearances tolerably well, but I took care that the
Whig dogs should not have the best of it.”

Leaping over the years until Johnson began work on his Dictionary, his
literary activities may be thus summarized:

  1738. London--an imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal.

  1741. Composition of the Parliamentary Debates in the Gentleman’s
  Magazine.

  1744. Life of Savage.

  1747. Plan for a Dictionary of the English Language, addressed to
  Lord Chesterfield.

  1749. The Vanity of Human Wishes. Irene--a Tragedy.

  1750. The periodical, The Rambler, first published.

  1752. The Rambler ceased publication.

  1753. Contributed to Hawkesworth’s Adventurer.

For London, a poem, he received ten guineas and for the Vanity of Human
Wishes fifteen guineas. His tragedy Irene brought him a hundred pounds
and when his old pupil, Garrick, who had become manager of the Drury
Lane theater, produced it for nine nights, he handed Johnson a hundred
and ninety-seven pounds and seventeen shillings as the author’s share
of the profits. Johnson, if not entirely free from the fear of poverty,
was at least in a way to give his attention to matters close to his
heart.




V.

THE DICTIONARY.


This making of the first English dictionary was an incredible feat.
There is a story told by Boswell, which shows that the stout hearted
Johnson was well aware of the fact that he had undertaken a giant’s
task. Dr. Adams entered the room one day and found Johnson hard at
work. Said Adams: “This is a great work, sir. How are you to get all
the etymologies?”

“Why, sir,” answered Johnson, “there is a shelf with Junius and
Skinner, and others; and there is a Welsh gentleman who has published
a collection of Welsh proverbs, who will help me with the Welsh.”

“But, sir,” protested Dr. Adams, “how can you do this in three years?”

“I have no doubt I can do it in three years,” asserted the sage.

“But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty
years to compile their dictionary.”

“Sir, thus it is,” explained Johnson. “This is the proportion. Let
us see: forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three is to sixteen
hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.”

From first to last, Johnson worked for seven years on the dictionary.
A few pages back, it was said that the Doctor had dedicated the Plan
to Lord Chesterfield, himself a man of great abilities, who had wide
social influence and literary ability. Somehow, Chesterfield had
behaved in some manner to Johnson as to excite his anger. A story
had it that one day Johnson was kept waiting in Lord Chesterfield’s
ante-chamber with the footman’s explanation that company was present.
Johnson sat in impatience, an impatience which changed to wrath when
the door opened and Colley Cibber, a comedy actor, walked out. The sage
rose in anger, left the house and never called on Lord Chesterfield
again. Johnson denied that there was any truth in the story but told
Boswell that “his lordship’s continued neglect was the reason why he
resolved to have no connection with him.”

It must be remembered, as Leslie Stephen has pointed out, that the
art of life as expounded by Lord Chesterfield in his famous letters
differs from that as expounded by Johnson quite as much as “the elegant
diplomatist differs from the rough intellectual gladiator of Grub
Street.” So there were words. Things were said that stung. Thus:

  “Johnson having now explicitly avowed his opinion of Lord
  Chesterfield, did not refrain from expressing himself concerning that
  nobleman with pointed freedom: ‘This man (said he) I thought had
  been a Lord among wits; but, I find, he is only a wit among Lords!’
  And when his Letters to his natural son were published, he observed
  that ‘they teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing
  master.’”

Literary people are not free from the vice of backbiting, scandalizing
and petty talk any more than fishwives and Billingsgate porters. So we
find Lord Chesterfield calling Johnson a “respectable Hottentot” and
accusing him of “throwing his meat anywhere but down his throat.” And
in another place, the prince of elegant conduct and behavior is quoted
as having said of Johnson that he “was not only uncouth in manner and
warm in dispute, but behaved exactly in the same way to superiors,
equals and inferiors; and therefore, by a necessary consequence,
absurdly to two of the three.” So the breach grew.

