Deformities of Samuel Johnson, Selected from his Works Part 3

The book is said to be, the 'production of Arbuthnot.' Within ten lines, it is 'the joint production of _three_ great writers.' How can follies be practised which are not known? or diseases cured, which were never felt? He claims the attributes of omniscience when saying, that 'it has been little read, or when read, has been forgotten;' for, as it has been so frequently reprinted, no human being can be certain that it has been little read, or forgotten; but there is the strongest evidence of the contrary. This period concludes, as it began, with a most absurd a.s.sertion. If 'the design cannot boast of much originality,' there is nothing original in the literary world. Who is Mr Ouffle? and who told the Doctor that Swift carried any part of Scriblerus into Ireland, to supply hints for his travels? When Gulliver was published, Dr Arbuthnot, as appears from their correspondence, did not know whether that book was written by Swift or not; so that we are sure the Dean carried _nothing_ of Arbuthnot's along with him. Had Dr Johnson 'flourished and stunk' in their age, he would have been the hero of Martin's memoirs; and, to suppose him conscious of this circ.u.mstance, will account for the Rambler's malevolence, and explain why the bull broke into a china-shop.

I beg particular attention to the following pa.s.sage.

'His (Pope's) version may be said to have tuned the English tongue; for, since its appearance, no writer[45], however deficient in other powers, has wanted _melody_[46].' This is wild enough; but, of Gray's two longest Odes, 'the language is laboured into _harshness_.' Hammond's verses 'never glide in a stream of _melody_.' The diction of Collins 'was often _harsh_, unskilfully laboured, and injudiciously selected.

His lines, commonly, are of slow motion, clogged and impeded with cl.u.s.ters of consonants.' Of the style of Savage, 'The general fault is, _harshness_.' The diction of Shenstone 'is often _harsh_, improper, and affected,' &c.

Of these five poets, some were not born when Pope's version was published; and, of the rest, not one had penned a line now extant. They are all here charged, in the strongest terms, with _harshness_; and yet, (_mirabile dictu!_) since the appearance of Pope's version, 'no writer, however deficient in other powers, has wanted _melody_.'

It is no less curious, that the author of this wonder-working translation is himself charged with want of melody; and that too in a poem written many years after the appearance of Pope's Homer. 'The essay on man contains more lines unsuccessfully laboured, more _harshness_ of diction, more thoughts imperfectly expressed, more levity without elegance, and more heaviness without strength,[47]' &c.

'Gray thought his language more poetical, as it was more remote from common use[48].' This a.s.sertion is not entirely without foundation, but it is very far from being quite true.

'Finding in Dryden, honey _redolent of spring_, an expression that reaches the utmost limits of our language, Gray drove it a little more beyond common apprehension, by making _gale_ to be _redolent of joy and youth_[49].' The censure is just. But Dr Johnson is the last man alive, who should blame an author for driving our language to its utmost limits: For a very great part of his life has been spent in corrupting and confounding it. In some verses to a Lady, he talks of his _arthritic_ pains[50], an epithet not very suitable to the dialect of Parna.s.sus. Dr Johnson himself cannot always write common sense. 'In a short time many were content to be shewn beauties which _they could not see_[51].' He must here mean--'Beauties which they could not have seen;'--for it is needless to add, that no man can be shewn what he cannot see.

It is curious to observe a man draw his own picture, without intending it. Pomposo, when censuring some of Gray's odes, observes, That 'Gray is too fond of words arbitrarily compounded. The mind of the writer seems to work with unnatural violence. _Double, double, toil and trouble._' He (the author of an Elegy in a country church-yard) 'has a kind of strutting dignity, and is tall by walking on tip-toe. His art and his struggle are too visible, and there is too little appearance of ease, or nature. In all Gray's odes, there is a kind of c.u.mbrous splendour which we wish away[52].' We may say like Nathan, _Thou art the man_.

Mr. Gray, and Mr. Horace Walpole, are said to have _wandered_ through France and Italy[53]. And as a contrast to this polite expression, I shall add some remarks which have occurred on the Doctor's own mode of wandering.

