cf/Ui'e^'iU^i/- ^ rJW/Z^/v^/^/^^ '^7' ctV. ^yl^Ccr/^:^^ C/^ifyiA^^ri^ i DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. (In the dress worn by him in his journey to the Hebrides.) MACAULAY'S AND CARLYLE'S ESSAYS ON SAMUEL JOHNSON EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY WILLIAM STRUNK, Jr. Instructor in English, Cornell University NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1895 Copyright, 1895, BY HENRY HOLT & CO. fVLMRY MORSE: STtPHfiM THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, RAHWAY, N. J, fR IS^S h^z. W^S MAtrs/ CONTENTS. lODUi CTION : PAGE I. Johnson and Boswell, . V II. Sketch of Macaulay's Life, ix III. Macaulay and Croker, . xii IV. Remarks on Macaulay's Essay, xvii V. Sketch of Carlyle's Life, XXV VI. The Relation between the two Essays, . xxxi VII. Remarks on Carlyle's Essay, o xxxiii Text : Samuel Johnson, by Thomas Babington Macaulay, Boswell's Life of Johnson, by Thomas Carlyle, Notes : Notes on Macaulay's Essay, ..... Notes on Carlyle's Essay, . . . . . 65 i5g 178 514668 INTRODUCTION, I. Johnson and Boswell. [The first great authorities for the lives of the two are Bos- well's Life of Johnson and Tour to the^Iebrides . Besides the great literary excellence of these works, their veracity and accuracy are unquestioned. The other sources for Johnson's biography, mentioned in the two essays, add little to what Boswell tells, and are of interest chiefly to annotators of the Life. Mrs. Thrale gives some anecdotes not found elsewhere, it is true, but her book has no serious value ; it is merely amusing. Hawkins is proverb- ially dull, and has an air of giving information at second hand. Tyers gives merely a rambling collection of gossip, told in com- monplace fashion. Murphy, a professional man of letters and a personal friend, wrote a life of Johnson as one of his literary com- missions, just as he had previously written a life of Fielding ; sat- isfactory performances in their day, but now long obsolete. Apart from his relation to Johnson, Boswell must be studied in the account of his life prefixed to Boswelliana : the Commonplace Book of James Boswell, edited by the Rev. Charles Rogers, London, 1874 (printed for the Grampian Club). Leslie Stephen has supplied a briefer account to the Dictionary of National Biog- raphy. The shorter lives of Johnson are by Macaulay in the Britannica, by Leslie Stephen in the Dictio7iary of National Biography and the English Men of Letters series, and by Lieut. - Col. F. Grant in the Great Writers series. The latter work con- tains a bibliography to the year 1887. The leading incidents in the lives of both are reviewed in Minto's English Prose.\ VI INTRODUCTION. It is not intended here to offer any substitute for an acquaintance with Boswell. The following table of dates is for convenient reference. Johnson. Boswell. 1709. Born at Lichfield, Sept. 18. 1 71 2, Touched for the scrofula by Queen Anne. 1728. Enters Pembroke Col- lege, Oxford, Oct. 31. Translates into Latin Pope's Messiah. 1729. Returns home in De- cember. 1 73 1. Death of his father. 1732, Usher at Market Bos- worth. 1734. Begins residence at Bir- mingham. 1735. Publishes Lobos Abys- sinia ; marries Mrs. Eliza- beth Porter ; opens a school at Edial. 1737. Removes to London with Mrs. Johnson, after a pre- liminary visit with Garrick. 1738. Begins writing for The Gentlejiian' s Magazine. Pub- lishes london. 1740-1743. Reports the Z>^(^a/^j 1740. Born at Edinburgh, of parliament in The Gentle- Oct. 29. 7nan's Magazine. 1744. Life of Savage. 1747. Addresses to Lord Ches- terfield the Plan for a Dic- tionary of the English Lan- guage. INTRODUCTION. Vll 1 748-1 75 5. Writes the Dic- tionary. 1749. Publishes The Vanity of Human Wishes ; Irene acted (written in 1737). 1750-52. Publishes The Ram- bler. 175 1. Death of Mrs. Johnson. 1755. Letter to Lord Chester- field ; degree of j\L A, from Oxford ; the Dictionary pub- lished. 1758-1760. The Idler. 1759. Death of his mother ; publishes Rasselas. 1762. Pensioned. 1763. Meets Boswell. 1764. Founding of the Literaiy Club. 1765. Degree of LL. D. from Dublin ; meets the Th rales (perhaps in 1764) ; publishes his edition of Shakespeare. 1773. Tour to Scotland and the Hebrides with Boswell. 1759-60. Studies civil law at Glasgow University. 1760. First visit to London. 1 761. His first publications, an Elegy and an Ode. 1763. Meets Johnson ; goes to Utrecht for study. 1764-1766, Travels in Ger- many, Switzerland Italy, Corsica, and France. 1766. Admitted to the Scotch Bar as advocate. 1768. Account of Corsica. 1769. Visits London ; attends the Stratford Jubilee ; mar- ries his cousin, Margaret Montgomerie. 1773. Elected a member of the Club ; tour with John- son. Vlll INTRODUCTION 1774. Tour to North Wales. 1775. Publishes \\\q. Joiirney 2i\\^S. Taxation no Tyranny ; de- gree of D. C. L. from Oxford ; visits Paris with the Thrales. 1777-81. Writes and publishes The Lives of the Poets. 1784. Death, London, Dec, 13. 1 775-1 785. Visits London each year, excepting 1777, 1780, and 1782. [782. Death of his father. 1784. Tyers's Biographical Sketch {Gentleman' s Maga- zine for Dec). 1786. Mrs. Thrale's Anecdotes. 1787. Sir John Hawkins's Life (two editions). 1787-89. Johnson's works ed- ited by Hawkins. 1792. Murphy's Essay on the Life and Genius of Johnson^ prefixed to an edition of his works. 1785. Journal of a Tourto The Hebrides (two editions). 1786. Called to the English Bar. Third edition of the Tour. 1789. Takes a house in Lon- don ; death of his wife. 1790. Publishes in advance 7"//^ Letter from Sam uel Johnson to the Earl of Chesterfield^ and A Conversation between George III. and Samuel Johnson. 1 79 1. The Life of Samuel Johnson. 1793. Second edition of the Life. 1795. Death, London, May 19. WTRODUCTION. IX II. Sketch of Macaulay's Life. [Macaulay's life has been related in full, with selections from his diary and letters, by his nephew. Sir George Otto Trevelyan, 2 vols., 1876, This is the standard account of his life, and more- over one of the most interesting and readable of biographies. Macaulay's connection with the Edinburgh Review may be fol- lowed in Selections from the Correspondence of the late Macvey Napier^ 1879. For an estimate of his place in literature the reader is referred to Bagehot's Literary Studies^ or Leslie Stephen's Half Hours in a Library, or to the shorter biographies, by J. Cotter Morison in the English Men of Letters, by Mark Pattison in the Britannica, and by Leslie Stephen in the Dictionary of National Biography, A summary of the facts of his life is given by Professor Minto in the Manual of English Prose Liter- ature. The present remarks are intended merely to give the reader a notion of Macaulay's circumstances and influence at the time of writing this essay in 1831.] Macaulay was born in Leicestershire in 1800. His father, Zachary Macaulay, was accounted a distin- guished man. He was a leading agitator for the abolition of the slave trade, edited the organ of the movement, The CJwistian Observer^ and had been governor of Sierra Leone. He was an educated man, practised in historical and political questions, and rigid in his notions of morality and propriety. His son's fondness for poetry and light reading gave him many qualms of conscience, which young Macaulay had constantly to contend against, as appears from several letters published by Trevelyan. Macaulay's mother was a cultured gentlewoman, who supervised her son's early reading, and criticised his juvenile productions. The boy's early reading was voluminous. At six X INTRODUCTION. he had begun to receive pocket-money for the pur- chase of books. At eight he had "nearly exhausted the epics," and could recite by heart Scott's Lay and Marmion^ at that time the freshest additions to English literature. About the same time he compiled for himself an epitome of universal history, from the Creation to the year 1800, and wrote several heroic and romantic poems, inspired by his reading of Scott. Already he bore some resemblance to the Macaulay of maturer years, whose intellectual characteristics were vast reading, prodigious memory, and fluency in composition. Macaulay received his earliest instruction at a small school in Clapham, and at twelve entered a pri- vate school conducted by the Rev. Mr. Preston. He went into residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, at eighteen. Here he devoted himself to the classics, expressing great distaste for mathematical studies. He twice gained the chancellor's medal for English verse, and won other minor distinctions, but his neglect of the mathematics barred him from the highest honors. In 1824, two years after his graduation, he was made a Fellow. In 1823 Knight's Quarterly Magazine began, with Cambridge men as chief contributors, and Macaulay as the chief of these. His contributions attracted the notice of Jeffrey, who invited him to write for the Edinburgh Review. In August, 1825, appeared Macaulay 's essay on Milton. The author was at once a famous man. Murray declared that it would be worth the copyright of Childe Harold to have him on the Quarterly'^ and Jeffrey, acknowledging the receipt IN TROD UC7 ion: XI of the manuscript, wrote, "The more I think, the less I can conceive where you picked up that style." In the next succeeding years Macaulay's fame grew steadily. His articles in the Review were more eagerly read than anything of the kind published in England. They were unsigned, according to the cus- tom of the time, but their brilliant, vigorous style caused them to be recognised at a glance, and the sale of the Review came to depend in a measure on the frequency of his contributions. A number of now famous articles appeared between the one on Milton and the present one on Johnson, among them Dryden^ Byron^ and Bunyan. In the meantime Macaulay had been called to the bar, but he neglected law for literature and politics. In January, 1828, he was made a commissioner of bankruptcy, at an annual salary of ;^4oo. Three political essays, published in 1829, attracted the favorable notice of Lord Lans- downe, who in 1830 offered him a seat in parliament, as the representative of the "pocket borough" of Calne. In the House he rose rapidly into prominence by his speeches on the Reform Bill. In 1 83 1 the remuneration for his writings had be- come for a time Macaulay's only source of income. He had lost all expectations from his father's estate, once estimated at ;^ioo,ooo but now swept away by business reverses, he had in 1830 helped by his vote and influence to abolish his office as commissioner of bankruptcy, and he now saw his annual ;!^30o of fel- lowship money expiring. Under this pressure, not- withstanding his active political life, Macaulay was now doing his hardest work on the Review^ sending XII INTRODUCTION. in an article to each number. During the rest of his life his reputation continued to develop, but it is doubtful whether his direct personal influence as a reviewer could ever have been greater than at this time. His article on Robert Montgomery destroyed a reputation; his praise of Bunyan set everyone to re-reading The Filgrini's Progress. Croker's cento of the biographies of Johnson was never reprinted. It will be sufficient to remind the reader that much that is associated with Macaulay's name comes after the date of the present essay: in literature, many of his best-known essays, among them those dealing with Walpole, Chatham, Bacon, Clive, Hastings, Addison, and Mme. D'Arblay, the Lays of Ancient Ro?ne, several lives in the Briianfiica, and the History of England, and in his life, the two landmarks of his service in India (i 834-1 838) and his elevation to the peerage (1857). He died in 1859. III. Macaulay and Croker. ~[For Croker's career the chief source of information is Croker's Correspondence and Diaries, edited by Louis J. Jennings, 3 vols., 1884. A more condensed account, by Sir Theodore Martin, is to be found in the Dictionary of National Biography. Both writers do Croker more than justice in the story of the controversy over the edition of Boswell.] John Wilson Croker was twenty years Macaulay's senior. He was his foremost antagonist in debate and almost his only personal enemy, from the time when the younger of the two entered the House of Com- mons, Croker's biographers have done their best to present him in a favorable light: he was certainly a INTRODUCTION. XIU hard-working, conscientious public servant, and an enthusiastic student of literature and history, but his harshness and cynicism cannot be entirely disguised. The long feud between Macaulay and Croker, begun in the House and intensified by the appearance of the essay on Johnson, is an unpleasant chapter in literary history, to be revived here only so far as is necessary to an appreciation of Macaulay's language and of its effect. Croker had been in parliament since 1807. In debate he was the mainstay of the Tgry side. He was now (1831) a prominent opponent of the Reform Bill, and in this capacity had had frequent sharp encounters with Macaulay, in some of which the member for Calne had been worsted, and his argu- ments stigmatized as "vague generalities handled with that brilliant imagination which tickles the ear and amuses the fancy without satisfying the reason." Macaulay was presumably anxious for revenge. Croker's project of editing Boswell was proposed to Mr. Murray in January, 1829. The work of col- lection and preparation occupied the next two years. The book appeared June 22, 1831. In March, 1831, Macaulay had written to Macvey Napier, Jeffrey's successor as editor of the Ediiibiirgh Review^ "I will certainly review Croker's Boswell when it comes out." On June 29, he wrote in a letter to his sister Hannah, "I am to review Croker's edi- tion of Bozzy. It is wretchedly ill done. The notes are poorly written and shamefully inaccurate. There is, however, much curious information in it. The whole of 'The Tour to the Hebrides' is incorporated XIV INTRODUCTION. with 'The Life.' So are most of Mrs. Thrale's anec- dotes, and much of Sir John Hawkins's lumbering book. The whole makes five large volumes." He then goes on to exjDlain to her two of Boswell's anec- dotes, by means of Croker's notes. Some weeks later he writes, in reference to one of his own speeches in the House, "I ought to tell you that Peel was very civil, and cheered me loudly, and that impudent, leering Croker congratulated the House on the proof which I had given of my readiness. He was afraid, he said, that I had been silent so long on account of the many allusions which had been made to Calne. Now that I had risen again, he hoped that they should hear me oftener. See whether I do not dust that varlet's jacket for hiil\ "in the next number of the Blue and Yellow.* I detest him more than cold boiled veal." On the 9th of t>eptember he writes to her, "Half my article on Bos well went to Edinburgh yesterday. I have, though I say it who should not say it, beaten Croker black and blue." The article appeared in the September number of the Review^ 1831. The other magazines had spoken favorably; the Quarterly Review^ for instance (which Croker had helped to found in 1808, and to which he was still one of the principal contributors), calling the new work, "the best edition of an English book that has appeared in our time." In October, Macaulay wrote to his friend T. F. Ellis, "My article on Croker has . . . smashed his book . . . Croker looks across the House of Commons at me with a * So the Review was familiarly called. Its cover was dark blue, with a yellow back. IN TR OD UC TION. XV leer of hatred which I repay with a gracious smile of pity." Croker was not to be smashed without a struggle. In BlackwQod' s for November {Nodes A??ibrosian(B^ No. LIX.) his friend J. G. Lockhart replied in his behalf. Lockhart answered Macaulay only in part, defending Croker' s accuracy^ not his editorial method. In actual defense there was little to be said, but he made a lively counter-attack, in which he easily showed that Macaulay, while triumphing over minor errors of Croker as "scandalous inaccuracy," had himself made not a few of the same kind. Croker afterwards wrote and distributed privately a pamphlet in his own defense, based on Lockhart's article, but Macaulay did not deign a retort, partly, it seems, from the belief that his original antagonist in the Nodes had been not Lockhart, but Wilson (' 'Chris- topher North"), who had assailed him ferociously for another of his essays two years before. Croker's turn came in 1849. When the first two volumes of Macaulay 's History of England were pub- lished, he declared in the Quarterly that the book would "never be quoted as authority on any ques- tion or point in the history of England," and explained its popularity by comparing it to Waverley. He also impeached the author's style, accuracy, and fairness. Trevelyan informs us that Croker's article was "a farrago of angry trash," and "so bitter, so foolish, and, above all, so tedious, that scarcely anybody could get through it, and nobody was convinced by it." But Sir George was hardly open to conviction. To return to the controversy over Croker's Boswell. XVI IN TROD UCTION. The inaccuracies, which Macaulay was at such pains to expose and denounce, were after all only trivial. The gravamen of the charge against Croker should have been, not the blundering way in which he pur- sued his plan of editing, but the nature of the plan itself. He deliberately mangled an English classic by inserting passages from other books. Macaulay indeed does not let this go unmentioned, but he is here far from showing proper indignation. Carlyle, with a truer literary sense than Macaulay, ignores Croker's errors in dates and genealogies as too petty for discussion, and arraigns him for his vicious edi- torial method. It is evident that Macaulay' s plan of attack was dictated by personal hostility. He lays less stress on Croker's serious offence, an error of judgment, and dwells at length upon trifles of scholarship, in order to humiliate Croker by making him out an ignoramus. He exaggerates the importance of slight mistakes in order to indulge a personal animosity against the offender. And while so doing, he makes several mistakes on his own account. As Macaulay acknowledged to his sister, Croker had collected from Johnson's surviving contempo- raries, and from other sources, "much curious infor- mation," which has been drawn upon by all succeed- ing editors. The condemnation by Macaulay and Carlyle caused the subsequent withdrawal of the interpolations, which were relegated to an appendix, all except the Tow^ which was perversely retained in the midst of the Life. Croker lived to issue two more editions of Boswell, in 1835 and 1848, and his INTRODUCTION. XVll edition has been three times reprinted in England since his death. In its various forms, between forty and fifty thousand copies of his work have been sold. IV. Remarks on Macaulay's Essay. Structure. The essay consists of three sections. The first disposes of Croker. A single paragraph, commending the book that Croker has edited, fur- nishes the transition to the second section, which dis- cusses Boswell. The third and principal section discusses Johnson. In the third section the form of writing is mainly generalized description. The introductory paragraph gives a striking portrait of Johnson, unsurpassed in Macaulay's writings for rapid and effective enumera- tion of details. This is followed by two descriptions, the first of the Grub Street author, to whom Johnson is assumed to have borne a resemblance in the days of his early obscurity in London, the second of John- son himself, as he appeared in society during his last twenty years. The first is located in time by the words, "Johnson came to London," the second by the words, "A pension had been conferred upon him." These are the only biographical details af- forded. Macaulay assumes in the reader an acquaint- ance with Johnson's life and works. The essay contains nothing resembling the digres- sions of either DeQuincey or Carlyle. Macaulay as a rule keeps close to his subject. In the present essay the only exception is the paragraph beginning, "How XVI 11 IN TROD UC TION. it chanced" (p. 51), in which the author palpably goes out of his way to condemn the reasoning of the schoolmen, and to aim a deliberate side-thrust at cer- tain "eminent lawyers," his fellow members in the House. Matter. Macaulay does not do justice to either Johnson or Boswell. Carlyle's essay was a reply on behalf of both. In his life of Johnson, contributed in 1856 to the Encyclopcsdia Britaimica^ Macaulay made reparation for his criticisms on the former. Certain specific statements in the essay are elaborately refuted by G. B. Hill, in two chapters of his Dr. John- son : his Friends and his Critics^ 1878. Macaulay's treatment of both his subjects is unsympathetic. Despite his fondness for literature and for literary illustration, his turn of mind was matter of fact, prac- tical. He found Johnson and Boswell in no way like his colleagues in parliament or the earls and ambas- sadors whom he met at Holland House, and he was unable to enter into sympathy with them. Further, hi^lQ^ye of paradox led him to exaggerate Boswell's meanness in order to contrast it with his genius (though he nowhere uses so complimentary a term), and to heighten Johnson's superstition, rude- ness, and intolerance, in order to contrast them with his incredulity, his benevolence, and his enlighten- ment. Furthermore, his habit of exaggeration and his fondness for strong effect led him to misrepresent facts. Macaulay's perversions of Boswell's anecdotes are irritating when compared with their originals. Thus : IN TR OD UC TIOiV. X l X Johnson described him [Boswell] as a fellow who had missed his only chance of immortality by not having been alive when the " Dunciad " was written, (p. 26.) Turning to the Life^ Oct. 16, 1769, we find: He [Johnson] repeated to us, in his forcible, melodious manner, the concluding lines of the Dwiciad. ^Yhile he was talking loudly in praise of those lines, one* of the company ventured to say, 'Too fine for such a poem : — a poem on what ? ' Johnson, (with a disdainful look,) ' Why, on dunces. It was worth while being a dunce then. Ah, Sir, hadst tJiou lived in those days ! ' From this we see that Johnson was not describing Boswell at all, but merely rallying him to his face with a bit of off-hand banter, the petty punishment for an interruption. The uncomplimentary term "fellow" is seen to be an addition by Macaulay, and even the main statement is a distortion. Another instance: He himself [Johnson] went on a ghost-hunt to Cock Lane, and was angry with John Wesley for not following up another scent of the same kind with the proper spirit and perseverance, (p. 47.) In the Life^ April 15, 1778, we read : Of John Wesley, he said, ' He can talk well on any subject.' Boswell. ' Pray, Sir, what has he made of his story of a ghost?* Johnson. 'Why, Sir, he believes it; but not on sufficient authority ... I am sorry that John did not take more pains to inquire into the evidence for it.' W^as Johnson aiigj-y with John Wesley? Nothing in the text justifies so strong a term. Moreover, the story is in direct opposition to Macaulay's interpreta- * Evidently Boswell. He does not give hi^s name, b?rause the joke is on himself, XX INTRODUCTION. tion. It is cited as evidence for Johnson's supersti- tious belief in ghosts; it turns out to illustrate his very rational incredulity on the subject. Originality. This is not Macaulay's strong point. His essay represents no deeper insight into Johnson's character; it is merely a skillful and lucid statement of the difficulties which his character presents at first sight. "Macaulay's Boswell," says Garnett in his Carlyle, "is the Boswell of his neighbors." Most of Macaulay's judgments on the two can be found, some- times in almost the same words, in earlier writers. A few illustrations will help to make this evident. Thus: Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. " ' The Rehearsal,' " he said, very unjustly, " has not wit enough to keep it sweet ; " then, after a pause, "it has not enough vitality to preserve it from putrefaction." (p. 6i.) From the Z//>, June 19, 1784, we see that this criti- cism is taken bodily from Boswell: He seemed to take a pleasure in speaking in his own style, for when he had carelessly missed it, he would repeat the thought trans- lated into it. Talking of the Comedy of the Rehearsal, he said, ' It has not wit enough to keep it sweet.' This was easy ; he therefore caught himself, and pronounced a more round sentence ; I ' It has not enough vitality to preserve it from putrefaction.' Again, Macaulay writes: The habits of his [Johnson's] early life had accustomed him to bear privation with fortitude, but not to taste pleasure with mod- eration, (p. 43.) This, with the sentence which succeeds it, is a repro- duction of what Boswell writes in the Life^ March 20, 1781: IN TROD UC TION. x x i Ever)'thing about his character and manners was forcible and violent ; there never was any moderation ; many a day did he fast, many a year did he refrain from wine ; but when he did eat, it was voraciously ; when he did drink wine, it was copiously. He could practice abstinence, but not temperance. Further, compare Macaulay's remarks on Johnson's "little talent for personation" (p. 62) with the fol- lowing from Courtenay's Poetical Review of t/ie Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel JoJm- son (1786): But all propriety his Ramblers mock. Where Betty prates from Newton and from Locke ; When no diversity we trace between The lofty moralist and gay fifteen. Many of Macaulay's strictures on Boswell are antici- pated by Boswell himself, who clearly foresaw the hue and cry that would be raised against him; nearly all the hard names applied to Boswell in the essay can be found in the contemporary lampoons* of John Wol- cot ("Peter Pindar"). Still, Macaulay remains a great writer; it matters little to his readers that his opinions can be found, less forcibly expressed, either in Boswell or in poems that have passed out of remembrance. ^^^lat he repeats, he repeats in a new and attractive form ; the coins of his mintage glitter far more than the old-fashioned jewelry he has melted down. Style. The student is referred to Minto's English * A Poetical and Congratulatory Epistle to fames Boswell, Esq. (1785 ?)y Bozzy and Piozzi, or the British Biographers : A Town Eclogue (1786). X xii • IN TROD UCTIOAT. Prose for a full discussion. A few striking peculiar- ities are mentioned here, with express reference to the present essay. 1. Clearness. Macaulay is admirably clear. His professed aim was to write no sentence that did not disclose its meaning on first reading. Trevelyan accounts for his success in making himself clear, by his custom of talking and writing to children. It is to be noted that Macaulay's style is that of an orator; he became a debater at Cambridge. The orator, whose language must be understood while it is delivered, feels the importance of clearness more strongly than the writer of printed literature. Regard for clearness determines several marked features of Macaulay's style. One is his frequent repetition of a thought from different points of view. Notice, for instance, the first three sentences of the paragraph beginning, "Johnson decided literary ques- tions" (p. 53), and the passage, "He was no master," etc., to "he knew nothing" (p. 55). Another is his fondness for illustration. Almost every statement is supported either by evidence or by one or more parallels. Note the list of government appointments held by English authors (p. 35), and the appeal to Roman and Greek epitaphs (p. 55). Negative aids to clearness are the in frequency of metaphor and the almost total absence of digression. 