When, in the course of time, the dictionary neared completion, Lord
Chesterfield tried in courtly manner to bridge the gulf of separation.
Some have believed that he yearned to see the great work dedicated to
him, others hold that he had no ulterior motive, but was frankly sorry
for the indifference with which he had treated the learned author.
Whatever the cause, there appeared, over his signature, two papers in
the World and they contained not only a high recommendation of the
work, but some studied compliments.

  “I think the public in general,” it read, “and the republic of
  letters in particular, are greatly obliged to Mr. Johnson for having
  undertaken and executed so great and desirable a work. Perfection is
  not to be expected from man; but if we are to judge by the various
  works of Johnson already published, we have good reason to believe
  that he will bring this to as near perfection as any man could do....

  “It must be owned that our language is, at present, in a state of
  anarchy, and hitherto, perhaps, it may not have been the worse for
  it. During our free and open trade, many words and expressions have
  been imported, adopted and naturalized from other languages which
  have greatly enriched our own.... Good order and authority are now
  necessary. But where shall we find them, and, at the same time,
  the obedience due to them? We must have recourse to the old Roman
  expedient in times of confusion, and choose a dictator. Upon this
  principle, I give my vote for Mr. Johnson to fill that great and
  arduous post. And I hereby declare that I make a total surrender
  of all my rights and privileges in the English language, as a free
  born British subject, to the said Mr. Johnson during the term of his
  dictatorship....”

It failed of its intended effect. Johnson declared that the
Chesterfield letter did not ring true, was “all false and hollow,”
and that he would be no man’s dupe. Straightway he composed a letter
which he sent to Lord Chesterfield, and it is due to the nobleman to
note that, according to his friend, Mr. Robert Dodsley, the letter
“lay upon his table where anybody might see it. He (Lord Chesterfield)
read it to me: said, ‘this man has great powers,’ pointed out the
severest passages and observed how well they were expressed.” Johnson,
having sent the letter, had a remarkable delicacy with respect to its
circulation and, being asked for a copy by Lord Hardwicke, refused
with a smile, saying: “No, sir; I have hurt the dog too much already.”
Obviously, here were a couple of gentlemen, and possibly it would have
taken but little for each to have forgiven the other. The Johnson
letter follows:

    “TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD.

    February 7, 1755.

    “My Lord,

  “I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of the World, that
  two papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to the public, were
  written by your Lordship. To be so distinguished, is an honor, which,
  being very little accustomed to favors from the great, I know not
  well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.

  “When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your Lordship,
  I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment
  of your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast
  myself _Le vainquer du vainquer de la terre_; that I might obtain
  that regard for which I saw the world contending; but I found my
  attendance so little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would
  suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in
  public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and
  uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could, and no
  man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

  “Seven years, my Lord, have now passed, since I waited in your
  outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time
  I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which
  it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the
  verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of
  encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not
  expect, for I never had a Patron before.

  “The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
  him a native of the rocks.

  “Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
  struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground,
  encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to
  take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has
  been delayed until I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am
  solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not want it. I
  hope it is no very cynical asperity, not to confess obligations where
  no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public
  should consider me as owing that to a Patron, which Providence has
  enabled me to do for myself.

  “Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any
  favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should
  conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long
  wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with
  so much exultation,

                                         “My Lord,

                                “Your Lordship’s most humble
                                   “Most obedient servant,

                                                  “SAM. JOHNSON.”

Such is the letter that Thomas Carlyle calls, “the far-famed blast of
doom proclaiming into the ear of Lord Chesterfield and through him to
the listening world, that patronage should be no more.” There was an
aftermath of a kind, for we have it on the authority of Hawkins that
Chesterfield sent two friends to Johnson with the message that were he
rich enough he would settle five hundred pounds a year on Johnson, but
he who was now “the great Cham of Literature,” made answer that if the
first peer of the realm made such an offer, he would show him the way
downstairs. “Dictionary Johnson” had won his kingdom and knew it. One
thinks of Nietzsche and his saying: “For him who is born to command,
humble self-effacement and self-abnegation are not virtues, but vices.”