'It must afford peculiar entertainment to see a person of his character, who has scarcely ever been without the precincts of this metropolis (London), and _who has been long accustomed to the adulation of a little knot of companions of his own trade_, sallying forth in quest of discoveries--Neither the people nor the country that he has visited will perhaps be considered as the most extraordinary part of the phaenomena he has described.--The Doctor has endeavoured to give an account of his travels; but he has furnished his readers with a picture of himself. He has seen very little, and observed still less. His narration is neither supported by vivacity, to make it entertaining, nor accompanied with information, to render it instructive. It exhibits the pompous artificial diction of the Rambler with the same _vacuity of thought_.--The reader is led from one Highland family to another merely to be informed of the number of their children, the barrenness of their country, and of the kindness with which the Doctor was treated. In the Highlands he is like a foolish peasant brought for the first time into a great city, staring at every sign-post, and gaping with equal wonder and astonishment at every object he meets[54].'

'At Florence they (Gray and Walpole) quarelled and parted; and Mr.

Walpole is _now_ content to have it told that it was by his fault[55].'

This is a dirty insinuation; and the rant which follows in the next period is of equal value.

He observes, That '_A long story_ perhaps adds little to Gray's reputation[56].' _Perhaps_ was useless here, and indeed the Doctor has introduced it in a thousand places, where it was useless, and left it out in as many where it was necessary. In justice to Gray, he ought to have added, that their Author rejected, from a correct edition of his works, this insipid series of verses.

'Gray's reputation was now so high that he had the honour of refusing the laurel[57].' No man's reputation has ever yet acquired him the laurel, without some particular application from a courtier. What honour is acquired by refusing the laurel? An hundred pounds a-year would have enabled an oeconomist like Mr Gray to preserve his independence and exert his generosity. The office of laureat is only ridiculous in the hands of a fool. Mr. Savage in that character produced nothing which would dishonour an Englishman and a poet. It is probable that Mr. Gray, a very costive writer, could hardly have made a decent number of verses within the limited time. From the pa.s.sage now quoted the reader will not fail to remark, that the Rambler 'nurses in his mind a foolish disesteem of kings[58].'

Mr. Gray 'had a notion not very peculiar, that he could not write but at certain times, or at happy moments; a fantastic foppery to which _my_ kindness for a man of learning and of virtue wishes him to have been superior[59].' Milton, who was no doubt a shallow fellow compared with the Reformer of our language, had the same 'fantastic foppery.' Mr Hume remarks that Milton had not leisure 'to watch the returns of genius.'--Every man feels himself at some times less capable of intellectual effort, than at others. The Rambler himself has, in the most express terms, contradicted his present notion. In Denham's life he quotes four lines which must, he says, have been written 'in some _hour propitious to poetry_.' In another place in the same lives his tumid and prolix eloquence disembogues itself to prove, what no man ever doubted, viz. 'That a tradesman's hand is often out, he cannot tell why.' And an inference is drawn, That this is still more apt to be the case with a man straining his mental abilities.

In Gray's ode on spring, 'The thoughts have nothing new, the morality is natural, but too stale[60].' Read the poem, and then esteem the critic if you can. Speaking of _the Bard_ he says, 'Of the first stanza the abrupt beginning has been celebrated; but _technical_ beauties can give praise only to the inventor[61].' The question here is, What he means by a _technical_ beauty? That word he explains, 'Belonging to arts; not in common or popular use'--How can this word in either of these senses apply here with propriety?

What he says of 'these four stanzas[62]'--conveys, I think, no sentiment. Every word may be understood separately, but in their present arrangement they seem to have no meaning, or they mean nonsense, and perhaps, contradiction; but this pa.s.sage I leave to the supreme tribunal of all authors--to the reason and common sense of the reader. He can best determine whether he has 'never seen the notions in any other place, yet persuades himself that he always felt them.' These ideas are very beautifully expressed in many pa.s.sages of Gaelic poetry: and Mr.

Gray, let it be remembered, to the honour of his taste and candour, was the warm admirer of Fingal.