2. Force. Rhetorically, Macaulay's force lies chiefly in his preference for the short sentence, in his use of repeated structure, and in his strong sense of contrast, which makes antithesis his favorite figure. In the first particular he is strikingly unlike De tNTROD UCtlON . xxiii Quincey. Macaulay may be said to give us not so much sentences as detached parts of sentences, omit- ting the connectives, as "because, therefore, accord- ingly, moreover, for, and," which indicate the mutual relations of clauses. He thereby gains in vigor, but he loses in delicacy and in perspective. Note the last four sentences of the paragraph beginning, "The course which Mr. Croker" (p. 23), or the following extreme case, from the essay on Hampden: The Puritans were persecuted with cruelty worthy of the Holy Office. They were forced to fly from the country. They were imprisoned. They were whipped. Their ears were cut off. Their noses were slit. Their cheeks were branded with red-hot The paragraph is then concluded by means of longer sentences. Macaulay' s use of repeated structure and of antith- esis does not require illustration. 3. Paragraphs. Unity in the paragraph is usually observed. There is one exception in the present essay, the long paragraph beginning, "Johnson came among them" (pp. 42-5), which contains material for two paragraphs, one on Johnson's physical habits, the other on his harshness and his insensibility to distress. Characteristic of Macaulay is the alternating struc- ture of many of his paragraphs : they are more or less antithetic in arrangement. The simplest and com- monest form is begun by a series of remarks that leads us to expect a conclusion directly opposite to the one reached. In the centre of the paragraph we find the word "but," "y^^" or "however," after which the real theme of the paragraph is taken up and carried XXIV INTRODUC 7 'ION. through to the end. Examples are the paragraphs beginning, "Many of his sentiments" (p. 48), "No- body spoke more contemptuously" (p. 49), "As- suredly one fact" (p. 59), "Mannerism is pardonable" (p. 61). Note the last example, contrasting it with, "He was undoubtedly, etc." (p. 54) and see how a transposition of members may be made to produce a second, more involved, paragraph-structure. A third variant appears in the paragraph beginning, "On men and manners" (p. 55), where the force of the word "indeed" is concessive (equivalent to an "al- though" at the beginning of the sentence). Omitting the third and fourth sentences and the introductory "but" of the fifth, we have left a complete paragraph that moves in a straight line with no trace of the man- nerism in question. Macaulay, however, enlivens it by stopping half-way from his conclusion, making a false start in the opposite direction, then turning again and finishing. 4. Allusions. Macaulay 's wide reading enabled him to illustrate profusely .from literature and history every subject that he handled. He abounds in compari- sons. In imaginative literature the authors on whom he draws most frequently are Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, and Dante. There are frequent references to Biblical events and characters. Less numerous, but still plentiful, are allusions to Don Quixote^ the Arabian Nights, the Pilgrim' s Progress, Tofn Jo fie s, and Gtd- liver's Travels. Macaulay sometimes makes formal quotations, sometimes refers to familiar incidents, but most fre- quently merely mentions the men and women of fic- IN TROD UCTION. XXV tion as the representatives of certain traits of char- acter. In the present essay, for instance, he thus sets off Boswell's folly by contrasting it with that of Alnaschar and of Malvolio. Most rarely he weaves into his own expression the phraseology of other writers. One of the few instances is the passage on p. 43, "by that bread," etc., where he uses the lan- guage of Dante and of the Bible. This is the sort of allusion in which Carlyle abounds. Macaulay's plan is more entertaining to the majority of readers. It is also to be noted that Macaulay usually takes pains to make his allusions self-explanatory, at the same time flattering the reader by concealing the help. See for instance p. 55, where in mentioning the comparatively little-known Directions to Servants^ he is careful to remind the reader, but without obtruding the information, that Swift is the author. See also p. 36, "The supreme power passed to a man who cared little for poetry or eloquence." If the reader is not well enough informed to receive a definite im- pression from this statement, he need read only a few lines further on, to be told, in the politest manner possible, that the man is Walpole, who had an oppor- tunity of admiring, in contemporary poetry The Seasojis^ and in contemporary "eloquence" Pamela; that the former was written by Thomson, and the latter by Richardson. V. Sketch of Carlyle's Life. [The biography of Carlyle is by J. A. Froude. It is in two parts : Thomas Ca^'lyle, a History of the first fo7'ty Years of his Life, 2 vols., 1882 ; Thomas Carlyle, a History of his Life in XXVI INTRODUCTION. London, 2 vols., 1884. Besides the above should be consulted his Reminiscences, published by Froude in 1881, the Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, prepared for publication by Carlyle and edited by Froude, 3 vols., 1883, and the Correspond- ence of Thomas Carlyle with R. W. Emersoti, edited by Charles Eliot Norton, 2 vols., 1883. Further, the second book of Sartor Resartus is autobiographic. Carlyle's life has been written for the Dictionary of National Biography by Leslie Stephen, for the English Men of Letters series by Professor Nichol, and for the Great Writers series by Richard Garnett. Professor Minto gives a short account in his English Prose-I Thomas Carlyle was born in 1795, at Ecclefecchan in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, on the western side, a few miles from the English border. His father, James Carlyle, was a mason, who had built with his own hands the house in which he lived. Later he turned farmer. He was a stern, silent, thrifty Cal- vihist. Carlyle's mother had received but a limited education: she could write letters only with difficulty; she was frightened, "to distraction well nigh," when, at the age of twenty-nine, her son made a visit to France. Carlyle was taught to read by his mother; for fur- ther instruction he was sent to the village school. At seven the boy was on examination "complete" in English branches, and by advice of his examiner sought Latin instruction from the son of the minister. At nine he was placed in the grammar school of the neighboring town of Annan, where he studied Latin, French, and the rudiments of mathematics, and gained favorable reports. Thereupon it was decided by his parents that the boy should have an eldest son's por- IN TR OD UC TION. x x v 1 1 tion in education : should go to Edinburgh, study at the University, and become a minister. To Edinburgh accordingly Carlyle was sent when not quite fifteen. With an older companion he trudged on foot the hundred miles from his home to the capital. For the next five years his life was one of hard study. He had moderate success in the clas- sics, and was an able student of mathematics. He was moreover the oracle of a little circle of fellow- students, ambitious peasants' sons like himself, who exchanged views on literature and current affairs, and corresponded with each other during the vacations. The plan of entering the ministry, originating with his parents and never a fixed one with himself, Carlyle gradually abandoned. For the first three years after graduation, he earned his support by "schoolmaster- ing. " Resigning his second position (at Kirkcaldy) in 1818, he departed for Edinburgh with ;^9o of sav- ings. He intended to take pupils in mathematics until he could find some avenue to distinction. He learned German, attended lectures on law, read voluminously in the University library, found a pupil or two, and compiled articles for the Edinburgh En- cyclopadia^ "timorously aiming toward literature." He thus spent three years in ill health and desperate mood. In 1822 he was relieved of his hack-work by an appointment as tutor to the three sons of the Bullers, a retired Anglo-Indian family of wealth. He now found time for literature proper. He published a Life of Schiller (1823-24) in the London Magazine^ and translated Legendre's Geometry and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister (both in 1824). These works met XXVlll INTRODUCTIOhK with a moderate degree of success. He then left the Biillers, and for a while supported himself as best he could by translation from the German. In 182 1 Carlyle had been introduced by his friend Edward Irving to Jane Baillie Welsh, who became his wife in 1826. As the daughter of a professional man, she was accounted Carlyle's superior, but having literary tastes and aspirations, she looked forward to marriage with Carlyle as an intellectual companion- ship with a man of genius. She little anticipated her long years of penury, household drudgery, and prac- tical loneliness. Thirty years later she wrote the often quoted words, "I married for ambition; Car- lyle has exceeded all that my wildest hopes ever imagined, and I am miserable." She died in 1866, while Carlyle was on his way home from delivering his Installation Address as Lord Rector of the Edinburgh University. For about two years after their marriage the Carlyles lived in Edinburgh; in 1828 they retired to a small farm, Craigenputtoch, belonging to his wife. Here they lived in almost complete isolation for six years. In 1834 they removed to Chelsea, a suburb of London. To return to the story of Carlyle's fortunes as author. The temporary prosperity of 1824, arising from Schiller and Meisier^ was short-lived. His next venture in the field of translation, German Romance, was a financial failure, and his further plans were rejected by the publishers. He was unknown and unprepossessing, and had to create the taste by which he was to be enjoyed. For the first few months after his marriage Carlyle could earn nothing. A new INTRODUCTION. xxix prospect began in 1827 with a visit to Jeffrey, who commissioned him to write for the Edinburgh Review an article on Jean Paul Richter. This was followed by an account of the State of German Literature. These articles attracted attention in a limited circle. Burns ^ published in the Edinburgh Review^ was written at Craigenputtoch (1828). With this article began fresh difficulties. Carlyle was too original and too much in earnest. Jeffrey, speaking frankly as a friend, implored Carlyle to abridge his article, to be less extravagant, to "fling away" his affectations. Carlyle stubbornly insisted on having the paper pub- lished as he had written it. He carried his point. But in 1829 Jeffrey retired, and his successor, Macvey Napier, and the editors of the other reviews, were reluctant to accept Carlyle's articles. A History of German Literature was rejected by publishers, and when cut up into articles, was rejected by the review editors. Besides the difficulty in getting articles accepted, was the delay of months before any pay- ment for them was received. The year 1831 saw the Carlyle household in desperate straits. Accepting a loan from Jeffrey, Carlyle went to London in vain quest of a publisher for the MS. of a book he had just completed. Sartor Resartus. Sartor was doomed to be flatly rejected at first, to appear in Eraser' s Magazine as a serial (paid for at reduced rates) in 1833-34, and to be offered in book form to the British public only in 1838. All that came of Carlyle's trip was an extension of his literary acquaintance, and what was more to the point, several commissions for review articles. One was Characteristics.^ published in XXX INTRODUCTION. the Edinburgh Review (Dec, 183 1); two others were Biography and Boswelf s Life of Johnson^ pub- lished in Eraser's Magazine (April, 1832; May, 1832). The story of Carlyle's life has now been brought down to the date of the present essay. At this time he was still all but unknown, miserably poor, without prospects, recognized only by a few as a stubbornly eccentric genius, yet defiant, steadfast, and for the most part confident of his powers. We read his utterances on Johnson with greater interest as we realise how closely they can be made to apply to himself. His subsequent history belongs to the study of English literature, and not to that of the present essay. An enumeration of his further works is all that can be attempted here. In 1837 t\\Q French Revolution tst^h- lished his fame. Annual lecture courses in the years 1837-40 (in 1840 the famous Heroes and Hero-Wor- ship^ relieved him from pecuniary straits. Sartor received a second hearing in 1838. In Chartism (1839), Past and Present (1843), and Latter-Day Patnphlets (1850), Carlyle developed his peculiar political doctrines, and applied them to the "Con- dition-of-England question." In 1845 he published his second historical work, CroniwelV s Letters and Speeches. After the Life of John Sterling (1850) he devoted his concentrated energies for fifteen years to his crowning work, The History of Friedrich LL. of Prussia, called Frederick the Great (two volumes, 1858 ; two, 1862; two, 1865). This practically concluded his career as author; his few subsequent utterances IN TR OD UC TIOiY. x x x i were those of an oracle, now and then inspired by- public events to break his silence. He died at Chel- sea, February 4, i88r. VI. The Relation between the two Essays. Though nowhere expressly so stated it is certain from internal evidence that Carlyle's essay is a reply to Macaulay as well as a review of Croker. In the course of his discussion Carlyle undertakes to refute a number of Macaulay 's statements. The first point of issue is Boswell's attachment for Johnson. Macaulay had imputed it to servility and love of notoriety: He [Boswell] was always laying himself at the feet of some eminent man, and begging to be spit upon and trampled upon. (p. 27 ) He was a slave proud of his servitude, (p. 29.) Carljle sees in Boswell's relation to Johnson the sav'- ing virtue of "Hero-worship'*: Towards Johnson ^ however, his feeling was not sycophancy, which is the lowest, but reverence, which is the highest of human feelings, (p. 84.) ' Secondly, Macaulay,. with the rest of the world, had blamed Boswell for disclosing familiar conversations : He was not ashamed to exhibit himself to the world as a common spy, a common tatler, . . No man, surely, ever published such stories respecting persons whom he professed to love and revere, (p. 32.) Carlyle defends Boswell by an ingenious argument based on his favorite doctrine of silence: xxxii INTRODUCTION. An exception was early taken against this " Life of Johnson : " . . . That such jottings-down of careless conversation are an infringement of social privacy . . . To this accusation . . . might it not be well ... to offer the . . . plea of Not at all guilty ? . . . Let convei-sation be kept in remembrance to the latest date possible. Nay, should the consciousness that a man may be among us " taking notes " tend, in any measure, to restrict those floods of idle, insincere speech, in which the thought of man- kind is well-nigh drowned, were it other than the most indubitable benefit? (p. 92.) Further, Macaulay had explained the greatness of Boswell's book by the meanness and folly of its author: Boswell attained it [literary eminence] by reason of his weak- nesses. If he had not been a great fool, he would never have been a great writer, (p. 29.) Carlyle is roused by this to the highest pitch of indig- nation: Falser hypothesis, we may venture to say never rose in human soul. Bad is in its nature negative, and can do nothing ; what- ever enables us to do anything is by its very nature good. Alas, that there should be teachers in Israel, or even learners, to whom this world-ancient fact is still problematical, or even deniable. . . . Neither James Boswell's good book, or any other good thing, in any time or in any place, was, is, or can be performed by any man in virtue of his badness, but always and solely in spite thereof, (p. 83.) Similarly, one can discover direct contradictions of Macaulay's statements about Johnson. What Macaulay thought of these rebukes is not recorded. He probably cared little; throughout his life he seems to have been insensible to criticism. INTRODUCTION. xxxill Carlyle's letters and diary, before and after this time, contain many slighting references to Macaulay, both as politician and as man of letters. None of those made public by Froude contain any mention of the difference of opinion over Boswell and Johnson. Macaulay and Carlyle did not actually meet until some time in the forties. VII. Remarks on Carlyle's Essay. Structure. The structure of the essay is more complex than that of Macaulay's, and can be compre- hended only after careful study. Disregarding for the moment what may be called digressions, we find three main sections. The first section, that dealing with Croker, is the shortest and simplest. By way of introduction Carlyle applies a fable of ^sop to the situation. He then tells first, what he finds to commend in Croker's work, and secondly, what he finds to condemn. In con- clusion he pronounces the work a failure. The second section is a discussion of the character of Boswell. Within this is embedded a discussion of the merits of his book. In an introductory paragraph Boswell is presented as a man of whom chiefly evil has been spoken. Carlyle then tells first, what he finds to condemn in Boswell, namely, vanity and sensuaUty; secondly, what he finds in him to com- mend, namely, reyereacejor a superior and literary talent. He decides that Boswell' s character was made up of good and evil, and that the explanation of his great work lies entirely in the good. Carlyle next X X X 1 V IN TROD UC 77 ON. discusses Boswell's book, resting its merits on three grounds: it is true; it deals with the past; it contains historical information.* He then returns to Boswell himself, and defends his alleged breaches of con- fidence. The third section is devoted to Johnson. It is mechanically separated into three divisions: first, general introduction, and account of Johnson's early- life (1709-1737); second, account of Johnson's life in London (1737-1784); third, general remarks on Johnson's character and influence. In the first division the introduction demonstrates that men tend to go through life in flocks, even as sheep do; that men, like sheep, have their leaders; that Johnson was one of these leaders; consequently his biography deserves study. Then comes the ac- count of Johnson's early life, with Carlyle's comments. The second division is prefaced by a brief picture of the state of authorship at the time. Next, Johnson is described as confronted by a "twofold problem," to earn his livelihood as an author, and to do so by promulgating truthful doctrine. The first part of the problem was the choice between support from the patron and support from the bookseller. Carlyle tells what each choice implied, and which choice Johnson made. The second part of the problem was the choice between conservatism and radicalism in religious and political belief, Carlyle assuming that a * Or, one might say, it appeals to our common sense, to our feel- ing of reverence, and to our intellectual curiosity. The second and third reasons, stated above, may seem to overlap ; for Carlyle they are distinct. IN TROD UC TIOiV. x x x V consistent man would be either conservative in both, or radical in both. Was Johnson to be Tory and Churchman, or Whig and Deist? Carlyle describes the state of politics and religion, and explains and vindicates Johnson's choice. The narrative of his life is then resumed and concluded. The third division is something in the nature of a postscript, and contains miscellaneous remarks on Johnson's character. The chief points to be remem- bered are the specification of Johnson's cardinal virtues as valor, honesty, _aiid^aifection, which last is made to account for his famous "prejudices," and the comparison drawn between Johnson and Hume. Carlyle does not aim at pure narrative. His char- acteristic manner of telling a story is to overlay each incident with comments, usually upon its moral signifi- cance. In addition, whenever he is reminded of one of his favorite topics of declamation — Duty, Work, Silence, Puffery, etc. — the narrative stops entirely, in order that the moral may be heard. Such passages may properly be termed digressions. In the present essay note the digressions on History (pp. 88-92), Silence (pp. 93-95), Fame (p. 133), Puffery (p. 147), etc. On further acquaintance with Carlyle one dis- covers that these digressions constantly recur, in almost the same words, in his other essays, in his Jourjtal {aptid Froude), in Sartor, in the French Rev- olution, etc., down to Frederick. This recurrence may be illustrated by the following passages : Thus, do not recruiting sergeants drum through the streets of manufacturing towns, and collect ragged losels enough ; every one of whom, if once dressed in red, and trained a little, will receive xxxvi INTRODUCTION. fire cheerfully for the small sum of one shilling/^;- diem, and have the soul blown out of him at last with perfect propriety. — BoswelVs Johnson (p. 142). Ragged losels gathered by beat of drum from the overcrowded streets of cities, and drilled a little and dressed in red, do not they stand fire in an uncensurable manner ; and handsomely give their life, if needful, at the rate of a shilling per day ? — Latter-Day Pamphlets (No. II. :Model Prisons). Matter. Carlyle cannot be accused of injustice to either Boswell or Johnson. He is lenient in reprov- ing Boswell's faults, he becomes even fantastic in praising his "love for excellence." To one ac- quainted with the whole story of Boswell's life, his dangling after celebrities, his "Hero-worship," is too much like ordinary tuft-hunting to justify all of Carlyle' s commendation. Carlyle also takes the ground that Johnson was poor, unregarded, and obscure when Boswell sought him out. This, which if capable of proof would raise Boswell in our estima- tion, is contested by Dr. Birkbeck Hill in his JDr. Johnson: his Friends and his Critics ("Mr. Carlyle on Boswell"). * Carlyle also goes a little, too Tar in his praise of Johnson, when he asserts that through him "England escaped the bloodbath of a French revolution." Whatever England's danger, Johnson's influence was certainly less than Carlyle imagines. Originality. Carlyle's estimate of Boswell was an innovation; previous criticism had been little else than ridicule. His estimate of Johnson is original, in that he gives a new picture of the man and does not merely repeat what had been said before. But this is too INTRODUCriON-. xxxvil slight praise, for his account of Johnson is correct^ which it might have missed being, despite the greatest originality. Subsequent criticism of Johnson has differed from that of Carlyle only by being more or less enthusiastic than his ; it has moved along the lines which he laid down. Style, For a detailed analysis of Carlyle's style, see Minto's English Prose. The peculiarities noted here are merely those which are most prominent at first sight. 1. Ort/iography. A certain quaint effect is produced by Carlyle's old-fashioned fondness for capitals and hyphens. In sixteenth century fashion he capitalizes any emphatic noun or adjective: A Speaker of the Word ; the Bookselling guild ; a poor Man of Genius ; the Recording Angel ; they are professedly Didactic. He uses hyphens for compound numerals, for verbs followed by prepositional adverbs, and for compound nouns, often nondescripts of his own coinage : Fifty-third ; twenty-two years ; twenty-seven millions mostly fools. His comrades . . . slam-to the door ; the whole household burst-forth ; set-up a Parliament ; we should . . . look-out for something other and farther. Condition-of-England question ; universal-suffrages ; Able-Edi- tors; scoundrel-species; Advocate's-wig ; Tombstone-information ; black-or-white surplicing. 2. Vocabulary . Carlyle is an innovator in words, departing widely from conventional usage. He goes to any length to secure a contemptuous, grotesque, or graphic effect. The peculiarities of his vocabulary include : X X XV 1 1 1 AV TROD UC TIOX. a. Quaint obsolete or provincial words or meaningsi of words: Nay, other (=:diflferent), else (^otherwise), cunning (=clever), somewhat (= something), anon. b. More or less eccentric coinages of his own, some of them intentionally ludicrous: Squirelet, pistoleer, gigmanity, Halfness, Sanspotato, squeaklets. c. Pedantic expressions, which the reader must interpret by his knowledge of Latin: Sedentary (p. 129), protrusive importunity, papilionaceous. d. Homely colloquialisms, unfamiliar to elegant style, commonly for humorous effect: Poke in ; wag their tongues ; solid-feeding Thrale ; pot-bellied Landlord. e. Stock expressions, involving a favorite doctrine or illustration, and not explained every time they occur: Mumbojumbo, Popinjay, Dead-Sea apes, gigmanity, Bapho- metic, mother of dead dogs, vesture, iron leaf, Hero-worship, mud- gods, etc, 3. Figures of Speech. Carlyle's language is habit- ually figurative. To what extent is it a safe model? One must leave out chronic eccentricities, such as those mentioned above: Mumboj umbos, mud-gods, etc., and consider his less extravagant figures. In these he may challenge comparison with any writer. Carlyle continually produces the most graphic effects by the use of a metaphorical term, where IN TR on UC TION. X X X i X a writer less intent on vividness would have employed some easier, matter-of-fact expression; Boswell does not "go to" Bolt Court, he "dives into" it; John- son "creeps into" his obscure lodgings; Croker col- lects "Tombstone-information"; the world "cackled" at Johnson's pension. Carlyle's more extended comparisons, often of a very homely kind, are strikingly effective. The compari- son is carried out with just enough detail to illustrate most clearly: Old Auchinleck had, if not the gay, tail-spreading, peacock vanity of his son, no little of the slow-stalking, contentious, hissing vanity of the gander, (p. 76.) His [Boswell's] mighty " constellation ; " or sun, round whom he, as satellite, observantly gyrated, was, for the mass of men, but a huge ill-snuffed tallow-light, and he a weak night-moth, circling foolishly, dangerously about it, not knowing what he wanted. (p. 79.) The lampoon itself is indeed nothing, a soap-bubble that next moment will become a drop of sour suds, (p, 134.) 4. Allusions. Carlyle's allusions are mainly of two sorts. First, he uses certain stock allusions, that recur again and again. In many of these, the sub- jects are taken from his gallery of heroes. He con- tinually enforces his dogmas by illustrations from the lives of Knox, Cromwell, Johnson, Milton, Napoleon, and other great men. Thus, he often shows how true greatness goes unrecognized in its own time by re- minding us that Shakespeare was arrested for deer- stealing, that Burns gauged ale-barrels, and that Mil- ton received ten pounds for Paradise. Lost. Other frequent allusions are to stories that he has at least X 1 IN TR OD UC TION. once told at length. Thus, the "Dead-Sea apes" are explained in Past and Present (Book III, ch. iii), and "gigmanity" is explained in a footnote to BoswelVs Johnson (p. 77). Further, he has a set of fictitious personages with grotesque names: Sauerteig, the phi- losopher, whose sayings he quotes and approves; M'Croudy, the political economist; Crabbe, editor of the Intermittent Radiator\ Dryasdust, the annalist and statistician; Bobus Higgins; etc., etc. These he sets up as contemporary types, most often for pur- poses of ridicule. Secondly, Carlyle draws largely for allusions on Shakespeare and the English Bible. The notes to the present essay point out some forty instances, mostly from the latter. This Biblical phraseology, as handled by Carlyle, aids greatly in giving his writ- ings their earnest, prophetic tone; the simple, scrip- tural phrase still keeps its place as one of the most effective forms of human speech. Few, however, can employ it with Carlyle's success. Carlyle's Shakes- pearean language is used with a full sense of its original context, and often cannot be properly under- stood unless the reader is familiar with the passage whence it is derived; e, g.