The Dictionary concluded, Johnson rested awhile. In recognition of his
services, Oxford University gave him his M. A. degree which, in 1738,
was refused him. He knew that defeat at the desk which all literary
workers know. “A kind of strange oblivion has spread over me,” he said
in April, 1764, “so that I know not what has become of the last years,
and perceive that incidents and intelligence pass over me without
leaving any impression.” He was financially pinched too and in the
early part of 1756, Richardson, the novelist, lent him six guineas to
release him from arrest for debt. In 1759, his mother died at the age
of ninety. That shocked him into activity. He borrowed twelve guineas
to meet current expenses and sat down to write. In less than a week
he had finished the story Rasselas, sending the sheets to the printer
as they were finished, and for it he was paid a hundred pounds. The
greater part of the money he spent in the liquidation of debts and for
his mother’s funeral. Three years later Samuel Johnson left Grub Street
with a pension of three hundred a year settled on him by King George
III. “I hope,” said his friend Beauclerk, “you will now purge and live
cleanly like a gentleman.”




VI.

FROM GRUB STREET TO EASY STREET.


There followed days of comfort. Best of all comforts that came to
be Johnson’s, was his membership in the Literary Club which Sir
Joshua Reynolds had formed. Then indeed he could meet and talk with
choice spirits, for Burke was a member as also was Oliver Goldsmith.
Beauclerk, Sir John Hawkins, Adam Smith, Sheridan and other literary
lights were on the roll. One evening every week they met at the sign
of the Turk’s Head in Gerrard Street, Soho, and, having supped and
wined like gentlemen, discussed things dear to the heart of intelligent
men without inhibitions or prohibitions, until early morning. No
subject was barred and discussion was free. It was an improvement on a
coffee-house gathering, for bores and undesirables were not admitted.
From the record kept by Boswell, who first became acquainted with
Johnson the year before the Club was founded, (1763), it can be seen
that there was real sociability in the little circle. Further, it was
a wonderful age and topics came thick and fast. We can well imagine
some of them, such as the suicide of the boy poet and literary forger,
Chatterton: the account of Johnson’s Tour in the Hebrides with Boswell:
the story of Johnson’s meeting with the young king in Buckingham
Palace: the discussion of Fielding’s novels: the talk on Sterne’s
Tristram Shandy, greatest of quaint books; the reading of Percy’s
Reliques of Ancient Poetry: the debate on the novels of the bookseller
Richardson; the excitement when Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer was
played: the crowding round Johnson when he received the degree of LL.
D., in 1765, from Trinity College, Dublin: the heated arguments on
the authorship of the Letters of Junius: the doubts and despairs and
misgivings when the question of American taxation came up: the joy with
which Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with America was read: the talk
about Hume and his lack of orthodox religion: the diving into economics
and questions relating to political economy when the Wealth of Nations
stirred the English speaking world: the greetings when Boswell returned
from Corsica and the farewells and God-speeds when Johnson went to
Wales with the Thrales in 1774.

Johnson was mighty jealous of the exclusiveness of the club: much
opposed to the entrance into the magic circle of any unclubbable man.
Once, when Sir Joshua Reynolds was telling Garrick of its excellence,
“I’d like it much if I was a member,” said the actor manager. Sir
Joshua carried the message to Johnson. “He’ll be of us?” growled
the grand Cham. “How does he know we’ll permit him?” Then there
was a pause, after which he added: “Why, the first duke in England
has no right to use such language.” But Garrick had a friend in Sir
John Hawkins, too, and he put in a good word for Garrick. “Sir,”
said Johnson, “he will disturb us by his buffoonery.” Mr. Thrale was
appealed to and he interceded for Garrick. “If, sir, Garrick should
apply for membership, I shall blackball him,” declared the Doctor.
“Who, sir?” exclaimed the astonished Thrale. “Mr. Garrick?--your
friend, your companion--blackball him?” “Why, sir,” replied Johnson,
“I love my little David dearly--better than any or all his flatterers
do; but surely one ought to sit in a society like ours. ‘Unelbowed by a
gamster, pimp, or player.’”