Comparing Gray's ode with an ode of Horace[63], he says, 'there is in _the Bard_ more force, more thought, and more variety'--as indeed there very well may, for in the one there are thirty-six lines only, and in the other one hundred and forty-four. His whole works are full of such trifling observations. 'But to copy is less than to invent, theft is always dangerous.' If he means to insinuate that Gray's Bard is a copy of Horace, (and this is the plain inference from his words) I charge him in direct terms as _an atrocious violator of_ TRUTH.

'The fiction of Horace was to the Romans credible; (NO) but its revival disgusts _us_ with apparent and unconquerable falsehood, _Incredulus odi_[64].' How will the Doctor's verdict be digested at Aberdeen by 'a poet, a philosopher, and a good man[65].' It is diverting to remark how these _mutual admirers_ clash on the clearest point, with not a possibility of reconcilement.

I pa.s.s by five or six lines, which are not worth contradiction, though they cannot resist it. 'I do not _see_ that _the Bard_ promotes any truth moral or political[66].' The Rambler's intellect is _blind_.--He seems to have stared a great deal, to have seen little or nothing. The Bard very forcibly impresses this moral, political, and important truth, that eternal vengeance would pursue the English Tyrant and his posterity, as enemies to posterity, and exterminators of mankind. Dr Johnson, a stickler for the _jus divinum_, did not relish this idea.

He commends the 'Ode on Adversity,' but the hint was at 'first taken from Horace[67].' The poem referred to has almost no resemblance to Mr Gray's. And if we go on at this rate, where will we find any thing original? He mistakes the t.i.tle of this poem, which is not an 'Ode on,'

but a 'Hymn to' Adversity. This is a clear though trifling proof of his inattention. As he dare not condemn this piece, it is dismissed in six lines, to make room for '_The wonderful wonder of wonders_, the two Sister Odes, by which many have been persuaded to think themselves delighted[68].' He chews them through four tedious octavo pages. We come then to Gray's Elegy, which occupies an equal share of a paragraph containing only fourteen lines. So much more plentiful is the critic in gall than honey! And in reading this fragment we may remark that _nonsense_ is not _panegyric_.

Speaking of Welsh Mythology, he says, 'Attention recoils from the repet.i.tion of a tale that, even when it was _first_ heard, was heard with scorn[69].' There is no reason to think that the Welsh disbelieved these fictions. It is much more likely that many believe them at this day. Shakespeare has from this superst.i.tion made a whimsical picture of Owen Glendower: He painted nature. This is one of those a.s.sertions which our dictator should have qualified with a _perhaps_, an adverb, which, wherever it _ought_ to be met with in the Doctor's pages, 'will not easily be found[70].'

'But I will no longer look for particular faults; yet let it be observed that the ode might have been concluded with an action of better example; but suicide is always to be had without expence of thought[71].'

The lines objected to are these:

'He spoke, and headlong from the mountains height, Deep in the roaring tide, he plung'd to endless night.'

Let the Doctor, if he can, give us a better conclusion.

'_The Prospect of Eaton College_ suggests nothing to Gray, which every beholder does not equally think and feel[72].' He might as well have said, that every man in England is capable of producing Paradise Lost.

We have seen with what tenderness Dr Johnson speaks of the dead, we shall now see his tenderness to the living. 'Let us give the Indians arms, and teach them discipline, and encourage them now and then to plunder a plantation. Security and leisure are the parents of sedition[73].' The Doctor seems here to be serious. The proposal must reflect infinite honour on his wisdom and humanity.

'No part of the world has yet had reason to rejoice that COLUMBUS found at last reception and employment[74].' This wild opinion is fairly disproved by Dr Smith, a philosopher not much afraid of novelty; for he has advanced a greater variety of original, interesting, and profound ideas, than almost any other author since the first existence of books.

'Such is the unevenness of Dryden's compositions that ten lines are seldom found together without something of which the reader is ashamed[75].' This is a very wide _aberration_ from truth. In Dryden's fables we may frequently meet with five hundred lines together, without _ten_ among them, which could have disgraced the most eminent writer.