^ local habitation (p. d>6). Besides his borrowings from the Bible and from Shakespeare, Carlyle occasionally employs expres- sions from other writers, especially Milton. SAMUEL JOHNSON. (September, 183 1.) The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Including a Jour- nal of a Tour to the Hebrides, by James Boswell, Esq. A New Edition, with numerous Additions and Notes. By John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S. Five Vol- umes 8vo. London : 1831. This work has greatly disappointed us. Whatever faults we may have been prepared to find in it, we fully expected that it would be a valuable addition to English literature; that it would contain many curious 5 facts, and many judicious remarks ; that the style of the notes would be neat, clear, and precise ; and that the typographical execution would be, as in new edi- tions of classical works it ought to be, almost faultless. We are sorry to be obliged to say that the merits of 10 Mr. Croker's performance are on a par with those of a certain leg of mutton on which Dr. Johnson dined, while travelling from London to Oxford, and which he, with characteristic energy, pronounced to be "as bad as bad could be; ill fed, ill killed, ill kept, and 15 ill dressed. ' ' This edition is ill compiled, ill arranged, ill written, and ill printed. Nothing in the work has astonished us so much as the ignorance or carelessness of Mr. Croker with re- 2 / J/;/ CA ULA V OAT 'spcct tc lacts ^nd dates., Many of his blunders are such as we should be surprised to hear any well edu- cated gentleman commit, even in conversation. The notes absolutely swarm with misstatements into which the editor never would have fallen, if he had taken 5 the slightest pains to investigate the truth of his asser- tions, or if he had even been well acquainted with the book on which he undertook to comment. We will give a few instances. Mr. Croker tells us in a note that Derrick, who was 10 master of the ceremonies at Bath, died very poor in 1760.' We read on; and, a few pages later, we find Dr. Johnson and Boswell talking of this same Der- rick as still living and reigning, as having retrieved his character, as possessing so much power over 15 his subjects at Bath that his opposition might be fatal to Sheridan's lectures on oratory.*^ And all this is in 1763. The fact is, that Derrick died in 1769. In one note we read that Sir Herbert Croft, the 20 author of that pompous and foolish account of Young, which appears among the Lives of the Poets, died in 1805.^ Another note in the same volume states that this same Sir Herbert Croft died at Paris, after residing abroad for fifteen years, on the 27th of April, 25 1816.^ Mr. Croker informs us, that Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, the author of the Life of Beattie, died in 1816.^ A Sir William Forbes undoubtedly died in that year, but not the Sir William Forbes in question, 30 ' I. 394- ^ I. 404. ^ IV. 321. * IV. 428. 6 ii_ 262. BOSWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 3 whose death took place in 1806. It is notorious, indeed, that the biographer of Beattie lived just long enough to complete the history of his friend. Eight or nine years before the date which Mr. Croker has 5 assigned for Sir William's death, Sir Walter Scott lamented that event in the introduction to the fourth canto of Marmion. Every school-girl knows the lines: " Scarce had lamented Forbes paid The tribute to his Minstrel's shade ; 10 The tale of friendship scarce was told, Ere the narrator's heart was cold : Far may we search before we find A heart so manly and so kind ! " In one place we are told that Allan Ramsay, the 15 painter, was born in 1709, and died in 1784;* in another, that he died in 1784, in the seventy-first year of his age.'^ In one place, Mr. Croker says, that at the com- mencement of the intimacy between Dr. Johnson and 20 Mrs. Thrale, in 1765, the lady was twenty-five years old.^ In other places he says that Mrs. Thrale's thirty-fifth year coincided with Johnson's seventieth.* Johnson was born in 1709. If, therefore, Mrs. Thrale's thirty-fifth year coincided with Johnson's 25 seventieth, she could have been only twenty-one years old in 1765. This is not all. Mr. Croker, in another place, assigns the year 1777 as the date of the com- plimentary lines which Johnson made on Mrs. Thrale's thirty-fifth birthday.^ If this date be correct, Mrs. ^ IV. 105. 2 V. 281. 3 I, 5J0. 4 IV. 271, 322. 5 jii ^62. 4 AIACAULAY OIST Thrale must have been born in 1742, and could have been only twenty-three when her acquaintance with Johnson commenced. Mr. Croker therefore gives us three different statements as to her age. Two of the three must be incorrect. We will not decide between them ; we will only say that the reasons which Mr. Croker gives for thinking that Mrs. Thrale was exactly thirty-five years old when Johnson was seventy, appear to us utterly frivolous. Again, Mr. Croker informs his readers that "Lordic Mansfield survived Johnson full ten years. "^ Lord Mansfield survived Dr. Johnson just eight years and a quarter. Johnson found in the library of a French lady, whom he visited during his short visit to Paris, some 15 works which he. regarded with great disdain. "I looked," says he, "into the books in the lady's closet, and, in contempt, showed them to Mr. Thrale. Prince Titi, Bibliotheque des Fees, and other books." ^ "The History of Prince Titi," observes Mr. Croker, 2c "was said to be the autobiography of Frederick Prince of Wales, but was probably written by Ralph his secretary." A more absurd note never was penned. The history of Prince Titi, to \vhich Mr. Croker refers, whether written by Prince Frederick 25 or by Ralph, was certainly never published. If Mr. Croker had taken the trouble to read with attention that very passage in Park's Royal and Noble Authors which he cites as his authority, he would have seen that the manuscript was given up to the government. 30 Even if this memoir had been printed, it is not very UI. 151. 2 ixi. 271. BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 5 • likely to find its way into a French lady's bookcase. And would any man in his senses speak contemptu- ously of a French lady for having in her possession an English work, so curious and interesting as a Life of 5 Prince Frederick, whether written by himself or by a confidential secretary, must have been? The history at which Johnson laughed was a very proper com- panion to the Bibliotheque des Fees, a fairy tale about good Prince Titi and naughty Prince Violent. Mr. loCroker may find it in the Magasin des Enfans, the first French book which the little girls of England read to their governesses. Mr. Croker states that Mr. Henry Bate, who after- wards assumed the name of Dudley, was proprietor of 15 the Morning Herald, and fought a duel with George Robinson Stoney, in consequence of some attacks on Lady Strathmore which appeared in that paper.' Now, Mr. Bate was then connected, not with the Morning Herald, but with the Morning Post; and the 20 dispute took place before the Morning Herald was in existence. The duel was fought in January, 1777. The Chronicle of the Annual Register for that year contains an account of the transaction, and distinctly states that Mr. Bate was editor of the Morning Post. 25 The Morning Herald, as any person may see by look- ing at any number of it, was not established till some years after this affair. For this blunder there is, we must acknowledge, some excuse; for it certainly seems almost incredible to a person living in our time 30 that any human being should ever have stooped to fight with a writer in the Morning Post. 'V. 196. 6 iMACAULAY OiV "James de Duglas," says Mr. Croker, "was re- quested by King Robert Bruce, in his last hours, to repair with his heart to Jerusalem, and humbly to deposit it at the sepulchre of our Lord, which he did in 1329."^ Now, it is well known that he 5 did no such thing, and for a very sufficient reason, because he was killed by the way. Nor was it in 1329 that he set out. Robert Bruce died in 1329, and the expedition of Douglas took place in the following year, "Quand le printems vint et la sai- 10 son," says Froissart, in June, 1330, says Lord Hailes, whom Mr. Croker cites as the authority for his statement. Mr. Croker tells us that the great Marquis of Montrose was beheaded at Edinburgh in 1650.'^ 15 There is not a forward boy at any school in Eng- land who does not know that the marquis was hanged. The account of the execution is one of the finest pas- sages in Lord Clarendon's History. We can scarcely suppose that Mr. Croker has never read that passage; 20 and yet we can scarcely suppose that any person who has ever perused so noble and pathetic a his- tory can have utterly forgotten all its most striking circumstances. "Lord Townshend," says Mr. Croker, "was not 25 secretary of state till 1720."^ Can Mr. Croker pos- sibly be ignorant that Lord Townshend was made secretary of state at the accession of George I. in 1 7 14, that he continued to be secretary of state till he was displaced by the intrigues of Sunderland and 30 Stanhope at the close of 17 16, and that he returned to 1 IV. 29. 2 11^ 526. 3 in. 52. BOSWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 7 the office of secretary of state, not in 1720, but in 1721? Mr. Croker, indeed, is generally unfortunate in his statements respecting the Townshend family. He 5 tells us that Charles Townshend, the chancellor of the exchequer, was "nephew of the prime minister, and son of a peer who was secretary of state, and leader of the House of Lords." ' Charles Townshend was not nephew, but grandnephew, of the Duke of New- 10 castle, not son, but grandson, of the Lord Town- shend who was secretary of state, and leader of the House of Lords. "General Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga," says Mr. Croker, "in March, 1778."^ General Burgoyne 15 surrendered on the 17th of October, 1777. "Nothing," says Mr. Croker, "can be more un- founded than the assertion that Byng fell a martyr to political party. By a strange coincidence of circum- stances, it happened that there was a total change of 20 administration between his condemnation and his death ; so that one party presided at his trial and another at his execution: there can be no stronger proof that he was not a political martyr."^ Now, what will our readers think of this writer when we 25 assure them that this statement, so confidently made, respecting events so notorious, is absolutely untrue? One and the same administration was in office when the court-martial on Byng commenced its sittings, through the whole trial, at the condemnation and at 30 the execution. In the month of November, 1756, the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Hardwicke resigned; ^ in. 36S. 2 IV. 222. « I. 298. 8 MACAULAY ON the Duke of Devonshire became first lord of the treasury, and Mr. Pitt, secretary of state. This administration lasted till the month of April, 1757. Byng's court-martial began to sit on the 28th of December, 1756. He was shot on the 14th of March, 5 1757. There is something at once diverting and pro- voking in the cool and authoritative manner in which Mr. Croker makes these random assertions. We do not suspect him of intentionally falsifying history. But of this high literary misdemeanor we do without to hesitation accuse him, that he has no adequate sense of the obligation which a writer, who professes to relate facts, owes to the public. We accuse him of a negli- gence and an ignorance analogous to that crassa negli- geutia and that crassa ignorantia^ on which the law 15 animadverts in magistrates and surgeons, even when malice and corruption are not imputed. We accuse him of having undertaken a work which, if not per- formed with strict accuracy, must be very much worse than useless, and of having performed it as if the 20 difference between an accurate and an inaccurate statement was not worth the trouble of looking into the most common book of reference. But we must proceed. These volumes contain mistakes more gross, if possible, than any that we 25 have yet mentioned. Boswell has recorded some observations made by Johnson on the changes which had taken place in Gibbon's religious opinions. That Gibbon when a lad at Oxford turned Catholic is well known. "It is said," cried Johnson, laughing, "that 30 he has been a Mohammedan." "This sarcasm," says the editor, "probably alludes to the tenderness BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 9 with which Gibbon's malevolence to Christianity- induced him to treat Mohammedanism in his history." Now, the sarcasm was uttered in 1776; and that part of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman 5 Empire which relates to Mohammedanism was not published till 1788, twelve years after the date of this conversation, and near four years after the death of Johnson/ "It was in the year 1761," says Mr. Croker, "that 10 Goldsmith published his Vicar of Wakefield. This leads the editor to observe a more serious inaccuracy of Mrs. Piozzi than Mr. Boswell notices, when he ^ A defence of this blunder was attempted. That the celebrated chapters in which Gibbon has traced the progress of Mohammed- 15 anism were not written in 1776 could not be denied. But it was confidently asserted that his partiality to Mohammedanism ap- peared in his first volume. This assertion is untrue. No passage which can by any art be construed into the faintest indication of the faintest partiality for Mohammedanism has ever been quoted 20 or ever will be quoted from the first volume of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. To what, then, it has been asked, could Johnson allude ? Pos- sibly to some anecdote or some conversation of which all trace is lost. One conjecture may be offered, though with diffidence. 25 Gibbon tells us in his memoirs, that at Oxford he took a fancy for studying Arabic, and was prevented from doing so by the remonstrances of his tutor. Soon after this the young man fell in with Bossuet's controversial writings, and was speedily converted by them to the Roman Catholic faith. The apostasy of a gentle- 30 man commoner would of course be for a time the chief subject of conversation in the common room of Magdalene. His whim about Arabic learning would naturally be mentioned, and would give occasion to some jokes about the probability of his turning Mussulman. If such jokes were made, Johnson, who frequently 35 visited Oxford, was very likely to hear of them. 1 o Jl/J CA ULA Y ON says Johnson left her table to go and sell the Vicar of Wakefield for Goldsmith. Now Dr. Johnson was not acquainted with the Thrales till 1765, four years after the book had been published."' Mr. Croker, in reprehending the fancied inaccuracy of Ivlrs. 5 Thrale, has himself shown a degree of inaccuracy, or, to speak more properly, a degree of ignorance, hardly credible. In the first place, Johnson became ac- quainted with the Thrales, not in 1765, but in 1764, and during the last weeks of 1764 dined with them 10 every Thursday, as is written in Mrs. Piozzi's anec- dotes. In the second place, Goldsmith published the Vicar of Wakefield, not in 1761, but in 1766. Mrs. Thrale does not pretend to remember the precise date of the summons which called Johnson from her 15 table to the help of his friend. She says only that it was near the beginning of her acquaintance with Johnson, and certainly not later than 1766. Her accuracy is therefore completely vindicated. It was probably after one of her Thursday dinners in 176420 that the celebrated scene of the landlady, the sheriff's officer, and the bottle of Madeira, took place. '^ The very page which contains this monstrous blunder, contains another blunder, if possible, more monstrous still. Sir Joseph Mawbey, a foolish member 25 of Parliament, at whose speeches and whose pigstyes the wits of Brookes's were, fifty years ago, in the habit of laughing most unmercifully, stated, on the authority of Garrick, that Johnson, while sitting in a ^ V. 409. 30 ^ This paragraph has been altered ; and a slight inaccuracy, immaterial to the argument, has been removed. BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. ii coffee-house at Oxford, about the time of his Doc- tor's degree, used some contemptuous expressions respecting Home's play and Macpherson's Ossian. "Many men" he said, "many women, and many 5 children, might have written Douglas," Mr. Croker conceives that he has detected an inaccuracy, and glories over poor Sir Joseph in a most characteristic manner, "I have quoted this anecdote solely with the view of showing to how little credit hearsay anec- 10 dotes are in general entitled. Here is a story pub- lished by Sir Joseph Mawbey, a member of the House of Commons, and a person every way worthy of credit, who says he had it from Garrick. Now mark: John- son's visit to Oxford, about the time of his Doctor's 15 degree, was in 1754, the first time he had been there since he left the university. But Douglas was not acted till 1756, and Ossian not published till 1760. All, therefore, that is new in Sir Joseph Mawbey 's story is false." ^ Assuredly we need not go far to find 20 ample proof that a member of the House of Commons may commit a very gross error. Now mark, say we, in the language of Mr. Croker. The fact is, that Johnson took his Master's degree in 1754/ and his Doctor's degree in 1775.' In the spring of 1776* he 25 paid a visit to Oxford, and at this visit a conversation respecting the works of Home and Macpherson might have taken place, and, in all probability, did take place. The only real objection to the story Mr. Croker has missed. Boswell states, apparently on the 30 best authority, that as early at least as the year 1763, Johnson, in conversation with Blair, used the same »V. 409. 2 I 252, 3111.205. 4 jll. 326. 12 MACAULAY ON expressions respecting Ossian, which Sir Joseph repre- sents him as having used respecting Douglas/ Sir Joseph, or Garrick, confounded, we suspect, the two stories. But their error is venial, compared with that of Mr. Croker. 5 We will not multiply instances of this scandalous inaccuracy. It is clear that a writer who, even when warned by the text on which he is commenting, falls into such mistakes as these, is entitled to no confi- dence whatever. Mr, Croker has committed an error lo of five years with respect to the publication of Gold- smith's novel, an error of twelve years with respect to the publication of part of Gibbon's History, an error of twenty-one years with respect to an event in John- son's life so important as the taking of the doctoral 15 degree. Two of these three errors he has committed, while ostentatiously displaying his own accuracy, and correcting what he represents as the loose assertions of others. How can his readers take on trust his statements concerning the births, marriages, divorces, 20 and deaths of a crowd of people whose names are scarcely known to this generation? It is not likely that a person who is ignorant of what almost everybody knows can know that of which almost everybody is ignorant. We did not open this book with any wish 25 to find blemishes in it. We have made no curious researches. The work itself, and a very common knowledge of literary and political history, have enabled us to detect the mistakes which we have pointed out, and many other mistakes of the same 30 kind. We must say, and we say it with regret, that ' I. 405- BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHN SO iV. 13 we do not consider the authority of Mr. Croker, unsupported by other evidence, as sufficient to justify any writer who may follow him in relating a single anecdote or in assigning a date to a single event. 5 Mr. Croker shows almost as much ignorance and heedlessness in his criticisms as in his statements con- cerning facts. Dr. Johnson said, very reasonably as it appears to us, that some of the satires of Juvenal are too gross for imitation. Mr. Croker, who, by the 10 way, is angry with Johnson for defending Prior's tales against the charge of indecency, resents this aspersion on Juvenal, and indeed refuses to believe that the doctor can have said anything so absurd. "He probably said — some passages of them — for there are 15 none of Juvenal's satires to which the same objec- tion may be made as to one of Horace's, that it is altogether gross and licentious.'" Surely Mr. Croker can never have read the second and ninth satires of Juvenal. 20 Indeed, the decisions of this editor on points of classical learning, though pronounced in a very authoritative tone, are generally such that, if a school- boy under our care were to utter them, our soul assuredly should not spare for his crying. It is no 25 disgrace to a gentleman who has been engaged during near thirty years in political life that he has forgotten his Greek and Latin. But he becomes justly ridicu- lous if, when no longer able to construe a plain sen- tence, he affects to sit in judgment on the most deli- 30 cate questions of style and metre. From one blunder, a blunder which no good scholar would have made, ' I. 167. 14 MACAU LA Y OlST Mr. Croker was saved, as he informs us, by Sir Robert Peel, who quoted a passage exactly in point from Horace. We heartily wish that Sir Robert, whose classical attainments are well known, had been more frequently consulted. Unhappily he was not 5 always at his friend's elbow; and we have therefore a rich abundance of the strangest errors. Boswell has preserved a poor epigram by Johnson, inscribed "Ad Lauram parituram." Mr. Croker censures the poet for applying the word puella to a lady in Laura's situ- 10 ation, and for talking of the beauty of Lucina. "Lucina," he says, "was never famed for her beauty." ^ If Sir Robert Peel had seen this note, he probably would have again refuted Mr. Croker 's criti- cisms by an appeal to Horace. In the secular ode, 15 Lucina is used as one of the names of Diana, and the beauty of Diana is extolled by all the most orthodox doctors of the ancient mythology, from Homer in his Odyssey to Claudian in his Rape of Proserpine. In another ode, Horace describes Diana as the goddess 20 who assists the "laborantes utero puellas." But we are ashamed to detain our readers with this fourth- form learning. Boswell found, in his tour to the Hebrides, an inscription written by a Scotch minister. It runs 25 thus: "Joannes Macleod, &c., gentis suae Philarchus, &c.. Florae Macdonald matrimoniali vinculo conju- gatus turrem banc Beganodunensem proaevorum habi- taculum longe vetustissimum, diu penitus labefactatam, anno ^rse vulgaris mdclxxxvi. instauravit." — "The 30 minister," says Mr. Croker, "seems to have been no ' I. 133. BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 15 contemptible Latinist. Is not Philarchus a very- happy term to express the paternal and kindly authority of the head of a clan?" ^ The composition of this eminent Latinist, short as it is, contains 5 sev^eral words that are just as much Coptic as Latin, to say nothing of the incorrect structure of the sen- tence. The word Philarchus, even if it were a happy term expressing a paternal and kindly authority, would prove nothing for the minister's Latin, what- 10 ever it might prove for his Greek. But it is clear that the word Philarchus means, not a man who rules by love, but a man who loves rule. The Attic writers of the best age use the word q)ikaf>xoi in the sense which we assign to it. Would Mr. Croker translate 15 q)i\6(Doq)Oi, a man who acquires wisdom by means of love, or q)i\oKep67]^, a man who makes money by means of love? In fact, it requires no Bentley or Casaubon to perceive, that Philarchus is merely a false spelling for Phylarchus, the chief of a tribe. 20 Mr. Croker has favored us with some Greek of his own. "At the altar," says Dr. Johnson, *T recom- mended my ^ v KOfiioai dsfiag. Indeed, without this emendation it would not be easy to construe the words, even if T^varuv could bear the meaning which Mr. Croker assigns to it. l6 MACAU LAY ON Johnson was not a first-rate Greek scholar; but he knew more Greek than most boys when they leave school; and no schoolboy could venture to use the word ^vrjxoi in the sense which Mr. Croker ascribes to it without imminent danger of a flogging. 5 Mr. Croker has also given us a specimen of his skill in translating Latin. Johnson wrote a note in which he consulted his friend, Dr. Lawrence, on the pro- priety of losing some blood. The note contains these words: — "Si per te licet, imperatur nuncio Holderum lo ad me deducere. ' ' Johnson should rather have written "imperatum est." But the meaning of the words is perfectly clear. "If you say yes, the messenger has orders to bring Holder to me." Mr. Croker tran- slates the words as follows: ' 'If you consent, pray tell 15 the messenger to bring Holder to me."^ If Mr. Croker is resolved to write on points of classical learn- ing, we would advise him to begin by giving an hour every morning to our old friend Corderius, Indeed, we cannot open any volume of this work in 20 any place, and turn it over for two minutes in any direction, without lighting on a blunder. Johnson, in his Life.of Tickell, stated that a poem entitled The Royal Progress, which appears in the last volume of the Spectator, was written on the accession of George 25 I. The word "arrival" was afterwards substituted for "accession." "The reader will observe," says Mr. Croker, "that the Whig term accessioft, which might imply legality, was altered into a statement of the simple fact of King George's arrival^ "^ Now 30 Johnson, though a bigoted Tory, was not quite such a ^ V. 17. 2 IV. 425. BOSWELLS LIFE OF JOHN SOISr. 17 fool as Mr. Croker here represents him to be. In the Life of Granville, Lord Lansdowne, which stands a very few pages from the Life of Tickell, mention is made of the accession of Anne, and of the accession of 5 George I. The word arrival was used in the Life of Tickell for the simplest of all reasons. It was used because the subject of the poem called The Royal Progress was the arrival of the king, and not his accession, which took place near two months before 10 his arrival. The editor's want of perspicacity is indeed very amusing. He is perpetually telling us that he cannot understand something in the text which is as plain as language can make it. "Mattaire," said Dr. John- 15 son, "wrote Latin verses from time to time, and pub- lised a set in his old age, which he called Senilia, in which he shows so little learning or taste in writing as to make Carteret a dactyl."' Hereupon we have this note: *'The editor does not understand this 2o objection, nor the following observation." The fol- lowing observation, which Mr. Croker cannot under- stand, is simply this: "In matters of genealogy," says Johnson, "it is necessary to give the bare names as they are. But in poetry and in prose of any elegance 25 in the writing, they require to have inflection given to them." If Mr. Croker had told Johnson that this was unintelligible, the doctor would probably have replied, as he replied on another occasion, "I have found you a reason, sir; I am not bound to find you 30 an understanding." Every body who knows any thing of Latinity knows that, in genealogical tables, ' IV. 335. i8 MACAULAY ON Joannes Baro de Carteret, or Vice-comes de Car- teret, may be tolerated, but that in compositions which pretend to elegance, Carteretus, or some other form which admits of inflection, ought to be used. All our readers have doubtless seen the two dis- 5 tichs of Sir William Jones, respecting the division of the time of a lawyer. One of the distichs is trans- lated from some old Latin lines; the other is original. The former runs thus: " Six hours to sleep, to law's grave study six, lO Four spend in prayer, the rest on nature fix," "Rather," says Sir William Jones, " Six hours to law, to soothing slumbers seven, Ten to the world allot, and all to heaven." The second couplet puzzles Mr. Croker strangely. 