Garrick failed to understand his exclusion and made many diplomatic
inquiries. What had he done? Who disliked him? Had he been the subject
of conversation? Then one day Oliver Goldsmith took the matter up.
“It would,” he said, “give an agreeable variety to the meetings; for
there can be nothing new among us: we have, indeed, traveled over
one another’s minds.” That, the grand Cham would not allow, and he
was piqued at the suggestion. “Sir,” said he, “you have not traveled
over my mind, I assure you.” But Goldsmith’s plea won Sir Joshua, and
Garrick became a member. Shortly afterwards, Sir William Jones, the
Richard Burton of his day, was also admitted.

Boswell had almost as much difficulty in becoming a member as Garrick.
“The honor of being elected into the Club,” said the Bishop of St.
Asaph, “is not inferior to that of being representative of Westminster
and Surrey.” Boswell could show no credentials. What had he done?
What were his merits? For answer there was but one statement. He was
the follower of Johnson, and, moreover, according to the Cham, he was
clubable. Then there was a dark hint. So long as Boswell remained
unadmitted, no other name should become eligible. Boswell has left on
record the mental anxiety that was his while waiting to know the result
of the ballot, and he was the happiest of men when he learned at last
that the ballot was clear.

Like the late William Marion Reedy, Johnson was ever ready to offer
aid to literary aspirants. As Reedy brought to light many, Sara
Teasdale, Zoe Akins, Harris Merton Lyon, Edgar Lee Masters, Witter
Bynner, John L. Hervey, to name a few, so Samuel Johnson with his
advice and encouragement, and, often his influence, found an audience
for struggling writers and heartened them to renewed efforts. When
Goldsmith’s Traveler appeared, the first reception was unpromising.
Dr. Johnson gave it a favorable notice in the “Critical Review” and
that turned the trick. The public that likes its opinions ready-made
took notice. The Great Cham had approved so all must be well. Even the
illuminati were astonished that a mere drudge, a hack, a newspaper
essayist, should have written such a poem and before a year was ended
a fourth edition had gone to press and Goldsmith was acclaimed the
best poet of his day. At the club, one evening, a member tackled
Goldsmith. “What do you mean,” he asked, “by the last word in the first
line of your Traveler, remote, solitary, _slow_? Do you mean tardiness
of locomotion?” “Yes,” answered Goldsmith, flurried and inattentive.
But the protecting Johnson had also heard. “No, sir,” he interjected.
“You did not mean tardiness of locomotion; you meant that sluggishness
of mind which comes upon a man in solitude.” “Ah,” interjected the
poet, “_that_ was what I meant.” But that was sufficient to set rumor
going. There were additions to the story and, before long, it was
whispered that Goldsmith had not written the line in question. Then
in the startling manner in which whispering tongues can poison truth,
it became an open secret that Johnson had written the finest passages
in the poem. Johnson heard, and at once indicated the verses he had
contributed, nine in all and by no means the best. Further, he came out
with a paper, proclaiming The Traveler the finest poem that had seen
the light of print since the days of Pope.

“He (Goldsmith) imitates you, sir,” said Boswell.

“Why, no, sir,” answered Johnson. “Jack Hawksworth is one of my
imitators, but not Goldsmith. Goldy, sir, has great merit.”

“But, sir, he is much indebted to you for his getting so high in the
public estimation.”

But Johnson would not admit that. “Why, sir, he has, perhaps, got
_sooner_ to it by his intimacy with me.”

Johnson, indeed, discovered the native talent in Goldsmith and
sympathized with his struggle against poverty. Not only was he generous
with his literary criticism and advice but he went a step further,
checking him for his occasional extravagance and improvidence. Of one
incident in their acquaintance Johnson told the following tale:

  “I received, one morning, a message from Goldsmith that he was in
  great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me,
  begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a
  guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as
  soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him
  for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion; I perceived that
  he had already changed my guinea, and had a bottle of Madeira and a
  glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be
  calm, and began to talk with him of the means by which he would be
  extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for the press,
  which he produced for me. I looked into it and saw its merit; told
  the landlady I would soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller,
  sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he
  discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone
  for having used him so ill.”

The novel so rescued was the immortal “Vicar of Wakefield” and in spite
of Johnson’s recommendation, the short-sighted publisher kept it for
nearly two years before giving it to the world.