His prologues and epilogues are a never failing fountain of good sense and genuine poetry. But it were insulting the taste of the English nation to insist any farther on this point. We shall presently see how far Dr Johnson's Dictionary will answer the foregoing description.

Dryden it is said discovers 'in the preface to his fables, that he translated the first book of the Iliad without knowing what was in the second[76].' This insinuation revolts against all probability; and whoever peruses that elegant and delightful preface will find it to be NOT TRUE.

'The highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue[77].' And _sensitive_ is defined '_having sense or perception; but not reason_.' If I understand the meaning of this pa.s.sage, it is, that no pleasure communicated through any of the organs of sense is equal to that of _rest_. This a.s.sertion leads to the most absurd consequences. In man, to separate sensitive from rational perception appears to be simply impossible. Even rest is not in strict language any pleasure. It is merely a mitigation of pain. The reader will decide whether I do the Doctor justice, while I say, that he must have been petrified when he composed this maxim. Thirst and hunger had been long forgot. Handel and t.i.tian had no power to charm. We learn that a lover can receive, and his mistress can bestow nothing which is equal to the rapturous enjoyment of an _easy chair_. The thought is new; no human being ever did, or ever will conceive it, except this immortal IDLER.

'Physicians and lawyers are no friends to religion, and many _conjectures_ have been formed to discover the _reason_ of such _a combination_ between men who agree in _nothing else_, and who seem to be less affected in their own provinces by religious opinions than any other part of the community[78].' He then proceeds in the tone of an author, who has made a discovery to inform us of the cause. 'They have all seen a parson, seen him in a habit different from their own, and therefore _declared war_ against him.' But _this_ can be no motive for peculiar antipathy to parsons, allowing such antipathy to exist; for in habit all other cla.s.ses differ no less from the clergy, than the lawyer and physician. But the remark itself is frivolous and false. Boerhaave and Hale were men of eminent piety. Physicians and lawyers have as much regard for religion as any other people generally have. Their _agreeing in nothing else_ is another of the blunders crowded into this pa.s.sage.

But I have too much respect for the reader's understanding to insist any farther on this point. The _conjecturers_, the _combination_, and the _declaration of war_, exist no where but in the Doctor's pericranium. He was at a loss what to say, and the position is only to be regarded as a _turbid ebullition of amphibological inanity_. But while we thus meet with something which is ridiculous in every page, we are not to forget even for a moment, what we have often heard, and what is most unquestionably _true_, viz. That Dr Johnson is the father of British literature, capital author of his age, and the greatest man in Europe[79]!!!

'We are by our occupations, education, and habits of life, divided almost into different species, who regard one another for the most part with scorn and malignity[80].' The Doctor is himself a proof, that a man may look upon almost all of his own profession with scorn and malignity: So that between his precept and his practice, the world seems bad enough. But I hope every heart revolts at this gross insult on the characters of mankind. He brings as an instance the aversion which subsists between soldiers and sailors. There no doubt have been jealousies and bloodshed between these two cla.s.ses of men, but the same accidents fall out more frequently between soldiers themselves. The _scorn_ and _malignity_ of admirals seldom affect any line of service but their own. His captain of foot[81], who saw no danger in a sea-fight was a fool, and just such a specimen of English officers, as the Doctor himself is of English travellers. Our repulse at Carthagena was not owing to an antipathy between the _common_ men. Our late victory at Savannah proves with what ardour they can unite. The Doctor has insulted almost every order of society.

Coblers with coblers smoke away the night, Even players in the common cause, unite.

AUTHORS alone with more than mortal rage, Eternal war with brother authors wage[82].

'To raise esteem we must benefit others,' is an a.s.sertion advanced in the same page. But the Doctor, if he knows any thing, must know that _esteem_ is often felt for an enemy. We value for his courage or ingenuity the man who never heard our name, or who would not give a guinea to save us from perdition. We can esteem the hero who butchers nations, and the pedant who perplexes truth. Marlborough's avarice led him to continue the continental war, till he had laid the great foundation of our public debt. He was detested as much as any general _now_ in England, and yet 'he was so great a man (said one of his enemies) that I have forgot his faults.' Posterity, while they suffer for his baseness, pay the due tribute of esteem to his genius and intrepidity.