15 "Sir William," says he, "has shortened his day to twenty-three hours, and the general advice of 'all to heaven' destroys the peculiar appropriation of a cer- tain period to religious exercises." ^ Now, we did not think that it was in human dulness to miss the 20 meaning of the lines so completely. Sir William dis- tributes twenty-three hours among various employ- ments. One hour is thus left for devotion. The reader expects that the verse will end with "and one to heaven." The whole point of the lines consists in 25 the unexpected substitution of "all" for "one." The conceit is wretched enough; but it is perfectly intelli- gible, and never, we will venture to say, perplexed man, woman, or child before. ^ V. 233. BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 19 Poor Tom Davies, after failing in business, tried to live by his pen. Johnson called him "an author generated by the corruption of a bookseller." This is a very obvious and even a commonplace allusion to the 5 famous dogma of the old physiologists. Dryden made a similar allusion to that dogma before Johnson was born. Mr. Croker, however, is unable to understand what the doctor meant. "The expression," he says, "seems not quite clear." And he proceeds to talk 10 about the generation of insects, about bursting into gaudier life, and Heaven knows what.' There is a still stranger instance of the editor's talent for finding out difficulty in what is perfectly plain. "No man," said Johnson, "can now be made 15 a bishop for his learning and piety." "From this too just observation," says Boswell, "there are some emi- nent exceptions." Mr. Croker is puzzled by Bos- well's very natural and simple language. "That a general observation should be pronounced too Just, by 20 the very person who admits that it is not universally just, is not a little odd." "^ A very large proportion of the two thousand five hundred notes which the editor boasts of having added to those of Boswell and Malone consists of the 25 flattest and poorest reflections, reflections such as the least intelligent reader is quite competent to make for himself, and such as no intelligent reader would think it worth while to utter aloud. They remind us of nothing so much as of those profound and interesting 30 annotations which are pencilled by sempstresses and apothecaries' boys on the dog-eared margins of novels 1 IV. 323. 2 iii^ 228. 20 MACAU LAY ON borrowed from circulating libraries; "How beauti- ful!" "Cursed prosy I" "I don't like Sir Reginald Malcolm at all." "I think Pelham is a sad dandy." Mr. Croker is perpetually stopping us in our progress through the most delightful narrative in the language, 5 to observe that really Dr. Johnson was very rude, that he talked more for victory than for truth, that his taste for port wine with capillaire in it was very odd, that Boswell was impertinent, that it was foolish in Mrs. Thrale to marry the music-master; and so 10 forth. We cannot speak more favorably of the manner in which the notes are written than of the matter of which they consist. We find in every page words used in wrong senses, and constructions which violate 15 the plainest rules of grammar. We have the vulgar- ism of "mutual friend" for "common friend." We have "fallacy" used as synonymous with "falsehood." We have many such inextricable labryrinths of pro- nouns as that which follows: "Lord Erskine was fond 20 of this anecdote; he told it to the editor the first time that he had the honor of being in his company." Lastly, we have a plentiful supply of sentences resem- bling those which we subjoin. "Markland, who^ with Jortin and Thirlby, Johnson calls three contempo- 25 raries of great eminence."^ "Warburton himself did not feel, as Mr. Boswell was disposed to think he did, kindly or gratefully of Johnson." * "It was hiju that Horace Walpole called a man who never made a bad figure but as an author." ^ One or two of these sole- 30 cisms should perhaps be attributed to the printer, who » IV. 377. 2 IV. 415. 3 II. 461. BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 21 has certainly done his best to fill both the text and the notes with all sorts of blunders. In truth, he and the editor have between them made the book so bad that we do not well see how it could have been 5 worse. When we turn from the commentary of Mr. Croker to the work of our old friend Boswell, we find it not only worse printed than in any other edition with which we are acquainted, but mangled in the most 10 wanton manner. Much that Boswell inserted in his narrative is, without the shadow of a reason, degraded to the appendix. The editor has also taken upon him- self to alter or omit passages which he considers as indecorous. This prudery is quite unintelligible to 15 us. There is nothing immoral in Boswell' s book,*^ nothing which tends to inflame the passions. He sometimes uses plain words. But if this be a taint which requires expurgation, it would be desirable to begin by expurgating the morning and evening 20 lessons. The delicate office which Mr. Croker has undertaken he has performed in the most capricious manner. One strong, old-fashioned English word, familiar to all who read their Bibles, is changed for a softer synonyme in some passages, and suffered to 25 stand unaltered in others. In one place a faint allusion made by Johnson to an indelicate subject, an allusion so faint that, till Mr. Croker' s note pointed it out to us, we had never noticed it, and of which we are quite sure that the meaning would never be dis- 30 covered by any of those for whose sake books are expurgated, is altogether omitted. In another place, a coarse and stupid jest of Dr. Taylor on the same 22 MACAU LA V ON subject, expressed in the broadest language, almost the only passage, as far as we remember, in all Bos- well's book, which we should have been inclined to leave out, is suffered to remain. We complain, however, much more of the additions 5 than of the omissions. We have half of Mrs. Thrale's book, scraps of Mr, Tyers, scraps of Mr. Murphy, scraps of Mr. Cradock, long prosings of Sir John Hawkins, and connecting observations by Mr. Croker himself, inserted into the midst of Bos well's text. 10 To this practice we most decidedly object. An editor might as well publish Thucydides with extracts from Diodorus interspersed, or incorporate the Lives of Suetonius with the History and Annals of Tacitus. Mr. Croker tells us, indeed, that he has done only 15 what Bos well wished to do, and was prevented from doing by the law of copyright. We doubt this greatly. Boswell has studiously abstained from availing him- self of the information given by his rivals, on many occasions on which he might have cited them without 20 subjecting himself to the charge of piracy. Mr. Croker has himself, on one occasion, remarked very justly that Boswell was unwilling to owe any obliga- tion to Hawkins. Bat, be this as it may, if Boswell had quoted from Sir John and from Mrs. Thrale, 25 he would have been guided by his own taste and judgment in selecting his quotations. On what Bos- well quoted he would have commented with perfect freedom ; and the borrowed passages, so selected, and accompanied by such comments, would have 30 become original. They would have dovetailed into the work, No hitch, no crease, would have been dis- BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 23 cernible. The whole would appear one and indi- visible: " Ut per loeve severos Effundat junctura ungues." 5 This is not the case with Mr. Croker's insertions. They are not chosen as Boswell would have chosen them. They are not introduced as Boswell would have introduced them. They differ from the quota- tions scattered through the original Life of Johnson, 10 as a withered bough stuck in the ground differs from a tree skilfully transplanted with all its life about it. Not only do these anecdotes disfigure Boswell's book; they are themselves disfigured by being inserted in his book. The charm of Mrs. Thrale's 15 little volume is utterly destroyed. The feminine quickness of observation, the feminine softness of heart, the colloquial incorrectness and vivacity of style, the little amusing airs of a half-learned lady, the delightful garrulity, the "dear Doctor Johnson," 20 the "it was so comical," all disappear in Mr. Croker's quotations. The lady ceases to speak in the first person ; and her anecdotes, in the process of trans- fusion, become as flat as Champagne in decanters, or Herodotus in Beloe's version. Sir John Hawkins, 25 it is true, loses nothing; and for the best of reasons: Sir John had nothing to lose. The course which Mr. Croker ought to have taken is quite clear. He should have reprinted Boswell's narrative precisely as Boswell wrote it; and in the 30 notes of the appendix he should have placed any anecdotes which he might have thought it advisable 24 MACAULAY ON to quote from other writers. This would have been a much more convenient course for the reader, who has now constantly to keep his eye on the margin in order to see whether he is perusing Boswell, Mrs. Thrale, Murphy, Hawkins, Tyers, Cradock, or Mr. 5 Croker. We greatly doubt whether even the Tour to the Hebrides ought to have been inserted in the midst of the Life. There is one marked distinction between the two works. Most of the Tour was seen by John- son in manuscript. It does not appear that he ever 10 saw any part of the Life. We love, we own, to read the great productions of the human mind as they were written. W^e have this feeling even about scientific treatises ; though we know that the sciences are always in a state of progression, 15 and that the alterations made by a modern editor in an old book on any branch of natural or political phi- losophy are likely to be improvements. Some errors have been detected by writers of this generation in the speculations of Adam Smith. A short cut has been 20 made to much knowledge at which Sir Isaac Newton arrived through arduous and circuitous paths. Yet we still look with peculiar veneration on the Wealth of Nations and on the Principia, and should regret to see either of those great works garbled even by the 25 ablest hands. But in works which owe much of their interest to the character and situation of the writers the case is infinitely stronger. What man of taste and feeling can endure rifacimenti^ harmonies, abridg- ments, expurgated editions? Who ever reads a stage 30 copy of a play when he can procure the original? Who ever cut open Mrs. Siddons's Milton? Who BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 25 ever got through ten pages of Mr. Gilpin's translation of John Bunyan's Pilgrim into modern English? Who would lose, in the confusion of a Diatessaron, the peculiar charm which belongs to the narrative of 5 the disciple whom Jesus loved? The feeling of a reader who has become intimate with any great orig- inal work is that which Adam expressed towards his bride: " Should God create another Eve, and I 10 Another rib afford, yet loss of thee Would never from my heart." No substitute, however exquisitely formed, will fill the void left by the original. The second beauty may be equal or superior to the first; but still it is not she. 15 The reasons which Mr. Croker has given for incor- porating passages from Sir John Hawkins and Mrs. Thrale with the narrative of Boswell would vindicate the adulteration of half the classical works in the lan- guage. If Pepys's Diary and Mrs. Hutchinson's 20 Memoirs had been published a hundred years ago, no human being can doubt that Mr. Hume would have made use of those books in his History of Eng- land. But would it, on that account, be judicious in a writer of our own times to publish an edition 25 of Hume's History of England, in which large extracts from Pepys and Mrs. Hutchinson should be incorporated with the original text? Surely not. Hume's history, be its faults what they may, is now one great entire work, the production of one vigorous 30 mind, Avorking on such materials as were within its reach. Additions made by another hand may supply a particular deficiency, but would grievously injure 2 6 MACAULAY ON the general effect. With Boswell's book the case is stronger. There is scarcely, in the whole compass of literature, a book which bears interpolation so ill. We know no production of the human mind which has so much of what may be called the race, so much 5 of the peculiar flavor of the soil from which it sprang. The work could never have been written if the writer had not been precisely what he was. His character is displayed in every page, and this display of char- acter gives a delightful interest to many passages 10 which have no other interest. The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more 15 decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. He has dis- tanced all his competitors so decidedly that it is not worth while to place them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere. 20 We are not sure that there is in the whole history of the human intellect so strange a phaenomenon as this book. Many of the greatest men that ever lived have written biography. Boswell was one of the smallest men that ever lived, and he has beaten them 25 all. He was, if we are to give any credit to his own account or to the united testimony of all who knew him, a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect. Johnson described him as a fellow who had missed his only chance of immortality by not having been 30 alive when the Dunciad was written. Beauclerk used his name as a proverbial*expression for a bore. He B OS WELL S L IFE OF JOHNSON. 2 7 was the laughing-stock of the whole of that brilliant society which has owed to him the greater part of its fame. He was always laying himself at the feet of some eminent man, and begging to be spit upon and 5 trampled upon. He was always earning some ridicu- lous nickname, and then "binding it as a crown unto him," not merely in metaphor, .but literally. He exhibited himself, at the Shakespeare Jubilee, to all the crowd which filled Stratford-on-Avon, with a 10 placard round his hat bearing the inscription of Cor- sica Boswell. In his Tour, he proclaimed to all the world that at Edinburgh he was known by the appella- tion of Paoli Boswell. Servile and impertinent, shal- low and pedantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family 15 pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of a born gentleman, yet stooping to be a talebearer, an eavesdropper, a common butt in the taverns of Lon- don, so curious to know every body who was talked about, that, Tory and high Churchman as he was, he 20 manoeuvred, we have been told, for an introduction to Tom Paine, so vain of the most childish distinc- tions, that when he had been to court, he drove to the office where his book was printing without changing his clothes, and summoned all the printers' devils 25 to admire his new ruffles and sword; such was this man, and such he was content and proud to be. Every thing which another man would have hidden, every thing the publication of which would have made another man hang himself, was matter of gay and 30 clamorous exultation to his weak and diseased mind. What silly things he said, what bitter retorts he pro- voked, how at one place he was troubled with evil 28 MACAULAY OuV presentiments which came to nothing, how at another place, on waking from a drunken doze, he read the prayerbook and took a hair of the dog that had bitten him, how he went to see men hanged and came away maudUn, how he added five hundred pounds to the 5 fortune of one of his babies because she was not scared at Johnson's ugly face, how he was frightened out of his wits at sea, and how the sailors quieted him as they would have quieted a child, how tipsy he was at Lady Cork's one evening and how much his 10 merriment annoyed the ladies, how impertinent he was to the Duchess of Argyle and with what stately contempt she put down his impertinence, how Colonel Macleod sneered to his face at his impudent ob- trusiveness, how his father and the very wife of his 15 bosom laughed and fretted at his fooleries ; all these things he proclaimed to all the world, as if they had been subjects for pride and ostentatious rejoicing. All the caprices of his temper, all the illusions of his vanity, all his hypochondriac whimsies, all his castles 20 in the air, he displayed with a cool self-complacency, a perfect unconsciousness that he was making a fool of himself, to which it is impossible to find a parallel in the whole history of mankind. He has used many people ill; but assuredly he has used nobody so ill as 25 himself. That such a man should have written one of the best books in the world is strange enough. But this is not all. Tvlany persons who have conducted them- selves foolishly in active life, and whose conversa- 30 tion has indicated no superior powers of mind, have left us valuable works. Goldsmith was very justly BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSOh^. 29 described by one of his contemporaries as an inspired idiot, and by another as a being " Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll." La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. His 5 blunders would not come in amiss among the stories of Hierocles. But these men attained literary emi- nence in spite of their weaknesses. Boswell attained it by reason of his weaknesses. If he had not been a great fool, he would never have been a great writer. 10 Without all the qualities which made him the jest and the torment of those among whom he lived, without the officiousness, the inquisitiveness, the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensibility to all reproof, he never could have produced so excellent a book. He 15 was a slave proud of his servitude, a Paul Pry, con- vinced that his own curiosity and garrulity were vir- tues, an unsafe companion who never scrupled to repay the most liberal hospitality by the basest viola- tion of confidence, a man without delicacy, without 20 shame, without sense enough to know when he was hurting the feelings of others or when he was expos- ing himself to derision; and because he was all this, he has, in an important department of literature, immeasurably surpassed such writers as Tacitus, Clar- 25 endon, Alfieri, and his own idol Johnson. Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to emi- nence as writers, Boswell had absolutely none. There is not in all his books a single remark of his own on literature, politics, religion, or society, which is not 30 either commonplace or absurd. His dissertations on hereditary gentility, on the slave-trade, and on the 30 MACAULAY ON entailing of landed estates, may serve as examples. To say that these passages are sophistical would be to pay them an extravagant compliment. They have no pretence to argument, or even to meaning. He has reported innumerable observations made by himself 5 in the course of conversation. Of those observations we do not remember one which is above the intel- lectual capacity of a boy of fifteen. He has printed many of his own letters, and in these letters he is always ranting or twaddling. Logic, eloquence, wit, 10 taste, all those things which are generally considered as making a book valuable, were utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of them- 15 selves have sufficed to make him conspicuous ; but because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made him immortal. Those parts of his book which, considered ab- stractedly, are most utterly worthless, are delightful 20 when we read them as illustrations of the character of the writer. Bad in themselves, they are good dra- matically, like the nonsense of Justice Shallow, the clipped English of Dr. Caius, or the misplaced con- sonants of Fluellen. Of all confessors, Boswell is the 25 most candid. Other men who have pretended to lay open their own hearts, Rousseau, for example, and Lord Byron, have evidently written with a con- stant view to effect, "and are to be then most distrusted when they seem to be most sincere. There is scarcely 30 any man who would not rather accuse himself of great crimes and of dark and tempestuous passions than pro- BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 31 claim all his little vanities and wild fancies. It would be easier to find a person who would avow actions like those of Caesar Borgia or Danton, than one who would publish a daydream like those of Alnaschar and Mal- 5 volio. Those weaknesses which most men keep cov- ered up in the most secret places of the mind, not to be disclosed to the eye of friendship or of love, were precisely the weaknesses which Boswell paraded before all the world. He was perfectly frank, because the 10 weakness of his understanding and the tumult of his spirits prevented him from knowing when he made himself ridiculous. His book resembles nothing so much as the conversation of the inmates of the Palace of Truth. 15 His fame is great ; and it will, we have no doubt, be lasting; but it is fame of a peculiar kind, and indeed marvellously resembles infamy. We remem- ber no other case in which the world has made so great a distinction between a book and its author. In 20 general, the book and the author are considered as one. To admire the book is to admire the author. The case of Boswell is an exception, we think the only exception, to this rule. His work is universally allowed to be interesting, instructive, eminently orig- 25inal; yet it has brought him nothing but contempt. All the world reads it; all the world delights in it; yet we do not remember ever to have read or ever to have heard any expression of respect and admiration for the man to whom we owe so much instruction and 30 amusement. While edition after edition of his book was coming forth, his son, as Mr. Croker tells us, was ashamed of it, and hated to hear it mentioned. This 32 MA CAUL AY ON feeling was natural and reasonable. Sir Alexander saw that, in proportion to the celebrity of the work, was the degradation of the author. The very editors of this unfortunate gentleman's books have forgotten their allegiance, and, like those Puritan casuists who took 5 arms by the authority of the king against his person, have attacked the writer while doing homage to the writings. Mr. Croker, for example, has published two thousand five hundred notes on the life of John- son, and yet scarcely ever mentions the biographer 10 whose performance he has taken such pains to illus- trate without some expression of contempt. An ill-natured man Boswell certainly was not; yet the malignity of the most malignant satirist could scarcely cut deeper than his thoughtless loquacity. 15 Having himself no sensibility to derision and con- tempt, he took it for granted that all others were equally callous. He was not ashamed to exhibit him- self to the whole world as a common spy, a common tattler, a humble companion without the excuse of 20 poverty, and to tell a hundred stories of his own pert- ness and folly, and of the insults which his pertness and folly brought upon him. It was natural that he should show little discretion in cases in which the feeling or the honor of others might be concerned. No man, 25 surely, ever published such stories respecting persons whom he professed to love and revere. He would infallibly have made his hero as contemptible as he has made himself, had not his hero really possessed some moral and intellectual qualities of a very high 30 order. The best proof that Johnson was really an extraordinary man is that his character, instead of BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. ZZ being degraded, has, on the whole, been decidedly raised by a work in which all his vices and weaknesses are exposed more unsparingly than they ever were exposed by Churchill or by Kenrick. 5 Johnson grown old, Johnson in the fulness of his fame and in the enjoyment of a competent fortune, is better known to us than any other man in history. Every thing about him, his coat, his wig, his figure, his face, his scrofula, his St.Vitus's dance, his rolling lowalk, his blinking eye, the outward signs which too clearly marked his approbation of his dinner, his insatiable appetite for fish-sauce and veal-pie with plums, his inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick of touching the posts as he walked, his mysterious prac- 15 tice of treasuring up scraps of orange-peel, his morn- ing slumbers, his midnight disputations, his contor- tions, his mutterings, his gruntings, his puffings, his vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence, his sarcastic wit, his vehemence, his insolence, his fits of tem- 2opestuous rage, his queer inmates, old Mr. Levett and blind Mrs. Williams, the cat Hodge and the negro Frank, all are as familiar to us as the objects by which we have been surrounded from childhood. But we have no minute information respecting those 25 years of Johnson's life during which his character and his manners became immutably fixed. We know him, not as he was known to the men of his own generation, but as he was known to men whose father he might have been. That celebrated club of which 30 he was the most distinguished member contained few persons who could remember a time when his fame was not fully established and his habits completely 34 MACAULAY ON formed. He had made himself a name in literature while Reynolds and the Wartons were still boys. He was about twenty years older than Burke, Goldsmith, and Gerard Hamilton, about thirty years older than Gibbon, Beauclerk, and Langton, and about forty 5 years older than Lord Stowell, Sir William Jones, and Windham. Boswell and Mrs. Thrale, the two writers from whom we derive most of our knowledge respect- ing him, never saw him till long after he was fifty years old, till most of his great works had become 10 classical, and till the pension bestowed on him by the Crown had placed him above poverty. Of those eminent men who were his most intimate associates toward the close of his life, the only one, as far as we remember, who knew him during the first ten or 15 twelve years of his residence in the capital, was David Garrick; and it does not appear that, during those years, David Garrick saw much of his fellow-towns- man. Johnson came up to London precisely at the time 20 when the condition of a man of letters was most miser- able and degraded. It was a dark night between two sunny days. The age of patronage had passed away. The age of general curiosity and intelligence had not arrived. The number of readers is at 25" present so great that a popular author may subsist in comfort and opulence on the profits of his works. In the reigns of William the Third, of Anne, and of George the First, even such men as Congreve and Addison would scarcely have been able to live like 30 gentlemen by the mere sale of their writings. But the deficiency of the natural demand for literature BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 35 was, at the close of the seventeenth and at the begin- ning of the eighteenth century, more than made up by artificial encouragement, by a vast system of bounties and premiums. There was, perhaps, never a time at 5 which the rewards of literary merit were so splendid, at which men who could write well found such easy admittance into the most distinguished society, and to the highest honors of the state. The chiefs of both the great parties into which the kingdom was 10 divided patronized literature with emulous munifi- cence. Congreve, when he had scarcely attained his majority, was rewarded for his first comedy with places which made him independent for life. Smith, though his Hippolytus and Phaedra failed, would have 15 been consoled with three hundred a year but for his own folly. Rowe was not only Poet Laureate, but also land-surveyor of the customs in the port of Lon- don, clerk of the council to the Prince of Wales, and secretary of the Presentations to the Lord Chan- 2ocellor. Hughes was secretary to the Commissions of the Peace. Ambrose Philips was judge of the Prerog- ative Court in Ireland. Locke was Commissioner of Appeals and of the Board of Trade. Newton was Master of the Mint. Stepney and Prior were em- 25 ployed in embassies of high dignity and importance. Gay, who commenced life as apprentice to a silk mercer, became a secretary of legation at five-and- twenty. It was to a poem on the Death of Charles the Second, and to the City and Country Mouse, that 30 Montague owed his introduction into public life, his earldom, his garter, and his Auditorship