Again, when Goldsmith’s play “The Good Natured Man,” was accepted,
Johnson was to the fore with his protecting kindness, attending
rehearsals, furnishing the prologue and counselling. The piece was
coldly received, and, in the evening after its first appearance,
Goldsmith went to Johnson with his troubles, weeping in an excess of
emotion. But that display the old Spartan disapproved. “No man,” said
he, “should be expected to sympathize with the sorrows of vanity.”

A little later, at a dinner, Goldsmith told the tale of his
appointment, making merry at his own mood and temporary pessimism,
for Goldsmith had the young boy’s temperament that kept him forever
flitting between the depths of gloom or the heights of good humor,
tears or laughter. He wound up his recital by saying: “When all were
gone, except Johnson here, I burst out a-crying, and even swore that I
would never write again.”

The doctor frowned his disapproval, hearing this. “All this,” he said,
“I thought had been a secret between you and me, and I am sure I would
not have said anything about it for the world.”

On another occasion Johnson took Goldsmith in hand. It was when the
latter had been cast down by a vindictive attack upon him by a self
appointed critic of whom the world now knows nothing. “Never mind,
sir,” said the Doctor. “A man whose business it is to be talked of is
much helped by being attacked. Fame, sir, is a shuttlecock; if it be
struck only at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground; to
keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.”

In the case of Goldsmith’s “She Stoops to Conquer,” Johnson used every
effort to get it produced. He firmly believed in it, although the
manager of Covent Garden theater was dead against it and even the
principal players, when, after weeks of uncertainty, it was put in
rehearsal, declined their parts. But Johnson was like an everlasting
rock, and, by his efforts, it was produced on Monday, March 15, 1778.
On the production of it, he wrote to Boswell, saying: “I know of no
comedy for many years, that has so much exhilarated an audience; it has
answered so much the great end of comedy, making an audience merry,”
and time has amply demonstrated the correctness of Johnson’s taste,
for the display has lived up to its old reputation as an acting work
as distinct from a purely literary one. As I write this, I notice an
announcement of the play being given in London, England, to crowded and
delighted audiences.

Johnson’s advocacy of Goldsmith is shown again in the incident telling
of the discussion anent the Roman History. To Boswell, he said:
“Whether we take Goldsmith as a poet, as a comic writer, or as a
historian, he stands in the first class.”

“A historian!” cried the astonished Boswell, who knew that Goldsmith
had undertaken the writing of the two big volumes as a piece of hack
work, to keep the wolf from the door, “My dear sir, you surely will
not rank his compilation of the Roman History with the works of other
historians of his age.”

“Why, who are before him?” asked Johnson.

“Hume--Robertson--Lord Lyttleton,” answered Boswell, forgetting perhaps
for the moment and in the heat of the argument, Johnson’s antipathy to
all things Scotch.

“I have not read Hume,” said Johnson, “but doubtless Goldsmith’s
History is better than the verbiage of Robertson, or the foppery of
Dalrymple.”

“But will you not admit the superiority of Robertson, in whose history
we find such penetration, such painting?” queried the Scot.

But Johnson was stubborn. “Sir, you must consider how that penetration
and that painting is employed. It is not history, it is imagination.
He who describes what he never saw draws from fancy. Robertson paints
minds as Sir Joshua paints faces, in a history piece; he imagines a
heroic countenance. You must look upon Robertson’s work as a menace,
and try it by that standard. History it is not. Besides, sir, it is
the great excellence of a writer to put into his book as much as his
book will hold. Goldsmith has done this in his history. Now Robertson
might have put twice as much in his book. Robertson is like a man who
has packed wool in gold; the wool takes up more room than the gold.
No, sir, I always thought Robertson would be crushed with his own
weight--would be buried under his own ornaments. Goldsmith tells you
shortly all you want to know; Robertson detains you a great deal too
long. No man will read Robertson’s cumbrous detail a second time; but
Goldsmith’s plain narrative will please again and again. I would say
to Robertson what an old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils,
‘Read over your compositions, and whenever you meet with a passage
which you think is particularly fine, strike it out!’--Goldsmith’s
abridgement is better than that of Lucius Florus or Eutropius; and, I
venture to say, that if you compare him with Vertot in the same places
of Roman history, you will find that he excels Vertot. Sir, he has the
art of compiling, and of saying everything he has to say in a pleasing
manner. He is now writing a Natural History, and will make it as
entertaining as a Persian tale.”