In every point of view this maxim is 'the baseless fabrick of a vision.'

And what had so far _ob.u.mbrated_ the Rambler's powers of _ratiocination_, it is not easy to guess. We sometimes feel it impossible to esteem even our benefactor. 'I have received obligations (said Chatterton) without being obliged.' And of consequence, his benefactors had forfeited his esteem. The father of British literature has in forty other places contradicted his own words. He has proved that esteem is involuntary, and that benefits do not always procure it.

The Doctor says, 'That Cowley having, when very young, read Spenser, became _irrecoverably_ a poet[83].' And he adds a remark that shows his good sense: 'Such are the accidents which, sometimes remembered, and sometimes perhaps forgotten, PRODUCE that particular designation of mind and propensity for some certain science or employment, which is commonly called genius. The true genius is a mind of large general powers, _accidentally_ determined to some particular direction. The great painter of the present age had the first fondness for his art excited by a perusal of Richardson's treatise.' This drawling definition contradicts common sense. Does the Doctor mean that Cowley would have become a painter by perusing Richardson? or that Reynolds would have become a poet by perusing Spenser? This is the clear inference from his words, and its absurdity is 'too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation[84].' At this rate Garrick might have eclipsed Newton, and Voltaire defeated Frederick. Plato possessed 'a mind of large general powers.' He read Homer. He wrote verses, and he found that he could not be a poet. The Doctor himself has 'large general powers;' but he could never have been made a decent dancing master. Marcel might have broke his heart, before his pupil had acquired three steps of a minuet.

In his dictionary the Doctor, without a word of _accidental_ determination, defines genius to be 'disposition of _nature_, by which any one is qualified for some peculiar employment.' And here I cannot help adding, that 'the great painter' has by stepping out of his own line, discovered the narrowness of even a great man's knowledge. He affirms[85], That _scarce a poet from Homer down to Dryden ever felt his fire diminished merely by his advance in years_. There is nothing more absurd, says Cicero, than what we hear a.s.serted by some of the philosophers. Even in painting, the President's own profession, that rule does not hold. Cellini tells us, that Michael Angelo's genius decayed with years; and he speaks of it as common to all artists. His notion was perhaps grafted on an opinion of the Doctor's about the durability of Waller's genius[86]. But Waller was a feeble poet; he never had a genius, so that we need not wonder he never lost it. All his verses are hardly worth one of Dr Johnson's imitations of Juvenal.

Rowe (the famous tragic poet) 'seldom moves either pity or terror[87].'

Paradise Lost is a work which 'the reader admires, and lays down, _and forgets to take up again_[88],' But Rowe's Lucan, which is very little read, the Doctor p.r.o.nounces to be 'one of the _greatest_ productions of English poetry.' Dr Johnson's sycophants have a.s.serted, that 'in the walks of criticism and biography he has long been without a rival.' And they are no doubt willing to support their idol in his infamous a.s.sertion, that Swift 'excites neither surprise nor admiration[89].' The Doctor's disregard for the unanimous sentiments of mankind often excites surprize, but never admiration. Let us here apply his own observation, that 'there is often found in commentaries a spontaneous train of invective and contempt, more eager and venemous than is vented by the most furious controvertist in politics, against whom he is hired to defame[90].' We may ill.u.s.trate the Rambler's remark by his own example: 'Theobald, a man of narrow comprehension, and small acquisitions, with no native and intrinsick splendour of genius, with little of the artificial light of learning--his contemptible ostentation I have frequently concealed[91].' The definer of a fiddlestick proceeds thus: 'I have in some places shewn him, as he would have shewn himself for the reader's diversion, that the _inflated_ emptiness of some notes may justify or excuse the contraction of the rest.'--The advocate for tenderness and decorum goes on to tell us, that 'Theobald, thus weak and ignorant, thus _mean_ and FAITHLESS, thus petulant and ostentatious, by the good luck of having Pope for his enemy, has escaped, and escaped _alone_ with reputation from this undertaking. So easily is he praised whom no man can envy[92].' How does it appear that Theobald was weak and ignorant? The Doctor himself had in the preceding page told us, that 'he (Theobald) collated the antient copies, and rectified _many_ errors.'