of the Ex- chequer. Swift, but for the unconquerable prejudice] 36 MA CAUL AY OAT of the queen, would have been a bishop. Oxford, with his white staff in liis hand, passed through the crowd of his suitors to welcome Parnell, when that ingenious writer deserted the Whigs. Steele was a commissioner of stamps and a member of Parliament. Arthur 5. Mainwaring was a commissioner of the customs, and auditor of the imprest. Tickell was secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland. Addison was secretary of state. This liberal patronage was brought into fashion, as 10 it seems, by the magnificent Dorset, almost the only noble versifier in the court of Charles the Second who possessed talents for composition which were inde- pendent of the aid of a coronet. Montague owed his elevation to the favor of Dorset, and imitated 15 through the whole course of his life the liberality to which he was himself so greatly indebted. The Tory leaders, Harley and Bolingbroke in particular, vied with the chiefs of the Whig party in zeal for the encouragement of letters. But soon after the acces- 20 sion of the house of Hanover a change took place. The supreme power passed to a man who cared little for poetry or eloquence. The importance of the House of Commons was constantly on the increase. The government was under the necessity of bartering 25 for parliamentary support much of that patronage which had been employed in fostering literary merit; and Walpole was by no means inclined to divert any part of the fund of corruption to purposes which he con- sidered as idle. He had eminent- talents for govern- 30 ment and for debate. But he had paid little attention to books, and felt little respect for authors. One of BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 37 the coarse jokes of his friend, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, was far more pleasing to him than Thomson's Seasons or Richardson's Pamela. He had observed that some of the distinguished writers whom the favor 5 of Halifax had turned into statesmen had been mere encumbrances to their party, dawdlers in office, and mutes in Parliament. During the whole course of his administration, therefore, he scarcely befriended a single man of genius. The best writers of the age logave all their support to the opposition, and contrib- uted to excite that discontent which, after plunging the nation into a foolish and unjust war, overthrew the minister to make room for men less able and equally immoral. The opposition could reward its 15 eulogists with little more than promises and caresses. St. James's would give nothing: Leicester house had nothing to give. Thus, at the time when Johnson commenced his literary career, a writer had little to hope from the 20 patronage of powerful individuals. The patronage of the public did not yet furnish the means of com- fortable subsistence. The prices paid by booksellers to authors were so low that a man of considerable talents and unremitting industry could do little more 25 than provide for the day which was passing over him. The lean kine had eaten up the fat kine. The thin and withered ears had devoured the good ears. The season of rich harvests was over, and the period of famine had begun. All that is squalid and miserable 30 might now be sun\rned up in the word Poet. That word denoted a creature dressed like a scarecrow, familiar with compters and sponging-houses, and per- 38 MACAULAY ON fectly qualified to decide on the comparative merits of the Common Side in the King's Bench prison and of Mount Scoundrel in the Fleet. Even the poorest pitied him; and they well might pity him. For if their condition was equally abject, their aspirings were 5 not equally high, nor their sense of insult equally acute. To lodge in a garret up four pair of stairs, to dine in a cellar among footmen out of place, to translate ten hours a day for the wages of a ditcher, to be hunted by bailiffs from one haunt of beggary 10 and pestilence to another, from Grub Street to St. George's Fields, and from St. George's Fields to the alleys behind St. Martin's church, to sleep on a bulk in June and amidst the ashes of a glass-house in December, to die in an hospital and to be buried in 15 a parish vault, was the fate of more than one writer who, if he had lived thirty years earlier, would have been admitted to the sittings of the Kitcat or the Scriblerus club, would have sat in Parliament, and would have been intrusted with embassies to the High 20 Allies; who, if he had lived in our time, would have found encouragement scarcely less munificent in Albemarle Street or in Paternoster Row. As every climate has its peculiar diseases, so every walk of life has its peculiar temptations. The literary 25 character, assuredly, has always had its share of faults: vanity, jealousy, morbid sensibility. To these faults were now superadded the faults which are commonly found in men whose livelihood is precarious and whose principles are exposed to the trial of severe 30 distress. All the vices of the gambler and of the beggar were blended with those of the author. The BO SWELLS LIFE OF J OIL N SON. 39 prizes in the wretched lottery of book-making were scarcely less ruinous than the blanks. If good for- tune came, it came in such a manner that it was almost certain to be abused. After months of starvation and 5 despair, a full third night or a well-received dedica- tion filled the pocket of the lean, ragged, unwashed poet with guineas. He hastened to enjoy those lux- uries with the images of which his mind had been haunted while he was sleeping amidst the cinders and 10 eating potatoes at the Irish ordinary in Shoe Lane. A week of taverns soon qualified him for another year of night-cellars. Such was the life of Savage, of Boyse, and of a crowd of others. Sometimes blaz- ing in gold-laced hats and waistcoats; sometimes 15 lying in bed because tlieir coats had gone to pieces, or wearing paper cravats because their linen was in pawn ; sometimes drinking Champagne and Tokay with Betty Careless; sometimes standing at the window of an eating-house in Porridge island, to snuff 20 up the scent of what they could not afford to taste: they knew luxury; they knew beggary; but they never knew comfort. These men were irreclaimable. They looked on a regular and frugal life with the same aversion which an old gypsy or a Mohawk hunter 25 feels for a stationary abode and for the restraints and securities of civilized communities. They were as un- tameable, as much wedded to their desolate freedom, as the wild ass. They could no more be broken in to the offices of social man than the unicorn could be 30 trained to serve and abide by the crib. It was well if they did not, like beasts of a still fiercer race, tear the hands which minstered to their necessities. To 40 MACAULAY ON assist them was impossible; and the most benevolent of mankind at length became weary of giving relief which was dissipated with the wildest profusion as soon as it had been received. If a sum was bestowed on the wretched adventurer, such as, properly hus- 5 banded, might have supplied him for six months, it was instantly spent in strange freaks of sensuality, and, before forty-eight hours had elapsed, the poet was again pestering all his acquaintance for twopence to get a plate of shin of beef at a subterraneous cook- 10 shop. If his friends gave him an asylum in their houses, those houses were forthwith turned into bagnios and taverns. All order was destroyed; all business was suspended. The most good-natured host began to repent of his eagerness to serve a man 15 of genius in distress when he heard his guest roaring for fresh punch at five o'clock in the morning. A few eminent writers were more fortunate. Pope had been raised above poverty by the active patronage which, in his youth, both the great political parties 20 had extended to his Homer, Young had received the only pension ever bestowed, to the best of our recol- lection, by Sir Robert Walpole, as the reward of mere literary merit. One or two of the many poets who attached themselves to the opposition, Thomson in 25 particular and Mallet, obtained, after much severe suffering, the means of subsistence from their political friends. Richardson, like a man of sense, kept his shop; and his shop kept him, which his novels, admirable as they are, would scarcely have done But 30 nothing could be more deplorable than the state even of the ablest men, who at that time depended for sub- BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 41 sistence on their writings. Johnson, Collins, Field- ing, and Thomson, were certainly four of the most distinguished persons that England produced during the eighteenth century. It is well known that they 5 were all four arrested for debt. Into calamities and difficulties such as these John- son plunged in his twenty-eighth year. From that time till he was three or four and fifty, we have little information respecting him; little, we mean, com- 10 pared wdth the full and accurate information which we possess respecting his proceedings and habits towards the close of his life. He emerged at length from cock-lofts and sixpenny ordinaries into the society of the polished and the opulent. His fame 15 w^as established. A pension sufficient for his wants had been conferred on him; and he came forth to astonish a generation with which he had almost as little in common as with Frenchmen or Spaniards. In his early years he had occasionally seen the great ; 20 but he had seen' them as a beggar. He now came among them as a companion. The demand for amuse- ment and instruction had, during the course of tw^enty years, been gradually increasing. The price of literary labor had risen ; and those rising men of letters 25 with whom Johnson was henceforth to associate were for the most part persons widely different from those who had walked about with him all night in the streets for want of a lodging. Burke, Robertson, the War- tons, Gray, Mason, Gibbon, Adam Smith, Beattie, 30 Sir William Jones, Goldsmith, and Churchill, were the most distinguished writers of Avhat may be called the second generation of the Johnsonian age. Of 42 MACAULAY ON these men Churchill was the only one in whom we can trace the stronger lineaments of that character which, when Johnson first came up to London, was common among authors. Of the rest, scarcely any had felt the pressure of severe poverty. Almost all had been 5 early admitted into the most respectable society on an equal footing. They were men of quite a differ- ent species from the dependents of Curll and Osborne. Johnson came among them the solitary specimen of a past age, the last survivor of the genuine race of 10 Grub Street hacks; the last of that generation of authors whose abject misery and whose dissolute man- ners had furnished inexhaustible matter to the satirical genius of Pope. From nature he had received an uncouth figure, a diseased constitution, and an irri- 15 table temper. The manner in which the earlier years of his manhood had passed had given to his de- meanor, and even to his moral character, some pecu- liarities appalling to the civilized beings w'ho were the companions of his old age. The perverse irregularity 20 of his hours, the slovenliness of his person, his fits of strenuous exertion, interrupted by long intervals of sluggishness, his strange abstinence, and his equally strange voracity, his active benevolence, contrasted with the constant rudeness and the occasional ferocity 25 of his manners in society, made him, in the opinion of those with wdiom he lived during the last twenty years of his life, a complete original. An original he was, undoubtedly, in some respects. But if we pos- sessed full information concerning those who shared 30 his early hardships, we should probably find that what we call his singularities of manner were, for the most BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 43 part, failings which he had in common with the class to which he belonged. He ate at Streatham Park as he had used to eat behind the screen at St. John's Gate, when he was ashamed to show his ragged 5 clothes. He ate as it was natural that a man should eat, who, during a great part of his life, had passed the morning in doubt whether he should have food for the afternoon. The habits of his early life had accus- tomed him to bear privation with fortitude, but not 10 to taste pleasure with moderation. He could fast; but when he did not fast, he tore his dinner like a famished wolf, with the veins swelling on his fore- head, and the perspiration running down his cheeks. He scarcely ever took wine ; but when he drank it 15 he drank it greedily and in large tumblers. These were, in fact, mitigated symptoms of that same moral disease which raged with such deadly malignity in his friends Savage and Boyse. The roughness and violence which he showed in society were to be 20 expected from a man whose temper, not naturally gentle, had been long tried by the bitterest calamities, by the want of meat, of fire, and of clothes, by the importunity of creditors, by the insolence of book- sellers, by the derision of fools, by the insincerity of 25 patrons, by that bread which is the bitterest of all food, by those stairs which are the most toilsome of all paths, by that deferred hope which makes the heart sick. Through all these things the ill-dressed, coarse, ungainly peda,nl had struggled manfully up to emi- 3onence and command. It was natural that, in the exercise of his power, he should be "eo immitior, quia toleraverat," that, though his heart was un- 44 MACAULA V ON' doubtedly generous and humane, his demeanor in society should be harsh and despotic. For severe distress he had sympathy, and not only sympathy, but munificent relief. But for the suffering which a harsh world inflicts upon a delicate mind he had no 5 pity ; for it was a kind of suffering which he could scarcely conceive. He would carry home on his - shoulders a sick and starving girl from the streets. He turned his house into a place of refuge for a crowd of wretched old creatures who could find no 10 other asylum; nor could all their peevishness and ingratitude weary out his benevolence. But the pangs of wounded vanity seemed to him ridiculous; and he scarcely felt sufficient compassion even for the pangs of wounded affection. He had seen and felt so much 15 of sharp misery, that he was not affected by paltry vexations; and he seemed to think that every body ought to be as much hardened to those vexations as himself. He was angry with Boswell for complaining of a headache, with Ivlrs. Thrale for grumbling about 20 the dust on the road or the smell of the kitchen. These were, in his phrase, "foppish lamentations," which people ought to be ashamed to utter in a world so full of sin and sorrow. Goldsmith crying because the Good-natured Man had failed, inspired him with 25 no pity. Though his own health was not good, he detested and despised valetudinarians. Pecuniary losses, unless they reduced the loser absolutely to beggary, moved him very little. People whose hearts had been softened by prosperity might weep, he said, 30 for such events; but all that could be expected of a plain man was not to laugh. He was not much BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 45 moved even by the spectacle of Lady Tavistock dying of a broken heart for the loss of her lord. Such grief he considered as a luxury reserved for the idle and the wealthy. A washerwoman, left a widow with 5 nine small children, would not have sobbed herself to death. A person who troubled himself so little about small or sentimental grievances was not likely to be very attentive to the feelings of others in the ordinary in- lotercourse of society. He could not understand how a sarcasm or a reprimand could make any man really unhappy. "My dear doctor," said he to Goldsmith, "what harm does it do to a man to call him Holo- fernes?" "Pooh, ma'am," he exclaimed to Mrs. 15 Carter, "who is the worse for being talked of un- charitably?" Politeness has been well defined as benevolence in small things. Johnson was impolite, not because he wanted benevolence, but because small things appeared smaller to him than to people who 20 had never known what it was to live for fourpence halfpenny a day. The characteristic peculiarity of his intellect was the union of great powers with low prejudices. If we judge of him by the best parts of his mind, we should 25 place him almost as high as he was placed by the idolatry of Boswell; if by the worst parts of his mind, we should place him even below Boswell himself. Where he was not under the influence of some strange scruple or some domineering passion, which prevented 30 him from boldly and fairly investigating a subject, he was a wary and acute reasoner, a little too much inclined to scepticism, and a little too fond of paradox. 4^ MACAULAY ON No man was less likely to be imposed upon by falla- cies in argument or by exaggerated statements of fact. But if, while he was beating down sophisms and exposing false testimony, some childish preju- dices, such as would excite laughter in a well managed 5 nursery, came across him, he was smitten as if by enchantment. His mind dwindled away under the spell from gigantic elevation to dwarfish littleness. Those who had lately been admiring its amplitude and its force were now as much astonished at its 10 strange narrowness and feebleness as the fisherman in the Arabian tale, when he saw the Genie, whose stature had overshadowed the whole sea-coast, and . whose might seemed equal to a contest with armies, contract himself to the dimensions of his small 15 prison, and lie there the helpless slave of the charm of Solomon. Johnson was in the habit of sifting with extreme severity the evidence for all stories which were merely odd. But when they were not only odd but miracu- 20 lous, his severity relaxed. He began to be credulous precisely at the point where the most credulous people begin to be sceptical. It is curious to observe, both in his writings and in his conversation, the con- trast between the disdainful manner in which he 25 rejects unauthenticated anecdotes, even when they are consistent with the general laws of nature, and the respectful manner in which he mentions the wildest stories relating to the invisible world. A man who told him of a water-spout or a meteoric stone gener- 30 ally had the lie direct given him for his pains. A man who told him of a prediction or a dream wonder- BO SWELL'S LLFE OF JOHNSON. 47 fully accomplished was sure of a courteous hearing. "Johnson," observed Hogarth, "like King David, says in his haste that all men are liars." "His in- credulity," says Mrs. Thrale, "amounted almost to 5 disease." She tells us how he browbeat a gentleman who gave him an account of a hurricane in the West Indies, and a poor quaker who related some strange circumstance about the red-hot balls fired at the siege of Gibraltar. "It is not so; it cannot be true. Don't lo tell that story again. You cannot think how poor a figure you make in telling it." He once said, half jestingly, we suppose, that for six months he refused to credit the fact of the earthquake at Lisbon, and that he still believed the extent of the calamity to be 15 greatly exaggerated. Yet he related with a grave face how old Mr. Cave of St. John's Gate saw a ghost, and how this ghost was something of a shadowy being. He went himself on a ghost-hunt to Cock Lane, and was angry with John Wesley for not follow- 2oingup another scent of the same kind with proper spirit and perseverance. He rejects the Celtic gene- alogies and poems without the least hesitation; yet he declares himself willing to believe the stories of the second sight. If he had examined the claims of the 25 Highland seers with half the severity with which he sifted the evidence for the genuineness of Fingal, he . would, we suspect, have come away from Scotland with a mind fully made up. In his Lives of the Poets, we find that he is unwilling to give credit to 30 the accounts of Lord Roscommon's early proficiency in his studies; but he tells with great solemnity an absurd romance about some intelligence preternatu- 48 MACAULAY O.V rally impressed on the mind of that nobleman. He avows himself to be in great doubt about the truth of the stor}', and ends by warning his readers not wholly to slight such impressions. Many of his sentiments on religious subjects are 5 worthy of a liberal and enlarged mind. He could discern clearly enough the folly and meanness of all bigotry except his own. When he spoke of the scruples of the Puritans, he spoke like a person who had really obtained an insight into the divine phi- 10 losophy of the New Testament, and who considered Christianity as a noble scheme of government, tend- ing to promote the happiness and to elevate the moral nature of man. The horror which the sectaries felt for cards, Christmas ale, plum-porridge, mince-pies, 15 and dancing bears excited his contempt. To the arguments urged by some very worthy people against showy dress he replied with admirable sense and spirit, "Let us not be found, when our Master calls us, stripping the lace off our waistcoats, but the spirit 20 of contention from our souls and tongues. Alas! sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one." Yet he was himself under the tyranny of scruples as unreasonable as those of Hudibras or Ralpho, and 25 carried his zeal for ceremonies and for ecclesiastical dignities to lengths altogether inconsistent with reason or with Christian charity. He has gravely noted down in his diary that he once committed the sin of drinking coffee on Good Friday. In Scotland he 30 thought it his duty to pass several months without joining in public worship solely because the ministers BOSWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSOi^f. 49 of the kirk had not been ordained by bishops. His mode of estimating the piety of his neighbors was somewhat singular. "Campbell," said he, "is a good man, a pious man. I am afraid he has not been in 5 the inside of a church for many years; but he never passes a church without pulling off his hat: this shows he has good principles." Spain and Sicily must surely contain many pious robbers and well- principled assassins. Johnson could easily see that loa Roundhead who named all his children after Sol- omon's singers, and talked in the House of Commons about seeking the Lord, might be an unprincipled villain, whose religious mummeries only aggravated his guilt. But a man who took off his hat when 15 he passed a church episcopally consecrated must be a good man, a pious man, a man of good principles. Johnson could easily see that those persons who looked on a dance or a laced waistcoat as sinful, deemed most ignobly of the attributes of God and of 20 the ends of revelation. But with what a storm of invective he would have overwhelmed any man who had blamed him for celebrating the redemption of mankind with sugarless tea and butterless buns. Nobody spoke more contemptuously of the cant of 25 patriotism. Nobody saw more clearly the error of those who regarded liberty not as a means but as an end, and who proposed to themselves, as the object of their pursuit, the prosperity of the state as distinct from the prosperity of the individuals who compose 30 the state. His calm and settled opinion seems to have been that forms of government have little or no influence on the happiness of society. This opinion. so MACAULAY OAT erroneous as it is, ought at least to have preserved him from all intemperance on political questions. It did not, however, preserve him from the lowest, fiercest, and most absurd extravagances of party spirit, from rants which, in every thing but the diction, resembled 5 those of Squire Western. He was, as a politician, half ice and half fire. On the side of his intellect he was a mere Pococurante, far too apathetic about public affairs, far too sceptical as to the good or evil tendency of any form of polity. His passions, on 10 the contrary, w^ere violent even to slaying against all w^ho leaned to Whiggish principles. The w^ell-know^n lines which he inserted in Goldsmith's Traveller express what seems to have been his deliberate judgment: 15 " How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which kings or laws can cause or cure ! " He had previously put expressions very similar into the mouth of Rasselas. It is amusing to contrast these passages with the torrents of raving abuse W'hich 20 he poured forth against the Long Parliament and the American Congress. In one of the conversations reported by Boswell this inconsistency displays itself in the most ludicrous manner. "Sir Adam Ferguson," says Boswell, "suggested 25 that luxury corrupts a people and destroys the spirit of liberty. Johnson: Sir, that is all visionary. I w^ould not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual. Sir, the danger 30 of the abuse of power is nothing to a private man. JBOSWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 5 1 What 'Frenchman is prevented passing his life as he pleases?" Sir Adam: "But, sir, in the British con- stitution it is surely of importance to keep up a spirit in the people, so as to preserve a balance against the 5 crown." Johnson: "Sir, I perceive you are a vile Whig. Why all this childish jealousy of the power of the crown? The crown has not power enough." One of the old philosophers. Lord Bacon tells us, used to say that life and death were just the same to 10 him. "Why then," said an objector, "do you not kill yourself ?" The philosopher answered, "Because it is just the same." If the difference between two forms of government be not worth half a guinea, it is not easy to see how Whiggism can be viler than Tory- 15 ism, or how the crown can have too little power. If the happiness of individuals is not affected by political abuses, zeal for liberty is doubtless ridiculous. But zeal for monarchy must be equally so. No person could have been more quick-sighted than Johnson 20 to such a contradiction as this in the logic of an antagonist. The judgments which Johnson passed on books were, in his own time, regarded with superstitious veneration, and, in our time, are generally treated 25 with indiscriminate contempt. They are the judg- ments of a strong but enslaved understanding. The mind of the critic was hedged round by an uninter- rupted fence of prejudices and superstitions. Within his narrow limits he displayed a vigor and an activity 30 which ought to have enabled him to clear the barrier that confined him. How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his 52 MACAULAY ON premises so ably should assume his premises so foolishly, is one of the great mysteries of human nature. The same inconsistency may be observed in the schoolmen of the middle ages. Those Avriters show so much acuteness and force of mind in argu- 5 ing on their wretched data, that a modern reader is perpetually at a loss to comprehend how such minds came by such data. Not a flaw in the superstructure of the theory which they are rearing escapes their vigilance. Yet they are blind to the obvious unsound- 10 ness of the foundation. It is the same with some eminent lawyers. Their legal arguments are intellec- tual prodigies, abounding with the happiest analogies and the most refined distinctions. The principles of their arbitrary science being once admitted, the statute- 15 book and the reports being once assumed as the foun- dations of reasoning, these men must be allowed to be perfect masters of logic. But if a question arises as to the postulates on which their whole system rests, if they are called upon to vindicate the funda- 20 mental maxims of that system which they have passed their lives in studying, these very men often talk the languages of savages or of children. Those who have listened to a man of this class in his own court, and who have witnessed the skill with which he analyzes 25 and digests a vast mass of evidence, or reconciles a crowd of precedents which at first sight seem contra- dictory, scarcely know him again when a few hours later, they hear him speaking on the other side of Westminster Hall in his capacity of legislator. They 30 can scarcely believe that the paltry quirks which are faintly heard through a storm of coughing, and which BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHN SO iV. 53 do not impose on the plainest country gentleman, can proceed from the same sharp and vigorous intellect which had excited their admiration under the same roof and on the same day. 5 Johnson decided literary questions like a lawyer, not like a legislator. He never examined foundations where a point was already ruled. His whole code of criticism rested on pure assumption, for which he sometimes quoted a precedent or an authority, but 10 rarely troubled himself to give a reason drawn from the nature of things. He took it for granted that the kind of poetry which flourished in his own time, which he had been accustomed to hear praised from his childhood, and which he had himself written with 15 success, was the best kind of poetry. In his bio- graphical work he has repeatedly laid it down as an undeniable proposition that during the latter part of the seventeenth century, and the earlier part of the eighteenth, English poetry had been in a constant 20 progress of improvement. Waller, Denham, Dryden, and Pope had been, according to him, the great reformers. He judged of all works of the imagination by the standard established among his own contem- poraries. Though he allowed Homer to have been 25 a greater man than Virgil, he seems to have thought the ^neid a greater poem than the Iliad. Indeed he well might have thought so; for he preferred Pope's Iliad to Homer's. He pronounced that, after Hoole's translation of Tasso, Fairfax's would hardly be 30 reprinted. He could see no merit in our fine old English ballads, and always spoke with the most pro- voking contempt of Percy's fondness for them. Of 54 MA CAUL AY OJV the great original works of imagination which appeared during his time, Richardson's novels alone excited his admiration. He could see little or no merit in Tom Jones, in Gulliver's Travels, or in Tristram Shandy. To Thomson's Castle of Indolence he 5 vouchsafed only a line of cold commendation, of commendation much colder than what he has bestowed on the Creation of that portentous bore, Sir Richard Blackmore. Gray was, in his dialect, a barren rascal. Churchill was a blockhead. The contempt which he 10 felt for the trash of Macpherson was indeed just; but it was, we suspect, just by chance. He despised the Fin gal for the very reason which led many men of genius to admire it. He despised it, not because it was essentially commonplace, but because it had a 15 superficial air of originality. He was undoubtedly an excellent judge of com- positions fashioned on his own principles. But when a deeper philosophy was required, when he under- took to pronounce judgment on the works of those 20 great minds which "yield homage only to eternal laws," his failure was ignominious. He criticised Pope's Epitaphs excellently. But his observations on Shakespeare's plays and Milton's poems seem to us for the most part as wretched as if they had been 25 written by Rymer himself, whom we take to have been the worst critic that ever lived. Some of Johnson's whims on literary subjects can be compared only to that strange nervous feeling which made him uneasy if he had not touched every 30 post between the Mitre tavern and his own lodgings. His preference of Latin epitaphs to English epitaphs BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHN SO I^. 