Johnson’s prediction as to the Persian tale quality of the Natural
History was verified. The charming style of the book makes it as
entertaining as Darwin’s Voyage in the Beagle or any of the books of
Fabre. While it was in preparation, there were many talks with Johnson
on the ways of animals. One is particularly happy, the more especially
as it shows Johnson’s sturdy common sense opposed to Goldsmith’s happy
credulity. They were talking of the custom of the natives of Otaheite
in dog eating and Goldsmith had said that the Chinese also used dogs
as food and that a dog butcher in China was as common as any other
butcher. “When he walks abroad,” said Goldsmith, “all the dogs fall
upon him.”

“That is not owing to his killing dogs,” said Johnson. “I remember a
butcher at Lichfield, whom a dog that was in the house where I lived,
always attacked. It is the smell of carnage which provokes this, let
the animals he has killed be what they may.”

“Yes,” said Goldsmith, “there is a general abhorrence in animals at the
signs of massacre. If you put a tub full of blood into a stable, the
horses are likely to go mad.”

“I doubt that,” said Johnson.

“Nay, sir, it is a fact well authenticated,” persisted Goldsmith.

“You had better prove it before you put it in your book on Natural
History,” suggested Thrale. “You may do it in my stable if you will.”

“Nay, sir,” Johnson said. “I would not have him prove it. If he is
content to take his information from others, he may get through his
book with little trouble, and without much endangering his reputation.
But if he makes experiments for so comprehensive a book as his, there
would be no end to them; his erroneous assertions would fall then upon
himself; and he might be blamed for not having made experiments as to
every particular.”




VII.

SUNSET DAYS.


The high lights in Johnson’s career for the last twenty years in his
life are thus summed up:

  1765. His edition of Shakespeare published.

  1767. He had a conversation with King George III in the library at
  Buckingham palace.

  1770. His Pamphlet, “The False Alarm,” published.

  1773. He visited Scotland with Boswell, August 14 to November 22.

  1774. He visited Wales with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale.

  1775. He received the degree of D.C.L. from Oxford University and
  spent October and November in France with the Thrales. The same year
  he published (1) Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, and (2)
  Taxation no Tyranny.

  1779. The first four volumes of his Lives of the Poets published.

  1781. He completed his Lives of the Poets.

  1782. His health began to fail.

  1783. He had a stroke of paralysis in June and, on his recovery,
  instituted a Club at the Essex Head.

  1784. After staying at Lichfield, Ashbourne and Oxford seeking
  improvement in his health, he died in London at Bolt Court, December
  13. He was buried in Westminster Abbey by the side of Goldsmith.

But to list what I have called the high lights, especially in
connection with his literary work, conveys no conception at all of the
man’s intense application and activity. There were written by him in
those twenty years introductions, dedications, pamphlets, articles,
essays and sermons, for the man was interested in all kinds of human
activities. We find him writing a fairy tale, The Fountains, in 1766,
which appeared in Mrs. William’s Miscellanies. Then, in 1771, he is
interested in the Falkland Islands and publishes Thoughts on Certain
Late Transactions connected with them. There is internal evidence that
he wrote a preface for Baretti’s Easy Lessons in Italian and English,
and other like trifles. We have seen how whole heartedly he threw
himself into the case of Dr. Dodd, and in 1781 we find him equally
energetic in penning an argument in favor of Joseph Knight, an African
negro, who claimed his liberty in the Court of Common Session in
Scotland, and, through Johnson’s influence, obtained it.