This a.s.sertion our author, with his wonted consistency, has flatly contradicted in the very next line. 'What _little_ he (Theobald) did was commonly right.' Has the Doctor adduced, or has he attempted to adduce evidence, that Theobald was _mean_ and _faithless_, or what provocation has he to load this man's memory with such injurious epithets? His burst of vulgarity can reflect disgrace on n.o.body but himself. It is evident, tho' he thinks proper to deny it, that he considered Theobald as an object of envy; yet he is obliged to confess that Theobald 'escaped, and escaped _alone_, with reputation,' from the talk of amending Shakespeare. In a.s.signing a reason for this applause of Theobald, Dr Johnson pays a very poor compliment to the penetration of the public, for surely to combat a writer of so much merit and popularity as Pope, was not the plainest road to eminence in the literary world.

'In his (Shakespeare's) tragic scenes there is _always something wanting_'----NO[93]----'In his comic scenes he is seldom very successful, when he engages his characters in _reciprocations_ of smartness, and contests of sarcasms; their ideas are _commonly gross_, and their pleasantry _licentious_.' This accusation is cruel and unjust, as all the world knows already. But a great part of that preface is an incoherent jumble of reproach and panegyrick[94]. If any thing can be yet more faulty than what we have just now seen, it is what follows: 'Whenever he (Shakespeare) solicits his invention, or strains his faculties[95], the offspring of his _throes_ is _tumour_ (i. e. _puffy_ grandeur[96]), _meanness_, _tediousness_, and _obscurity_. His declamations or set speeches are _commonly cold and weak_.' The _set speeches_ (as the Doctor elegantly terms them) of Petruchio, of Jacques, of Wolsey, and of Hamlet, are _perhaps_ neither cold nor weak. The conclusion of this period is worthy of such a beginning; he mentions certain attempts from which Shakespeare 'seldom escapes without the pity or resentment of his reader.' The Doctor himself is an object of pity.

Shakespeare has been in his grave near two centuries--His life was innocent--His writings are immortal. To feel resentment against so great a man because his works are not every where equal, is an idea highly becoming the generosity of Dr Johnson.

What 'truth, moral or political,' is promoted by telling us, that, when Thomson came to London, _his first want was a pair of shoes_; that Pope 'wore a kind of fur doublet, under a s.h.i.+rt of very coa.r.s.e warm linen, with fine sleeves[97];' and a long string of such tiresome and disgusting trifles, which make his narrative seem ridiculous. Had Dr Johnson been Pope's apothecary, we would certainly have heard of the frequency of his pulse, the colour of his water, and the quant.i.ty of his stools.

'Though Pope seemed angry when a dram was offered him, he did not forbear to drink it[98].' And who the Devil cares whether he did or not?

The Doctor needed hardly to have told us, that 'his petty peculiarities were communicated by a female domestic;' for no gentleman would have confessed that they came within the reach of his observation.

The _truly ill.u.s.trious_ author of the RAMBLER, has exerted his venemous eloquence, _through several pages_, in order to convince us, that 'never were penury of knowledge and _vulgarity_ of sentiment so happily disguised,' as in Pope's Essay on Man. For this purpose, the Doctor celebrates the character of Crousaz, whose intentions 'were _always_ right, his opinions were solid, and his religion pure[99].' In opposition to such authorities, let us hear the great and immortal citizen of Geneva.

'M. de Crousaz has lately given us a refutation of the ethic epistles of Mr Pope, which I have read; but it did not please me. I will not take upon me to say, which of these two authors is in the right; but I am persuaded, that the book of the former will never excite the reader to do any one virtuous action, whereas _our zeal for every thing great and good is awakened by that of_ POPE[100].'