55 is an instance. An English epitaph, he said, would disgrace Smollett. He declared that he would not pollute the walls of Westminster Abbey with an Eng- lish epitaph on Goldsmith. What reason there can 5 be for celebrating a British writer in Latin, which there was not for covering the Roman arches of tri- umph with Greek inscriptions, or for commemorating the deeds of the heroes of Thermopylae in Egyptian hieroglyphics, we are utterly unable to imagine. 10 On men and manners, at least on the men and man- ners of a particular place and a particular age, John- son had certainly looked with a most observant and discriminating eye. His remarks on the education of children, on marriage, on the economy of families, 15 on the rules of society, are always striking, and gener- ally sound. In his writings, indeed, the knowledge of life which he possessed in an eminent degree is very imperfectly exhibited. Like those unfortunate chiefs of the middle ages who were suffocated by their 20 own chain-mail and cloth of gold, his maxims perish under that load of words which was designed for their defence and their ornament. But it is clear, from the remains of his conversation, that he had more of that homely wisdom which nothing but ex- 25 perience and observation can give than any writer t since the time of Swift. If he had been content to / write as he talked, he might have left books on the practical art of living superior to the Directions to ' Servants. 30 Yet even his remarks on society, like his remarks on literature, indicate a mind at least as remarkable for narrowness as for strength. He was no master 56 MACAULA V OAT of the great science of human nature. He had studied, not the genus man, but the species Lon- doner. Nobody was ever so thoroughly conversant with all the forms of life and all the shades of moral and intellectual character which were to be seen from 5 Islington to the Thames, and from Hyde-Park corner to Mile-end green. But his philosophy stopped at the first turnpike-gate. Of the rural life of England he knew nothing; and he took it for granted that every body who lived in the country was either stupid 10 or miserable. "Country gentlemen," said he, "must be unhappy; for they have not enough to keep their lives in motion;" as if all those peculiar habits and associations w^hich made Fleet Street and Charing Cross the finest views in the world to himself had 15 been essential parts of human nature. Of remote countries and past times he talked with wild and ignorant presumption. "The Athenians of the age of Demosthenes," he said to Mrs. Thrale, "were a people of brutes, a barbarous people." In conversa- 20 tion with Sir Adam Ferguson he used similar lan- guage. "The boasted Athenians," he said, "were barbarians. The mass of every people must be bar- barous where there is no printing." The fact was this: he saw that a Londoner who could not read was 25 a very stupid and brutal fellow; he saw that great refinement of taste and activity of intellect were rarely found in a Londoner who had not read much; and, because it was by means of books that people acquired almost all their knowledge in the society with which 30 he was acquainted, he concluded, in defiance of the strongest and clearest evidence, that the human mind BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOILNSON. 57 can be cultivated by means of books alone. An Athenian citizen might possess very few volumes; and the largest library to which he had access might be much less valuable than Johnson's bookcase in 5 Bolt Court. But the Athenian might pass every morning in conversation with Socrates, and might hear Pericles speak four or five times every month. He saw the plays of Sophocles and Aristophanes ; he walked amidst the friezes of Phidias and the paintings loof Zeuxis; he knew by heart the choruses of ^s- chylus; he heard the rhapsodist at the corner of the street reciting the shield of Achilles or the Death of Argus; he was a legislator, conversant with high questions of alliance, revenue, and war; he w^as a 15 soldier, trained under a liberal and generous disci- pline; he was a judge, compelled every day to weigh the effect of opposite arguments. These things were in themselves an education, an education eminently fitted, not, indeed, to form exact or profound thinkers, 20 but to give quickness to the perceptions, delicacy to the taste, fluency to the expression, and politeness to the manners. All this was overlooked. An Athenian who did not improve his mind by reading was, in Johnson's opinion, much such a person as a Cockney 25 who made his mark, much such a person as black Frank before he went to school, and far inferior to a parish clerk or a printer's devil. Johnson's friends have allowed that he carried to a ridiculous extreme his unjust contempt for for- 3oeigners. He pronounced the French to be a very silly people, much behind us, stupid, ignorant creatures. And this judgment he formed after having been at 5 8 MA CAUL AY ON Paris about a month, during which he would not talk French, for fear of giving the natives an advantage over him in conversation. He pronounced them, also, to be an indelicate people, because a French footman touched the sugar with his fingers. That 5 ingenious and amusing traveller, M. Simond, has defended his countrymen very successfully against Johnson's accusation, and has pointed out some English practices which, to an impartial spectator, would seem at least as inconsistent with physical 10 cleanliness and social decorum as those which John- son so bitterly reprehended. To the sage, as Boswell loves to call him, it never occurred to doubt that there must be something eternally and immutably good in the usages to which he had been accustomed. In 15 fact, Johnson's remarks on society beyond the bills of mortality are generally of much the same kind with those of honest Tom Dawson, the English footman in Dr. Moore's Zeiuco. "Suppose the king of France has no sons, but only a daughter, then, wdien the king 20 dies, this here daughter, according to that there law, cannot be made queen, but the next near relative, provided he is a man, is made king, and not the last king's daughter, which, to be sure, is very unjust. The French foot-guards are dressed in blue, and all 25 the marching regiments in white, which has a very foolish appearance for soldiers; and as for blue regi- mentals, it is only fit for the blue horse or the artillery." Johnson's visit to the Hebrides introduced him to 30 a state of society completely new to him; and a salu- tary suspicion of his own deficiencies seems on that BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 59 occasion to have crossed his mind for the first time. He confessed, in the last paragraph of his Journey, that his thoughts on national manners were the thoughts of one who had seen but little, of one who had passed 5 his time almost wholly in cities. This feeling, how- ever, soon passed away. It is remarkable that to the last he entertained a fixed contempt for all those modes of life and those studies which tend to eman- cipate the mind from the prejudices of a particular loage or a particular nation. Of foreign travel and of history he spoke with the fierce and boisterous con- tempt of ignorance. "What does a man learn by travelling? Is Beauclerk the better for travelling? What did Lord Charlemont learn in his travels, except 15 that there was a snake in one of the Pyramids of Egypt?" History was, in his opinion, to use the fine expression of Lord Plunkett, an old almanac; histor- ians could, as he conceived, claim no higher dignity than that of almanac-makers; and his favorite histori- 2oans were those who, like Lord Hailes, aspired to no higher dignity. He always spoke with contempt of Robertson. Hume he would not even read. He affronted one of his friends for talking to him about Catiline's conspiracy, and declared that he never 25 desired to hear of the Punic war again as long as he lived. Assuredly one fact which does not directly affect our own interests, considered in itself, is no better worth knowing than another fact. The fact that there 30 is a snake in a pyramid, or the fact that Hannibal crossed the Alps, are in themselves as unprofitable to us as the fact that there is a green blind in a particu- 6o MACAU LA V ON lar house in Threadneedle Street, or the fact that a Mr. Smith comes into the city every morning on the top of one of the Blackwall stages. But it is certain that those who will not crack the shell of history will never get at the kernel. Johnson, with hasty arro- 5 gance, pronounced the kernel worthless, because he saw no value in the shell. The real use of travelling to distant countries and of studying the annals of past times is to preserve men from the contraction of mind which those can hardly escape whose whole communion 10 is with one generation and one neighborhood, who arrive at conclusions by means of an induction not sufficiently copious, and who therefore constantly confound exceptions with rules, and accidents with essential properties. In short, the real use of travel- 15 ling and of studying history is to keep men from being what Tom Dawson was in fiction and Samuel John- son in reality. Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, appears far greater in Boswell's books than in his own. His 20 conversation appears to have been quite equal to his writings in matter, and far superior to them in manner. When he talked, he clothed his wit and his sense in forcible and natural expressions. As soon as he took his pen in his hand to write for the public, his style 25 became systematically vicious. All his books are written in a learned language, in a language which nobody hears from his mother or his nurse, in a lan- guage in which nobody ever quarrels, or drives bar- gains, or makes love, in a language in which nobody 30 ever thinks. It is clear that Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in which he wrote. The expres- ii>^' BOSVVELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 6i sions which came first to his tongue were simple, energetic, and picturesque. When he wrote for pub- lication, he did his sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. 5 Thrale are the original of that work of which the Journey to the Hebrides is the translation; and it is amusing to compare the two versions. "When we were taken upstairs," says he in one of his letters, "a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of 10 us was to lie." This incident is recorded in the Journey as follows : "Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose started up, at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge." Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. "The Rehearsal," he 15 said, very unjustly, "has not wit enough to keep it sweet;" then, after a pause, "it has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction." Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even agreeable, when the manner, though vicious, is natural. 20 Few readers, for example, would be willing to part with the mannerism of Milton or of Burke, But a mannerism which does not sit easy on the mannerist, which has been adopted on principle, and which can be sustained only by constant effort, is always offen- 25 sive. And such is the mannerism of Johnson. The characteristic faults of his style are so familiar to all our readers, and have been so often burlesqued, that it is almost superfluous to point them out. It is well known that he made less use than any other emi- 3onent writer of those strong plain w^ords, Anglo-Saxon or Norman-French, of which the roots lie in the inmost depths of our language; and that he felt a 62 MACAULA V ON vicious partiality for terms which long after our own speech had been fixed, were borrowed from the Greek and Latin, and which, therefore, even when lawfully- naturalized, must be considered as born aliens, not entitled to rank with the king's English. His con- 5 stant practice of padding out a sentence with useless epithets, till it became as stiff as the bust of an exquisite, his antithetical forms of expression, con- stantly employed even where there is no opposition in the ideas expressed, his big words wasted on little 10 things, his harsh inversions, so widely different from those graceful and easy inversions which give variety, spirit, and sweetness to the expression of our great old writers, all these peculiarities have been imitated by his admirers and parodied by his assailants, till the 15 public has become sick of the subject. Goldsmith said to him, very wittily and very justly, "If you were to write a fable about little fishes, doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like whales." No man surely ever had so little talent for 20 personation as Johnson. Whether he wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-hunter or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he wrote in the same pompous and unbending style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shafton's Euphuistic elo- 25 quence, bewrayed him under every disguise. Eu- phelia and Rhodoclea talk as finely as Imlac the poet, or Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia. The gay Cornelia describes her reception at the country-house of her relations in such terms as these: "I was surprised, 30 after the civilities of my first reception, to find, instead of the leisure and tranquillity which a rural life always BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. d^ promises, and, if well conducted, might always afford, a confused wildness of care, and a tumultuous hurry of diligence, by which every face was clouded and every motion agitated." The gentle Tranquilla 5 informs us that she "had not passed the earlier part of life without the flattery of courtship and the joys of triumph ; but had danced the round of gaiety amidst the murmurs of envy and the gratulations of applause, had been attended from pleasure to pleasure loby the great, the sprightly, and the vain, and had seen her regard solicited by the obsequiousness of gal- lantry, the gaiety of wit, and the timidity of love." Surely Sir John Falstaff himself did not wear his petticoats with a worse grace. The reader may well 15 cry out, with honest Sir Hugh Evans, "I like not when a 'oman has a great peard: I spy a great peard under her mufiler. " ' We had something more to say. But our article is already too long; and we must close it. We would 20 fain part in-good humor from the hero, from the bio- grapher, and even from the editor, who, ill as he has performed his task, has at least this claim to our grati- tude, that he has induced us to read Boswell's book again. As we close it the club-room is before us, and 25 the table on which stands the omelet for Nugent and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those heads which live forever on the canvass of Reynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke and the tall thin form of Langton, the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and 30 ' It is proper to observe that this passage bears a very close resemblance to a passage in the "Rambler" (No. 20). The resemblance may possibly be the effect of unconscious plagiarism. 64 BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. the beaming smile of Garrick, Gibbon tapping his snuff-box and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we have been brought up, the gigantic body, the huge 5 massy face, seamed with the scars of disease, the brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the grey wig with the scorched foretop, the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches ; 10 we see the heavy form rolling; we hear it puffing; and then comes the "Why, sir!" and the "What then, sir?" and the "No, sir!" and the "You don't see your way through the question, sir!" What a singular destiny has been that of this 15 remarkable man ! To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion ! To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity! To be more intimately known to posterity than other 20 men are known to their contemporaries! That kind of fame which is commonly the most transient is, in his case, the most durable. The reputation of those writings, which he probably expected to be immortal, is every day fading; while those peculiarities of 25 manner and that careless table-talk, the memory of which he probably thought would die with him, are likely to be remembered as long as the English lan- guage is spoken in any quarter of the globe. BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON.* ^sop's Fly, sitting on the axle of the chariot, has been much laughed at for exclaiming: What a dust I do raise! Yet which of us, in his way, has not some- times been guilty of the like? Nay, so foolish are 5 men, they often, standing at ease and as spectators on the highway, will volunteer to exclaim of the Fly (not being tempted to it, as he was) exactly to the same purport: What a dust thou dost raise! Smallest of mortals, when mounted aloft by circumstances, come lo to seem great ; smallest of phenomena connected with them are treated as important, and must be sedulously scanned, and commented upon with loud emphasis. That Mr. Croker should undertake to edit BoswelVs Life of Johnson was a praiseworthy but no miraculous 15 procedure: neither could the accomplishment of such undertaking be, in an epoch like ours, anywise regarded as an event in Universal History; the right or the wrong accomplishment thereof was, in very truth, one of the most insignificant of things. However, it sat 20 in a great environment, on the axle of a high, fast- rolling, parliamentary chariot; and all the world has exclaimed over it, and the author of it : What a dust * The Life of Samuel Johnson, LI..D.: including a Tour to the Hebrides : By James Bosvvell, Esq. — A new Edition, with 25 numerous Additions and Notes : by John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S. 5 vols. London, 1831. 65 66 CARLYLE ON thou dost raise! List to the Reviews, and "Organs of Public Opinion," from the National Omnibus upwards: criticisms, vituperative and laudatory, stream from their thousand throats of brass and of leather; here chanting lo Pceans ; there grating harsh thunder or 5 vehement shrew-mouse squeaklets; till the general ear is filled, and nigh deafened. Boswell's Book had a noiseless birth, compared with this Edition of Bos- well's Book. On the other hand, consider with what degree of tumult Paradise Lost and the Iliad were 10 ushered in! To swell such clamor, or prolong it beyond the time, seems nowise our vocation here. At most, perhaps, we are bound to inform simple readers, with all pos- sible brevity, what manner of performance and Edition 15 this is; especially, whether, in our poor judgment, it is worth laying out three pounds sterling upon, yea or not. The whole business belongs distinctly to the lower ranks of the trivial class. Let us admit, then, with great readiness, that as 20 Johnson once said, and the Editor repeats, "all works which describe manners require notes in sixty or seventy years, or less;" that, accordingly, a new Edi- tion of Boswell was desirable; and that Mr. Croker has given one. For this task he had various quali- 25 fications: his own voluntary resolution to do it; his. high place in society, unlocking all manner of archives to him ; not less, perhaps, a certain anecdotico-bio- graphic turn of mind, natural or acquired; we mean a love for the minuter events of History, and talent 30 for investigating these. Let us admit, too, that he has been very diligent; seems to have made inquiries BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHN SOX. 67 perseveringly, far and near; as well as drawn freely from his own ample stores ; and so tells us, to appear- ance quite accurately, much that he has not found lying on the highways, but has had to seek and dig 5 for. Numerous persons, chiefly of quality, rise to view in these Notes ; when and also where they came into this world, received office or promotion, died and were buried (only what they did^ except digest, remaining often too mysterious), — is faithfully enough 10 set down. Whereby all that their various and doubt- less widely-scattered Tombstones could have taught us, is here presented, at once in a bound Book. Thus is an indubitable conquest, though a small one, gained over our great enemy, the all-destroyer Time, and as 15 such shall have welcome. Nay, let us say that the spirit of Diligence, exhib- ited in this department, seems to attend the Editor honestly throughout; he keeps every where a watchful outlook on his Text; reconciling the distant with the 20 present, or at least indicating and regretting their irreconcilability; elucidating, smoothing down; in all ways exercising, according to ability, a strict edi- torial superintendence. Any little Latin or even Greek phrase is rendered into English, in general with 25 perfect accuracy; citations are verified, or else cor- rected. On all hands, moreover, there is a certain spirit of Decency maintained and insisted on : if not good morals, yet good manners are rigidly incul- cated; if not Religion, and a devout Christian heart, 30 yet Orthodoxy, and a cleanly Shovel-hatted look, — which, as compared with flat Nothing, is something very considerable. Grant, too, as no contemptible 68 CARLYLE ON triumph of this latter spirit, that though the Editor is known as a decided Politician and Party-man, he has carefully subdued all temptations to trangress in that way: except by quite involuntary indications, and rather as it were the pervading temper of the whole, 5 you could not discover on which side of the Political Warfare he is enlisted and fights. This, as we said, is a great triumph of the Decency-principle: for this, and for these other graces and performances, let the Editor have all praise. 10 Herewith, however, must the praise unfortunately terminate. Diligence, Fidelity, Decency, are good and indispensable: yet, without Faculty, without Light, they will not do the work. Along with that Tombstone-information, perhaps even without much 15 of it, we could have liked to gain some answer, in one way or other, to this wide question: What and how was English Life in Johnson's time; wherein has ours grown to differ therefrom? In other words: What things have we to forget, what to fancy and remem- 20 ber, before we, from such distance, can put ourselves in Johnson's /A? r^y and so, in the full sense of the term, understand him, his sayings and his doings? This was indeed specially the problem which a Com- mentator and Editor had to solve: a complete solu- 25 tion of it should have lain in him, his whole mind should have been filled and prepared with perfect insight into it; then, whether in the way of express Dissertation, of incidental Exposition and Indication, opportunities enough would have occurred of bring- 30 ing out the same: what was dark in the figure of the Past had thereby been enlightened ; Boswell had, not BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 69 in show and word only, but in very fact been made new again, readable to us who are divided from him, even as he was to those close at hand. Of all which very little has been attempted here; accomplished, 5 we should say, next to nothing, or altogether nothing. Excuse, no doubt, is in readiness for such omis- sion; and, indeed, for innumerable other failings; — as where, for example, the Editor will punctually ex- plain what is already sun-clear; and then anon, not 10 without frankness, declare frequently enough that "the Editor does not understand," that "the Editor cannot guess," — while, for most part, the Reader cannot help both guessing and seeing. Thus, if John- son say, in one sentence, that "English names should 15 not be used in Latin verses;" and then, in the next sentence, speak blamingly of "Carteret being used as a dactyl," will the generality of mortals detect any puzzle there? Or again, where poor Boswell writes, "I always remember a remark made to me by a 20 Turkish lady, educated in France: ' Ma foi, monsieur^ notre bonheur depend de la fago7i que notre sang cir- cule ;' " — though the Turkish lady here speaks Eng- lish-French, where is the call for a Note like this: "Mr. Boswell no doubt fancied these words had some 25 meaning, or he would hardly have quoted them; but what that meaning is the Editor cannot guess"? The Editor is clearly no witch at a riddle. — For these and all kindred deficiencies the excuse, as we said, is at hand ; but the fact of their existence is not the less 30 certain and regrettable. Indeed, it, from a very early stage of the business, becomes afflictively apparent, how much the Editor, 7° CARLYLE ON so well furnished with all external appliances and means, is from within unfurnished with means for forming to himself any just notion of Johnson or of Johnson's Life; and therefore of speaking on that subject with much hope of edifying. Too lightly is it 5 from the first taken for granted that Hunger^ the great basis of our life, is also its apex and ultimate perfection; that as "Neediness and Greediness and Vainglory" are the chief qualities of most men, so no man, not even a Johnson, acts or can think of acting 10 on any other principle. Whatsoever, therefore, can- not be referred to the two former categories (Need and Greed), is without scruple ranged under the latter. It is here properly that our Editor becomes burden- some, and, to the weaker sort, even a nuisance. 