Naturally then, such a man would be drawn into politics, especially
when such a tremendous event was afoot as the disposition of the
American colonies. His stand on the question of separation was, of
course, exactly opposite to that of his friend Edmund Burke, but,
nevertheless, they were firm and fast friends. Each had the greatest
admiration for the other. “Burke,” he said, “is such a man that if you
met him for the first time in the street, where you were stopped by a
drove of oxen, and you and he stepped aside to take shelter but for
five minutes, he’d talk to you in such manner that, when you parted,
you would say, That is an extraordinary man. He is never what we call
humdrum; never unwilling to begin to talk, nor in haste to leave off.”
When Burke became a member of Parliament, Johnson said, “Now we who
know Burke, know that he will be one of the first men in the country.”
Yet Burke was the intellectual support and standard of the Whigs, and
Johnson, the rock-ribbed Tory, declared that the devil was the first
Whig. Burke set forth views in his pamphlet on Conciliation directly
opposed to those set forth by Johnson in his Taxation no Tyranny. Yet
they were inseparables. Bennet Langton, who was present at the death
bed interview of Burke with Johnson, four others being in the room,
told of the final parting thus: “Mr. Burke said to him (Johnson): ‘I
am afraid sir, such a number of us may be oppressive to you.’ ‘No,
sir,’ said Johnson, ‘it is not so; and I must be in a wretched state,
indeed, when your company is not a delight to me.’ Mr. Burke, in a
tremulous voice, expressive of being very tenderly affected, replied,
‘My dear sir, you have always been good to me.’ Immediately afterwards
he went away. This was the last circumstance in the acquaintance of
these two eminent men.”

Yet Johnson, opposing Burke, had expressed himself regarding America
and the Americans in no doubtful way. “They are a race of convicts,
and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of
hanging:” “I am willing to love all mankind, except an American:”
“Rascals--Robbers--Pirates”: there is much of it. To get the real
Johnsonian attitude, we must imagine some one in the Philippine Islands
demanding a Congress of Philippine States to frame a bill of rights, or
to form an independent state, a Philippine commonwealth. Lurid things
would be said by many today, were such an insurrection led by someone
who had dabbled in small local politics in Manila, a tax collector who
had been found short in his accounts as Hosmer tells us Samuel Adams
had been. (Life of Samuel Adams, pp. 37-47, 240). Again, there had
filtered to England strange tales of lawless deeds, of mob rules, of
mass cruelty. Because Francis Greene had signed a farewell address to
Governor Hutchinson, of Massachusetts, the mob had driven him out of
Norwich as another mob had driven him out of Windham. Another mob had
laid waste the lands of the loyalist, David Ingersoll; the house of
Daniel Leonard had been riddled with bullets; Brigadier Ruggles alone
had fought off a mob, though the mane and tail of his horse had been
cut off, and his other horse poisoned; judges had been stopped in
the highway; the house of Sewell, Attorney-General of Massachusetts,
had been wrecked; Oliver, president of council, had been beaten by a
disorderly crowd; a gang of five thousand armed men at Worcester had
compelled the judge, sheriffs and gentlemen of the bar to march up and
down thirty times, bare headed. As time went on, things grew worse.
In South Carolina there were cases of the tarring and feathering of
loyalists and in Baltimore an inoffensive merchant had narrowly escaped
with his life after having been ordered to pay five hundred pounds to
the revolutionary convention. In other places men were ridden on fence
rails; were gagged; were bound for days together; were advertised as
public enemies. Turn to the American Archives, 4th series, ii. p. 922,
to see an incident, one of many. Indeed, our present word “lynch”
comes from those days, from the name of the brother of the man who
founded Lynchburgh, Virginia. (Atlantic Monthly, vol. xxxviii, p. 731.)
Then, too, the liberty of the press was no more. The transition state
indeed, was one of something very like anarchy. That Johnson called
the Americans robbers and pirates was not to be wondered at. Even John
Adams, as we know by his diary, had his grave doubts as to the wisdom
of the move he was engaged in. (Works of John Adams, vol. ii, p. 420.)

Realizing all this, we are not at all disposed to find fault with
Johnson for his excoriation of the American rebels. It explains why
his eloquent pamphlet, called The Patriot, had so wide a success.
It explains why the motto of his pamphlet seemed applicable to the
followers of Adams and his friends:

    They bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
    Yet still revolt when truth would set them free.
    License they mean when they cry liberty.
    For who loves that must first be wise and good.

A fine old gentleman, this Doctor Samuel Johnson. For cant, pretense
and frothiness he had no place; in schemes of institutional reform he
had no faith. In these days, when all seems to be endless unrest, when
there are cross purposes, political failures, noisy charlatans and
self seekers everywhere, it is good to turn to old Samuel Johnson, to
live for a time with a man who saw that the multitudinous family of
man constitutes a vital unit. It is good to be with the old Tory who
so heartily believed in his religion with its pathetic mystery and its
glorious traditions of purity and devotion. Accept what he accepted or
not, just as we choose, it does not matter, for the mere being in touch
with his sincerity serves to revive and strengthen us.




NOTES.

JOHNSON ON AMERICA.


Johnson’s famous remark on the loudest yelps for liberty being heard
from the drivers of negroes was probably made upon seeing a copy of
the Boston Gazette of July 22, 1776. It contained the Declaration of
Independence in full and also an advertisement of a slave for sale.

That Johnson was bitter against the Whigs can be easily understood,
for, in England, it was openly charged that by their expressed
sympathy, lawlessness in the colonies was encouraged. Others, in
newspapers and pamphlets, openly charged that information was being
sent out from England by certain Whigs. In this connection, read
Lecky’s England in the Eighteenth Century, ed. 1882, vol. iii, p. 545.
In short, it was a time of doubt, suspicion and, to a great extent,
of manufactured hate. When London merchants forwarded their famous
petition to Parliament, a petition that had the effect of making it
seem that there was a growing sentiment in favor of granting the
Americans the freedom from taxation that they asked, there was a
counter charge that the move was born of greed and fear, the merchants
being those who had sent shipments to America and wanted to be sure of
their pay. (See Letters of James Murray, Loyalist, p. 172.) To make
matters more confusing, it seemed to Johnson and all those who thought
as he did on the matter, that the rebellion was the work of a small
and active minority which knew what it wanted, and a vast majority
either apathetic or cowardly. Certainly, any student who examines
original documents today, must be puzzled to account for the weakness
of the patriots, as evidenced by the size of Washington’s army. (See
Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, 2nd series, vol. ii,
p. 204). Out of an entire population of the colonies, some 2,200,000
with drafting, urging, the offering of bounties and the gifts of land
resulted in an army that was not more than 25,000, and the Valley
Forge incident with Washington’s force of less than nine thousand
almost starving in a rich section of country, tells its tale of apathy.
In Graydon’s Memoirs, ed. 1846, pp. 34 and 37, we find the direct
evidence that he, a patriot recruiting officer, came to the conclusion
that love for the cause “was far from prevalent among the lower ranks
of the people, at least in Pennsylvania.” There is a pathetic passage
too in which he writes of his long journey in Maryland with the gain
of one lone recruit. Obviously, there was no widespread enthusiasm for
independence and Washington knew and admitted it. “From their form of
government and steady attachment heretofore to royalty, my countrymen
will come reluctantly into the idea of independence: but time and
persecution bring wonderful things to pass.” So said Washington, as
quoted by Bancroft in his History of the United States, edition of
1884, vol. iv. page 338.




BIBLIOGRAPHY.


The books listed below are suggested for those who have a further
interest in the subject. All of the books listed are bound in cloth
and can be secured from Haldeman-Julius Company, Clothbound Book
Department, Girard, Kansas. The prices quoted include carriage charges:

  Johnson’s “Letters,” 2 volumes, per set, $8.50.

  Johnson’s “Life of Milton,” 75c.

  Johnson’s “Life of Dryden and Pope,” $1.25.

  Johnson’s “Lives of the English Poets,” 3 volumes, per set, $12.50.

  Johnson’s “Rasselas,” $1.10.

  Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson,” Everyman Edition, Cloth Binding,
  2 volumes, per set, $1.75.

       *       *       *       *       *




Transcriber’s note

Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected.


*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79416 ***