15 "What good is it," will such cry, "when we had still some faint shadow of belief that man was better than a selfish Digesting-machine, what good is it to poke in, at every turn, and explain how this and that, which we thought noble in old Samuel, was vulgar, 20 base; that for him, too, there was no reality but in the Stomach ; and except Pudding, and the finer species of pudding which is named Praise, life had no pabulum? Why, for instance, when we know that Johnson lovedMx'^ good Wife, and says expressly that 25 their marriage was 'a love-match on both sides,' — should two closed lips open to tell us only this: *Is it not possible that the obvious advantage of having a woman of experience to superintend an establishment of this kind (the Edial school) may have contributed 30 to a match so disproportionate in point of age? — Ed.?' Or again when, in the Text, the honest cynic BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 71 speaks freely of his former poverty, and it is known that he once lived on fourpence halfpenny a-day, — need a Commentator advance, and comment thus: 'When we find Dr. Johnson tell unpleasant truths to, 5 or of, other men, let us recollect that he does not appear to have spared himself, on occasions in which he might be forgiven for doing so?' Why, in short," continues the exasperated Reader, "should Notes of this species stand affronting me, when there might 10 have been no Note at all?" — Gentle Reader, we answer. Be not wroth. What other could an honest Commentator do, than give thee the best he had? Such was the picture and theorem he had fashioned for himself of the world and of man's doings therein: 15 take it, and draw wise inferences from it. If there did exist a Leader of Public Opinion, and Champion of Orthodoxy in the Church of Jesus of Nazareth, who reckoned that man's glory consisted in not being poor; and that a Sage, and Prophet of his time, must 20 needs blush because the world had paid him at that easy rate of fourpence halfpenny pe)' diein^ — was not the fact of such existence worth knowing, worth con- sidering? Of a much milder hue, yet to us practically of an 25 all-defacing, and for the present enterprise quite ruinous character, — is another grand fundamental failing; the last we shall feel ourselves obliged to take the pain of specifying here. It is, that our Editor has fatally, and almost surprisingly, mistaken the 30 limits of an Editor's function; and so, instead of working on the margin with his Pen, to elucidate as best might be, strikes boldly into the body of the 72 CARLYLE ON page with his Scissors, and there clips at discretion! Four Books Mr. C. had by him, wherefrom to gather light for the fifth, which was Boswell's. What does he do but now, in the placidest manner, — slit the whole five into slips, and sew these together into a 5 sextum quid^ exactly at his own convenience, giving Boswell the credit of the whole! By what art-magic, our readers ask, has he united them? By the simplest of all : by Brackets. Never before was the full virtue of the Bracket made manifest. You begin a sentence 10 under Boswell's guidance, thinking to be carried happily through it by the same: but no; in the middle, perhaps after your semicolon, and some con- sequent "for," — starts up one of these Bracket-liga- tures, and stitches you in from half a page to twenty 15 or thirty pages of a Hawkins, Tyers, Murphy, Piozzi; so that often one must make the old sad reflection, "where we are, we know; whither we are going, no man knoweth!" It is truly said also, "There is much between the cup and the lip;" but here the 20 case is still sadder: for not till after consideration can you ascertain, now when the cup is at the lip, what liquor is it you are imbibing; whether Boswell's French wine which you began with, or some of Piozzi's ginger-beer, or Hawkins's entire, or perhaps 25 some other great Brewer's penny-swipes or even ale- gar, which has been surreptitiously substituted in- stead thereof. A situation almost original; not to be tried a second time! But, in fine, what ideas Mr. Croker entertains of a literary whole and the thing 30 called Book^ and how the very Printer's Devils did not rise in mutiny against such a conglomera- BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHXSOJSf. 73 tion as this, and refuse to print it, — may remain a problem. But now happily our say is said. All faults, the Moralists tell us, are properly shortcomings j crimes 5 themselves are nothing other than a not doing enough j difightifig^ but with defective vigor. How much more a mere insufficiency, and this after good efforts, in handicraft practice! Mr. Croker says: "The worst that can happen is that all the present Editor has lo contributed may, if the reader so pleases, be rejected as surplusage." It is our pleasant duty to take with hearty welcome what he has given ; and render thanks even for what he meant to give. Next, and finally, it is our painful duty to declare, aloud if that be 15 necessary, that his gift, as weighed against the hard money which the Booksellers demand for giving it you, is (in our judgment) very greatly the lighter. No portion, accordingly, of our small floating capital has been embarked in the business, or shall ever be; 20 indeed, were we in the market for such a thing, there is simply no Edition of Bosivell to which this last would seem preferable. And now enough, and more than enough ! 25 We have next a word to say of James Boswell. Boswell has already been much commented upon; but rather in the way of censure and vituperation, than of true recognition. He was a man that brought himself much before the world; confessed that he 30 eagerly coveted fame, or if that were not possible, notoriety ; of which latter as he gained far more than seemed his due, the public were incited, not only by 74 CARLYLE ON their natural love of scandal, but by a special ground of envy, to say whatever ill of him could be said. Out of the fifteen millions that then lived, and had bed and board, in the British Islands, this man has provided us a greater pleasure than any other indi- 5 vidual, at whose cost we now enjoy ourselves; per- haps has done us a greater service than can be specially attributed to more than two or three: yet, ungrateful that we are, no written or spoken eulogy of James Boswell any where exists ; his recompense in solid 10 pudding (so far as copyright went) was not excessive; and as for the empty praise, it has altogether been denied him. Men are unwiser than children; they do not know the hand that feeds them. U^" Boswell was a person whose mean or bad qualities 15 lay open to the general eye ; visible, palpable to the dullest. His good qualities, again, belonged not to the Time he lived in ; were far from common then ; indeed, in such a degree, were almost unexampled; not recognizable therefore by every one; nay, apt 20 even (so strange had they grown) to be confounded with the very vices they lay contiguous to and had sprung out of. That he was a wine-bibber and gross liver; gluttonously fond of whatever would yield him a little solacement, were it only of a stomachic char- 25 acter, is undeniable enough. That he was vain, heedless, a babbler; had much of the sycophant, alternating with the braggadocio, curiously spiced too with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb ; that he gloried much when the Tailor, by a court-suit, had 30 made a new man of him ; that he appeared at the Shakspeare Jubilee with a riband, imprinted "Cor- BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 75 SIC A BoswELL," round his hat; and in short, if you will, lived no day of his life without doing and say- ing more than one pretentious ineptitude: all this unhappily is evident as the sun at noon. The very 5 look of Boswell seems to have signified so much. In that cocked nose, cocked partly in triumph over his weaker fellow-creatures, partly to snuff up the smell of coming pleasure, and scent it from afar; in those bag-cheeks, hanging like half-filled wine-skins, still loable to contain more; in that coarsely protruded shelf-mouth, that fat dewlapped chin: in all this, who sees not sensuality, pretension, boisterous imbecility enough ; much that could not have been ornamental in the temper of a great man's overfed great man 15 (what the Scotch name flunky)^ though it had been more natural there? The under part of Boswell's face is of a low, almost brutish character. Unfortunately, on the other hand, what great and genuine good lay in him was nowise so self-evident. 20 That Boswell was a hunter after spiritual Notabilities, that he loved such, and longed, and even crept and crawled to be near them; that he first (in old Touch- wood Auchinleck's phraseology) "took on with Paoli;" and then being off with "the Corsican land- 25louper," took on with a schoolmaster, "ane that keeped a schule, and ca'd it an academy:" that he did all this, and could not help doing it, we account a very singular merit. The man, once for all, had an "open sense," an open loving heart, which so few 30 have: where Excellence existed, he was compelled to acknowledge it; was drawn towards it, and (let the old sulphur-brand of a Laird say what he liked) could 76 CARLYLE O.V not but walk with it, — if not as superior, if not as equal, then as inferior and lackey, better so than not at all. If we reflect now that this love of Excellence had not only such an evil natu?-e to triumph over; but also what an education and social position withstood it 5 and weighed it down, its innate strength, victorious over all these things, may astonish us. Consider what an inward impulse there must have been, how many mountains of impediment hurled aside, before the Scottish Laird could, as humble servant, embrace 10 the knees (the bosom was not permitted him) of the English Dominie! "Your Scottish Laird," says an English naturalist of these days, "may be defined as the hungriest and vainest of all bipeds yet known." Boswell too was a Tory; of quite peculiarly feudal, 15 genealogical, pragmatical temper; had been nurtured in an atmosphere of Heraldry, at the feet of a very Gamaliel in that kind ; within bare walls, adorned only with pedigrees, amid serving-men in threadbare livery ; all things teaching him, from birth up\vards, 20 to remember that a Laird was a Laird. Perhaps there was a special vanity in his very blood : old Auchinleck had, if not the gay, tail-spreading, peacock vanity of his son, no little of the slow-stalking, contentious, hissing vanity of the gander; a still more fatal species. 25 Scottish Advocates will yet tell you how the ancient man, having chanced to be the first sheriff appointed (after the abolition of "hereditary jurisdictions") by royal authority, was wont, in dull pompous tone, to preface many a deliverance from the bench with these 30 words: "I, the first King's Sheriff in Scotland." And now behold the worthy Bozzy, so prepossessed BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOHN SOX. 77 and held back by nature and by art, fly nevertheless like iron to its magnet, whither his better genius called! You may surround the iron and the magnet with what enclosures and encumbrances you please, — 5 with wood, with rubbish, with brass: it matters not, the two feel each other, they struggle restlessly towards each other, they will be together. The iron may be a Scottish squirelet, full of gulosity and "gig- manity; "* the magnet an English plebeian, and 10 moving rag-and-dust mountain, coarse, proud, iras- cible, imperious: nevertheless, behold how they embrace, and inseparably cleave to one another! It is one of the strangest phenomena of the past century, that at a time when the old reverent feeling of disci- 15 pleship (such as brought men from far countries, with rich gifts, and prostrate soul, to the feet of the Prophets) had passed utterly away from men's practi- cal experience, and was no longer surmised to exist (as it does), perennial, indestructible, in man's inmost 20 heart, — James Boswell should have been the indi- vidual, of all others, predestined to recall it, in such singular guise, to the wondering, and for a long while, laughing and unrecognizing world. It has been commonly said, The man's vulgar vanity 25 was all that attached him to Johnson; he delighted to be seen near him, to be thought connected with him. Now let it be at once granted that no consideration spring- ing out of vulgar vanity could well be absent from the * " ^. What do you mean by ' respectable?' — A. He always 30 kept a gig." {Thiirtell's Ti'ial.) — "Thus," it has been said, " does society naturally divide itself into four classes : Noblemen, Gentlemen, Gigmen, and Men." 78 CARLVLE ON- mind of James Boswell, in this his intercourse with Johnson, or in any considerable transaction of his life. At the same time, ask yourself: Whether such vanity, and nothing else, actuated him therein; whether this was the true essence and moving principle of the phe- 5 nomenon, or not rather its outward vesture, and the accidental environment (and defacement) in which it came to light? The man was, by nature and habit, vain; a sycophant-coxcomb, be it granted: but had there been nothing more than vanity in him, was 10 Samuel Johnson the man of men to w^hom he must attach himself? At the date when Johnson was a poor rusty-coated "scholar," dwelling in Temple-lane, and indeed throughout their whole intercourse after- wards, were there not chancellors and prime ministers 15 enough; graceful gentlemen, the glass of fashion; honor-giving noblemen; dinner-giving rich men; renowned fire-eaters, swordsmen, gownsmen ; Quacks and Realities of all hues, — any one of whom bulked much larger in the world's eye than Johnson ever did? 20 To any one of whom, by half that submissiveness and assiduity, our Bozzy might have recommended himself; and sat there, the envy of surrounding lick- spittles; pocketing now solid emolument, swallowing now well-cooked viands and wines of rich vintage; 25 in each case, also, shone on by some glittering reflex of Renown or Notoriety, so as to be the observed of innumerable observers. To no one of whom, how- ever, though otherwise a most diligent solicitor and purveyor, did he so attach himself: such vulgar cour-30 tierships were his paid drudgery, or leisure-amuse- ment; the worship of Johnson was his grand, ideal. BOSVVELVS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 79 voluntary business. Does not the frothy-hearted yet enthusiastic man, doffing his Advocate's-wig, regularly take post, and hurry up to London, for the sake of his Sage chiefly ; as to a Feast of Tabernacles, 5 the Sabbath of his whole year? The plate-licker and wine-bibber dives into Bolt Court, to sip muddy i coffee with a cynical old man and a sour-tempered/ blind old woman (feeling the cups, whether they are full, with her finger) ; and patiently endures contra- lo dictions without end ; too happy so he may but be ' allowed to listen and live. Nay, it does not appear that vulgar vanity could ever have been much flattered by Bos well's relation to Johnson. Mr. Croker says, Johnson was, to the last, little regarded by the great 15 world; from which, for a vulgar vanity, all honor, as from its fountain, descends. Bozzy, even among Johnson's friends and special admirers, seems rather to have been laughed at than envied: his officious, whisking, consequential ways, the daily reproofs and 20 rebuffs he underwent, could gain from the world no golden, but only leaden, opinions. His devout Dis- cipleship seemed nothing more than a mean Spaniel- ship, in the general eye. His mighty "constellation," or sun, round whom he, as satellite, observantly 25 gyrated, was, for the mass of men, but a huge ill- snuffed tallow-light, and he a weak night-moth, cir- cling foolishly, dangerously about it, not knowing what he wanted. If he enjoyed Highland dinners and toasts, as henchman to a new sort of chieftain, Henry 3oErskine, in the domestic "Outer-House," could hand him a shilling "for the sight of his Bear." Doubtless the man was laughed at, and often heard himself So CARLYLE ON laughed at for his Johnsonism. To be envied is the grand and sole aim of vulgar vanity; to be filled with good things is that of sensuality: for Johnson perhaps no man living , and the Earth Beelzebub's, which the Supreme Quack should inherit: and so all things were fallen into the 5 yellow leaf, and fast hastening to noisome corruption: for such an Era, perhaps no better Prophet than a parti-colored Zany-Prophet, concealing (from himself and others) his prophetic significance in such unex- pected vestures, — was deserved, or would have been 10 in place. A precious medicine lay hidden in floods of coarsest, most composite treacle ; the world swal- lowed the treacle, for it suited the world's palate; and now, after half a century, may the medicine also begin to show itself! James Boswell belonged, in his 15 corruptible part, to the lowest classes of mankind; a foolish, inflated creature, swimming in an element of self-conceit: but in his corruptible there dwelt an incorruptible, all the more impressive and indubitable for the strange lodging it had taken. 20 Consider, too, with what force, diligence, and vivacity he has rendered back all this which, in John- son's neighborhood, his "open sense" had so eagerly and freely taken in. That loose-flowing, careless- looking Work of his is as a picture painted by one of 25 Nature's own Artists; the best possible resemblance of a Reality ; like the very image thereof in a clear mirror. Which indeed it was: let but the mirror be clear ^ this is the great point; the picture must and will be genuine. How the babbling Bozzy, inspired 30 only by love, and the recognition and vision which love can lend, epitomises nightly the words of Wis-> dom, the deeds and aspects of Wisdom, and so, by 82 CARLYLE ON little and little, unconsciously works together for us a \\\\o\^ Johnsoniad J a more free, perfect, sunlit, and spirit-speaking likeness than for many centuries had been drawn by man of man! Scarcely since the days of Homer has the feat been equalled; indeed, in many 5 senses, this also is a kind of heroic poem. The fit Odyssey of our unheroic age was to be wTitten, not sung; of a Thinker, not of a Fighter; and (for want of a Homer) by the first open soul that might offer, — looked such even through the organs of a Boswell. 10 We do the man's intellectual endowment great wrong, if we measure it by its mere logical outcome ; though here, too, there is not wanting a light ingenuity, a figurativeness and fanciful sport, with glimpses of insight far deeper than the common. But Boswell's 15 grand intellectual talent was (as such ever is) an uncofisciotcs one, of far higher reach and significance than Logic; and showed itself in the whole, not in parts. Here again we have that old saying verified, "The heart sees farther than the head." 20 Thus does poor Bozzy stand out to us as an ill- assorted, glaring mixture of the highest and the lowest. What, indeed, is man's life generally but a kind of beast-godhood; the god in us triumphing more and more over the beast ; striving more and more to sub- 25 due it under his feet? Did not the Ancients, in their wise, perennially- significant way, figure Nature itself, their sacred All, or Pan, as a portentous commingling of these two discords; as musical, humane, oracular in its upper part, yet ending below in the cloven hairy 30 feet of a goat? The union of melodious, celestial Free-will and Reason with foul Irrationality and Lust; BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOHNSON. ^Z in which, nevertheless, dwelt a mysterious unspeak- able Fear and half-mad panic Awe ; as for mortals there well might! And is not man a microcosm, or epitomised mirror of that same Universe; or rather, is 5 not that Universe even Himself, the reflex of his own fearful and wonderful being, "the waste fantasy of his own dream?" No wonder that man, that each man, and James Boswell like the others, should resemble it ! The peculiarity in his case was the lo unusual defect of amalgamation and subordination: the highest lay side by side with the lowest; not morally combined with it and spiritually transfiguring it, but tumbling in half-mechanical juxtaposition with it, and from time to time, as the mad alternation 15 chanced, irradiating it, or eclipsed by it. The world, as we said, has been but unjust to him ; discerning only the outer terrestrial and often sordid mass ; without eye, as it generally is, for his inner divine secret; and thus figuring him no wise as a 20 god Pan, but simply of the bestial species, like the cattle on a thousand hills. Nay, sometimes a strange enough hypothesis has been started of him ; as if it were in virtue even of these same bad qualities that he did his good work; as if it were the very fact of his 25 being among the worst men in this world that had enabled him to write one of the best books therein ! ^ Falser hypothesis, we may venture to say, never rose' in human soul. Bad is by its nature negative, and can do nothing ; whatsoever enables us to do any thing 30 is by its very nature ^^<7^/. Alas, that there should be teachers in Israel, or even learners, to whom this world- ancient fact is still problematical, or even deniable! 84 CARLYLE ON Boswell wrote a good Book because he had a heart and an eye to discern Wisdom, and an utterance to render it forth ; because of his free insight, his lively- talent, above all, of his Love and childlike Open- mindedness. His sneaking sycophancies, his greedi- 5 ness and forwardness, whatever was bestial and earthly in him, are so many blemishes in his Book, which still disturb us in its clearness; wholly hindrances, not helps. Towards Johnson, however, his feeling was not Sycophancy, which is the lowest, but P^ever- 10 ence, which is the highest of human feelings. None but a reverent man (which so unspeakably few are) could have found his way from Boswell's environment to Johnson's: if such worship for real God-made superiors showed itself also as worship for apparent 15 Tailor-made superiors, even as hollow interested mouth-worship for such, — the case, in this composite human nature of ours, was not miraculous, the more was the pity! But for ourselves, let every one of us cling to this last article of Faith, and know it as the 20 beginning of all knowledge worth the name: That neither James Boswell's good Book, nor any other good thing, in any time or in any place, was, is, or can be performed by any man in virtue of his badness^ but always and solely in spite thereof. 25 As for the Book itself, questionless the universal favor entertained for it is well merited. In worth as a Book we have rated it beyond any other product of the eighteenth century: all Johnson's own Writings, laborious and in their kind genuine above most, stand 30 on a quite inferior level to it; already, indeed, they are becoming obsolete for this generation ; and for i BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 85 some future generation may be valuable chiefly as Pro- legomena and expository Scholia to this Johnsoniad of Boswell. Which of us but remembers, as one of the sunny spots in his existence, the day when he opened 5 these airy volumes, fascinating him by a true natural- magic ! It was as if the curtains of the past were drawn aside, and we looked mysteriously into a kindred coun- try, where dwelt our Fathers ; inexpressibly dear to us, but which had seemed forever hidden from our eyes. 10 For the dead Night had engulfed it; all was gone, vanished as if it had not been. Nevertheless, won- drously given back to us, there once more it lay; all bright, lucid, blooming; a little island of Creation amid the circumambient Void. There it still lies; 15 like a thing stationary, imperishable, over which changeful Time were now accumulating itself in vain, and could not, any longer, harm it or hide it. If w^e examine by what charm it is that men are still held to this Life of Johnson^ now when so much 20 else has been forgotten, the main part of the answer will perhaps be found in that speculation "on the import of Reality^'" communicated to the world, last Month, in this Magazine. The Johnsoniad oi Boswell turns on objects that in very deed existed ; it is all 25 true. So far other in melodiousness of tone, it vies with the Odyssey^ or surpasses it, in this one point: to us these read pages, as those chanted hexameters were to the first Greek hearers, are, in the fullest, deepest sense, wholly credible. All the wit and wisdom lying 30 embalmed in Boswell's Book, plenteous as these are, could not have saved it. Far more scientific instruc- tion (mere excitement and enlightenment of the tJiittk- 86 CARLYLE ON ing power) can be found in twenty other works of that time, which make but a quite secondary impression on us. The other works of that time, however, fall under one of two classes: either they are professedly Didactic; and, in that way, mere Abstractions, Philo- 5 sophic Diagrams, incapable of interesting us much otherwise than as Euclid's Ele?nents may do; or else, with all their vivacity and pictorial richness of color, t/iey are Fictions and not Realities. Deep, truly, as Herr Sauerteig urges, is the force of this consideration : 10 the thing here stated is a fact; these figures, that local habitation, are not shadow but substance. In virtue of such advantages, see how a very Boswell may become Poetical! Critics insist much on the poet that he should com- 15 municate an "Infinitude" to his delineation; that by intensity of conception, by that gift of "transcendental Thought," which is fitly wzmt^ genius and inspiration, he should inform the Finite with a certain Infinitude of significance; or, as they sometimes say, ennoble 20 the Actual into Idealness. They are right in their precept; they mean rightly. But in cases like this of the Johnsoniad (such is the dark grandeur of that "Time-element," wherein man's soul here below lives imprisoned), the Poet's task is, as it were, done 25 to his hand: Time itself, which is the outer veil of eternity, invests, of its own accord, with an authentic, felt "infinitude" whatsoever it has once embraced in its mysterious folds. Consider all that lies in that one word Past! What a pathetic, sacred, in every 30 SQnse poetic, meaning is implied in it; a meaning grow- ing ever the clearer, the farther we recede in Time,— BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 87 the more of that same Past we have to look through ! — On which ground indeed must Sauerteig have built, and not without plausibility, in that strange thesis of his: "that History, after all, is the true Poetry; that 5 Reality, if rightly interpreted, is grander than Fiction ; nay that even in the right interpretation of Realityi.^^ and History does genuine Poetry consist." Thus for Boswell's Life of Johnson has Time done, is Time still doing, what no ornament of Art or Arti- 10 fice could have done for it. Rough Samuel and sleek wheedling James were^ and are not. Their Life and whole personal Environment has melted into air. The Mitre Tavern still stands in Fleet Street; but where now is its scot-and-lot paying, beef-and-ale lov- 15 ing, cocked-hatted, pot-bellied Landlord; its rosy- faced, assiduous Landlady, with all her shining brass- pans, waxed tables, well-filled larder-shelves; her cooks, and bootjacks, and errand-boys, and watery- mouthed hangers-on? Gone! Gone! The becking 20 waiter, that with wreathed smiles, wont to spread for Samuel and Bozzy their 'supper of the gods,' has long since pocketed his last sixpence ; and vanished, sixpences and all, like a ghost at cock-crowing. The Bottles they drank out of are all broken, the Chairs 25 they sat on all rotted and burnt ; the very Knives and Forks they ate with have rusted to the heart, and become brown oxide of iron, and mingled with the indiscriminate clay. All, all, has vanished ; in very deed and truth, like that baseless fabric of Prospero's 30 air-vision. Of the Mitre Tavern nothing but the bare walls remain there: of London, of England, of the World, nothing but the bare walls remain; and these 88 CARLYLE ON also decaying (were they of adamant), only slower. The mysterious River of Existence rushes on: a new Billow thereof has arrived, and lashes wildly as ever round the old embankments; but the former Billow, with its loud, mad eddyings, where is it? — Where! — 5 Now this Book of Boswell's, this is precisely a Revoca- tion of the Edict of Destiny; so that Time shall not utterly, not so soon by several centuries, have dominion over us. A little row of Naphtha-lamps, with its line of Naphtha-light, burns clear and holy through 10 the dead Night of the Past: they who were gone are still here; though hidden they are revealed, though dead they yet speak. There it shines, that little miraculously lamp-lit Pathway; shedding its feebler and feebler twilight into the boundless dark Oblivion, 15 for all that our Johnson touched has become illumi- nated for us: on which miraculous little pathway we can still travel, and see wonders. It is not speaking with exaggeration, but with strict measured sobriety, to say that this Book of Boswell's 20 will give us more real insight into the History of Eng- land during those days than twenty other Books, falsely entitled "Histories," which take to themselves that special aim. What good is it to me though innumerable Smolletts and Belshams keep dinning in 25 my ears that a man named George the Third was born and bred up, and a man named George the Second died ; that Walpole, and the Pelhams, and Chatham, and Rockingham, and Shelburn, and North, with their Coalition or their Separation Ministries, all 30 ousted one another; and vehemently scrambled for "the thing they called the Rudder of Government, BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 89 but which was in reality the Spigot of Taxation"? That debates were held, and infinite jarring and jargoning took place ; and road-bills and enclosure- bills, and game-bills and India-bills, and Laws which 5 no man can number, which happily few men needed to trouble their heads with beyond the passing moment, were enacted, and printed by the King's Stationer? That he who sat in Chancery and rayed-out specula- tion from the Woolsack, was now a man that squinted, 10 now a man that did not squint? To the hungry and thirsty mind all this avails next to nothing. These men and these things, we indeed know, did swim, by strength or by specific — levity (as apples or as horse- dung), on the top of the current ; but is it by painfully 15 noting the courses, eddyings, and bobbings hither and thither of such drift-articles that you will unfold to me the nature of the current itself; of that mighty- rolling, loud-roaring Life- current, bottomless as the foundations of the Universe, mysterious as its Author? 20 The thing I want to see is not Redbook Lists, and Court Calendars, and Parliamentary Registers, but the Life of Man in England: what men did, thought suffered, enjoyed ; the form, especially the spirit, of their terrestial existence, its outward environment, 25 its inward principle ; hoiv and ivhat it was ; whence it proceeded, whither it was tending. Mournful, in truth, is it to behold what the busi- ness called "History," in these so enlightened and illuminated times, still continues to be. Can you 30 gather from it, read till your eyes go out, any dimmest shadow of an answer to that great question: How men lived and had their being; were it but economi- 90 CARLYLE ON cally, as what wages they got, and what they bought with these? Unhappily you cannot. History will throw no light on any such matter. At the point where living memory fails, it is all darkness; Mr. Senior and Mr. Sadler must still debate this simplest 5 of all elements in the condition of the Past: Whether men were better off, in their mere larders and pantries, or were worse off than now ! History, as it stands all bound up in gilt volumes, is but a shade more instruc- tive than the wooden volumes of a Backgammon- 10 board. How my Prime Minister was appointed is of less moment to me than How my House Servant was hired. In these days, ten ordinary Histories of King and Courtiers were well exchanged against the tenth part of one good History of Booksellers. 15 For example, I would fain know the History of Scotland: who can tell it me? "Robertson," cry innumerable voices; "Robertson against the world." I open Robertson; and find there, through long ages too confused for narrative, and fit only to be presented 20 in the way of epitome and distilled essence, a cunning answer and hypothesis, not to this question: By whom, and by what means, when and how, was this fair broad Scotland, with its Arts and Manufactures, Temples, Schools, Institutions, Poetry, Spirit, Na- 25 tional Character, created, and made arable, verdant, peculiar, great, here as I can see some fair section of it lying, kind and strong (like some Bacchus-tamed Lion), from the Castle-hill of Edinburgh? — 'but to this other question: How did the king keep himself 30 alive in those old days; and restrain so many Butcher Barons and ravenous Henchmen from utterly extirpat- BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOILNSOiY. 91 ing one another, so that killing went on in some sort of moderation? In the one little Letter of ^neas Sylvius, from old Scotland, there is more of History than in all this. — At length, however, we come to a 5 luminous age, interesting enough: to the age of the Reformation, All Scotland is awakened to a second higher life; the Spirit of the Highest stirs in every bosom, agitates every bosom ; Scotland is convulsed, fermenting, struggling to body itself forth anew. To 10 the herdsman, among his cattle in remote woods; to the craftsman, in his rude, heath-thatched workshop, among his rude guild-brethren ; to the great and to the little, a new light has arisen: in town and hamlet groups are gathered, with eloquent looks, and governed 15 or ungovernable tongues; the great and the little go forth together to do battle for the Lord against the mighty. We ask, with breathless eagerness: How was it; how went it on? Let us understand it, let us see it, and know it! — In reply, is handed us a really 20 graceful and most dainty little Scandalous Chronicle (as for some Journal of Fashion) of two persons: Mary Stuart, a Beauty, but over lightheaded ; and Henry Darnley, a Booby, who had fine legs. How these first courted, billed, and cooed, according to nature; 25 then pouted, fretted, grew utterly enraged, and blew one another up with gunpowder: this, and not the History of Scotland, is what we good-naturedly read. Nay, by other hands, something like a horse-load of other Books have been written to prove that it was 30 the Beauty who blew up the Booby, and that it was not she. Who or what it was, the thing once for all being so effectually done, concerns us little. To know 92 CARLYLE OX Scotland, at that great epoch, were a valuable Increase to knowledge: to know poor Darnley, and see him with burning candle, from centre to skin, were no increase of knowledge at all. — Thus is History written. Hence, indeed, comes it that History, which should 5 be "the essence of innumerable Biographies," will tell us, question it as we like, less than one genuine Bio- graphy may do, pleasantly and of its own accord ! The time is approaching when History will be attempted on quite other principles ; when the Court, the Senate, 10 and the Battle-field, receding more and more into the back-ground, the Temple, the Workshop, and Social Hearth, will advance more and more into the foreground; and History will not content itself with shaping some answer to that question: How were men 15 taxed and kept quiet then? but will seek to answer this other infinitely wider and higher question: How and what were men then? Not our Government only, or the ''house wherein our life was led," but the Life itself we led there, will be inquired into. Of which 20 latter it may be found that Government, in any modern sense of the word, is after all but a secondary condition: in the mere sense of Taxation 2:^^ Keeping quiet ^ a small, almost a pitiful one. — Meanwhile let us welcome such Boswells, each in his degree, as 25 bring us any genuine contribution, were it never so inadequate, so inconsiderable. An exception was early taken against this Life of Johnson^ and all similar enterprises, which we here recommend; and has been transmitted from critic to 30 critic, and repeated in their several dialects, uninter- ruptedly, ever since : That such jottings-down of care- BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 93 less conversation are an infringement of social privacy;- a crime against our highest Freedom, the Freedom of man's intercourse with man. To this accusation, which we have read and heard oftener than enough, 5 might it not be well for once to offer the flattest con- tradiction, and plea of Not at all guilty 1 Not that conversation is noted down, but that conversation should not deserve noting down, is the evil. Doubtless if conversation be falsely recorded, then is it simply a 10 Lie and worthy of being swept with all despatch to the Father of Lies. But if, on the other hand, con- versation can be authentically recorded and any one is ready for the task, let him by all means proceed with it ; let conversation be kept in remembrance to 15 the latest date possible. Nay should the conscious- ness that a man may be among us "taking notes" tend, in any measure, to restrict those floods of idle insincere speech^ with which the thought of mankind is well nigh drowned, — were it other than the most 20 indubitable benefit? He who speaks honestly cares not, needs not care, though his words be preserved to remotest time: for him who speaks ^/Vhonestly, the fittest of all punishments seems to be this same, which the nature of the case provides. The dishonest 25 speaker, not he only who purposely utters falsehoods, but he who does not purposely, and with sincere heart, utter Truth, and Truth alone; who babbles he knows not what, and has clapped no bridle on his tongue, but lets it run racket, ejecting chatter and futility, — 30 is among the most indisputable malefactors omitted, or inserted, in the Criminal Calendar. To him that will well consider it, idle speaking is precisely the begin- 94 CARLYLE ON ning of all Hollowness, Halfness, Infidelity (want of Faithfulness) ; the genial atmosphere in which rank weeds of every kind attain the mastery over noble fruits in man's life, and utterly choke them out: one of the most crying maladies of these days, and to be 5 testified against, and in all ways to the uttermost with- stood. Wise, of a wisdom far beyond our shallow depth, was that old precept: Watch thy tongue ; out of it are the issues of Life! "Man is properly an iiicarnaied word:'' the word that he speaks is the 10 man himself. Were eyes put into our head, that we might see J or only that we might fancy, and plausibly pretend, w^e had seen ? Was the tongue suspended there, that it might tell truly what we had seen, and make man the soul's-brother of man; or only that it 15 might utter vain sounds, jargon, soul-confusing, and so divide man, as by enchanted walls of Darkness, from union with man? Thou who wearest that cun- ning. Heaven-made organ, a Tongue, think well of this. Speak not, I passionately entreat thee, till thy 20 thought hath silently matured itself, till thou have other than mad and mad-making noises to emit: hold thy tongue (thou hast it a-holding) till j-^w*? meaning lie behind, to set it wagging. Consider the significance of Silence ; it is boundless, never by meditating to 25 be exhausted ; unspeakably profitable to thee ! Cease that chaotic hubbub, wherein thy own soul runs to waste, to confused suicidal dislocation and stupor: out of Silence comes thy strength. "Speech is silvern, Silence is golden ; Speech is human, Silence is divine." 30 Fool! thinkest thou that because no Boswell is there with ass-skin and black-lead to note thy jargon, it BO SWELL'S LLFE OF JOHN SO A^. 95 therefore dies and is harmless? Nothing dies, nothing can die. No idlest word thou speakest but is a seed cast into Time, and grows through all Eternity ! The Recording Angel, consider it well, is no fable, but 5 the truest of truths: the paper tablets thou canst burn ; of the "iron leaf" there is no burning. — Truly, if we can permit God Almighty to note down our con- versation, thinking it good enough for Him, — any poor Boswell need not scruple to work his will of it. lo Leaving now this our English Odyssey^ with its Singer and Scholiast, let us come to the Ulysses ; that great Samuel Johnson himself, the far-experienced, "much-enduring man," whose labors and pilgrimage are here sung. A full-length image of his Existence 15 has been preserved for us: and he, perhaps of all liv- ing Englishmen, was the one who best deserved that honor. For if it is true and now almost proverbial, that "the Life of the lowest mortal, if faithfully recorded, would be interesting to the highest;" how 20 much more when the mortal in question was already distinguished in fortune and natural quality, so that his thinkings and doings were not significant of himself only, but of large masses of mankind! "There is not a man whom I meet on the streets," says one, 25 "but I could like, were it otherwise convenient, to know his Biography:" nevertheless, could an enlight- ened curiosity be so far gratified, it must be owned the Biography of most ought to be, in an extreme degree, summary. In this world there is so wonder- 30 fully little self-subsistence among men ; next to no orig- inality (though never absolutely none): one Life is too 96 CARL VLB ON servilely the copy of another; and so in whole thou- sands of them you find little that is properly new ; noth- ing but the old song sung by a new voice, with better or worse execution, here and there an ornamental (juaver, and false notes enough: but the fundamental 5 tune is ever the same; and for the words, these, all that they meant stands written generally on the Church- yard-stone: Natus sum; esuriebam, qttcerebam j nunc repletics reqinesco. Mankind sail their Life-voyage in huge fleets, following some single whale-fishing or her- 10 ring-fishing Commodore: the log-book of each differs not, in essential purport, from that of any other; nay the most have no legible log-book (reflection, observa- tion not being among their talents); keep no reckoning, only keep in sight of the flagship, — and fish. Read the 15 Commodore's Papers (know his Life) ; and even your lover of that street Biography will have learned the most of what he sought after. Or, the servile iniitancy, and yet also a nobler rela- tionship and mysterious union to one another which 20 lies in such imitancy, of Mankind might be illustrated under the different figure (itself nowise original) of a Plock of Sheep. Sheep go in flocks for three rea- sons: First, because they are of a gregarious temper, and love to be together: Secondly, because of their 25 cowardice; they are afraid to be left alone: Thirdly, because the common run of them are dull of sight, to a proverb, and can have no choice in roads; sheep can in fact see nothing; in a celestial Luminary, and a scoured pewter Tankard, would discern only that 30 both dazzled them, and were of unspeakable glory. How like their fellow-creatures of the human species ! BO SWELL'S LLFE OF JOHNSON. 97 Men, too, as was from the first maintained here, are gregarious; then surely faint-hearted enough, trem- bling to be left by themselves ; above all, dull-sighted, down to the verge of utter blindness. Thus are we 5 seen ever running in torrents, and mobs, if we run at all; and after what foolish scoured Tankards, mistak- ing them for suns! Foolish Turnip-lanterns likewise, to all appearance supernatural, keep whole nations quaking, their hair on end. Neither know we, except 10 by blind habit, where the good pastures lie: solely when the sweet grass is between our teeth, we know it, and chew it; also when grass is bitter and scant, we know it, — and bleat and butt: these last two facts we know of a truth and in very deed. — Thus do Men 15 and Sheep play their parts on this Nether Earth; wandering restlessly in large masses, they know not whither; for most part each following his neighbor, and his own nose. Nevertheless, not always ; look better, you shall 2ofind certain that do, in some small degree, knoiv whither. Sheep have their Bell-wether; some ram of the folds, endued with more valor, with clearer vision than other sheep ; he leads them through the wolds, by height and hollow, to the woods and water-courses, 25 for covert or for pleasant provender ; courageously marching, and if need be, leaping, and with hoof and horn doing battle, in the van: him they courageously, and with assured heart, follow. Touching it is, as every herdsman will inform you, with what chivalrous 30 devotedness these woolly Hosts adhere to their Wether; and rush after him, through good report and through bad report, were it into safe shelters and 98 CARLYLE ON green tliymy nooks, or into asphaltic lakes and the jaws of devouring lions. Ever also must we recall that fact which we owe Jean Paul's quick eye: "If you hold a stick before the Wether, so that he, by necessity, leaps in passing you, and then withdraw 5 your stick, the Flock will nevertheless all leap as he did ; and the thousandth sheep shall be found impetu- ously vaulting over air, as the first did over an other- wise impassable barrier." Reader, wouldst thou understand Society, ponder well those ovine proceed- 10 ings; thou wilt find them all curiously significant. Now if sheep always, how much more must men always, have their Chief, their Guide! Man too is by nature quite thoroughly gregafious : nay, ever he struggles to be something more, to be social j not even 15 when Society has become impossible does that deep- seated tendency and effort forsake him. Man, as if by miraculous magic, imparts his Thoughts, his Mood of mind to man ; an unspeakable communion binds all past, present, and future men into one indissoluble 20 whole, almost into one living Individual. Of which high, mysterious Truth, this disposition to imitate, to lead and be led, this impossibility 7iot to imitate, is the most constant, and one of the simplest manifesta- tions. To "imitate!" which of us all can measure 25 the significance that lies in that one word? By virtue of which the infant Man, born at Wolstrop, grows up not to be a hairy Savage, and chewer of Acorns, but an Isaac Newton and Discoverer of Solar Systems! — Thus, both in a celestial and terrestrial sense, are we 30 a Flock^ such as there is no other: nay, looking away from the base and ludicrous to the sublime and sacred BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 99 side of the matter (since in every matter there are two sides), have not we also a Shepherd, "if we will but hear his voice?" Of those stupid multitudes there is no one but has an immortal Soul within him; a reflex 5 and living image of God's whole Universe: strangely, from its dim environment, the light of the Highest looks through him; — for which reason, indeed, it is that we claim a brotherhood with him, and so love to know his History, and come into clearer and clearer 10 union with all that he feels, and says, and does. However, the chief thing to be noted was this: Amid those dull millions, who, as a dull flock, roll hither and thither, whithersoever they are led; and seem all sightless and slavish, accomplishing, attempt- 15 ing little save what the animal instinct (in its some- what higher kind) might teach (to keep themselves and their young ones alive), — are scattered here and there superior natures, whose eye is not destitute of free vision, nor their heart of free volition. These 2o latter, therefore, examine and determine, not what others do, but what it is right to do ; towards which and which only, will they, with such force as is given them, resolutely endeavor: for if the Machine, living or inanimate, is merely y>^, or desires to be fed, and 25 so works; the Person can will, and so do. These are properly our Men, our Great Men; the guides of the dull host, — which follows them as by an irrevocable decree. They are the chosen of the world: they had this rare faculty not only of "supposing" and "inclin- 30 ing to think," but of knowing and believing; the nature of their being was, that they lived not by Hearsay but by clear Vision ; while others hovered and swam lOO CARLYLE ON along, in the grand Vanity-fair of the World, blinded by the mere "Shows of things," these saw into the Things themselves, and could walk as men having an eternal loadstar, and with their feet on sure paths. Thus was there a Reality in their existence; some- 5 thing of a perennial character; in virtue of which indeed it is that the memory of them is perennial. Whoso belongs only to his own age, and reverences only its gilt Popinjays or soot-smeared Mumbojumbos, must needs die with it: though he have been crowned 10 seven times in the Capitol, or seventy and seven times, and Rumor have blown his praises to all the four winds, deafening every ear therewith, — it avails not; there was nothing universal, nothing eternal in him; he must fade away, even as the Popinjay-gildings 15 and Scarecrow-apparel, which he could not see through. The great man does, in good truth, belong to his own age; nay more so than any other man; being properly the synopsis and epitome of such age with its interests and influences: but belongs likewise 20 to all ages, otherwise he is not great. What was transitory in him passes away ; and an immortal part remains, the significance of which is in strict speech inexhaustible, — as that of every 7'eal object is. Aloft, conspicuous, on his enduring basis, he stands there, 25 serene, unaltering; silently addresses to every new generation a new lesson and monition. Well is his Life worth writing, worth interpreting; and ever, in the new dialect of new times, of re-writing and re- interpreting. 30 Of such chosen men was Samuel Johnson: not rank- ing among the highest, or even the high, yet distinctly BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHN SO M. :ioi admitted into that sacred band •-■whoGe 'exisit'cnce wa-s no idle Dream, but a Reality which he transacted awake ; nowise a Clothes-horse and Patent Digester, but a genuine Man. By nature he was gifted for the 5 noblest of earthly tasks, that of Priesthood, and Guidance of mankind ; by destiny, moreover, he was appointed to this task, and did actually, according to strength, fufil the same: so that always the question, Hoiv ; in what spirit J under what shape! remains for lo us to be asked and answered concerning him. For as the highest Gospel was a Biography, so is the Life of every good man still an indubitable Gospel, and preaches to the eye and heart and whole man, so that Devils even must believe and tremble, these 15 gladdest tidings: "Man is heaven-born; not the thrall of Circumstances, of Necessity, but the victorious subduer thereof: behold how he can become the 'Announcer of himself and of his Freedom;' and is ever what the Thinker has named him, 'the Messias 20 of Nature!' " — Yes, Reader, all this that thou hast so often heard about "force of circumstances," "the creature of the time," "balancing of motives," and who knows what melancholy stuff to the like purport, wherein thou, as in a nightmare Dream, sittest para- 25 lysed, and hast no force left, — was in very truth, if Johnson and waking men are to be credited, little other than a hag-ridden vision of death-sleep; some half-iSiCX., more fatal at times than a whole false- hood. Shake it off; awake; up and be doing, even 30 as it is given thee! The Contradiction which yawns wide enough in every Life, which it is the meaning and task of Life lo.! Ca-RLYLE on \o .leconoile, w^^s jin- Jqhnson's wider than in most. Seldom, for any man, has the contrast between the ethereal heavenward side of things, and the dark sor- did earthward, been more glaring: whether we look at Nature's work with him or Fortune's, from first to 5 last, heterogeneity, as of sunbeams and miry clay, is on all hands manifest. Whereby indeed, only this was declared. That much Life had been given him ; many things to triumph over, a great work to do. Happily also he did it; better than the most. 10 Nature had given him a high, keen-visioned, almost poetic soul; yet withal imprisoned it in an inert, unsightly body: he that could never rest had not limbs that would move with him, but only roll and waddle: the inward eye, all-penetrating, all-embrac- 15 ing, must look through bodily w'indows that were dim, half-blinded; he so loved men, and "never once saw the human face divine!" Not less did he prize the love of men; he was eminently social; the approbation of his fellows was dear to him, "valuable," as he 20 owned, "if from the meanest of human beings:" yet the first impression he produced on every man was to be one of aversion, almost of disgust. By Nature it was further ordered that the imperious Johnson should be born poor: the ruler-soul, strong in its 25 native royalty, generous, uncontrollable, like the lion of the woods, was to be housed, then, in such a dwell- ing-place: of Disfigurement, Disease, and, lastly, of a Poverty which itself made him the servant of serv- ants. Thus was the born King likewise a born Slave: 30 the divine spirit of Music must awake imprisoned amid dull-croaking universal Discords; the Ariel finds BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 103 himself encased in the coarse hulls of a Caliban. So is it more or less, we know (and thou, O Reader, knowest and feelest even now), Avith all men: yet with the fewest men in any such degree as with 5 Johnson. Fortune, moreover, which had so managed his first appearance in the world, lets not her hand lie idle, or turn the other way, but works unweariedly in the same spirit, while he is journeying through the world. 10 What such a mind, stamped of Nature's noblest metal, though in so ungainly a die, was specially and best of all fitted for, might still be a question. To none of the world's few Incorporated Guilds could he have adjusted himself without difficulty, without 15 distortion ; in none been a Guild-Brother well at ease. Perhaps, if we look to the strictly practical nature of his faculty, to the strength, decision, method that manifests itself in him, we may say that his calling was rather towards Active than Speculative life; that as States- 20 man (in the higher, now obsolete sense). Lawgiver, Ruler; in short, as Doer of the Work, he had shone even more than as Speaker of the Word. His honesty of heart, his courageous temper, the value he set on things outward and material, might have made him a 25 King among Kings. Had the golden age of those new French Prophets, when it shall be: A chacun selon sa capacite ; a chaqiie capacite selon ses ceuvres^ but arrived! Indeed, even in our brazen and Birming- ham-lacker age, he himself regretted that he had 30 not become a Lawyer, and risen to be Chancellor, which he might well have done. However, it was otherwise appointed. To no man does Fortune throw I04 CARLYLE ON open all the kingdoms of this world, and say: It is thine ; choose where thou wilt dwell ! To the most she opens hardly the smallest cranny or doghutch, and says, not without asperity: There, that is thine while thou canst keep it; nestle thyself there, and 5 bless Heaven! Alas, men must fit themselves into many things: some forty years ago, for instance, the noblest and ablest Man in all the British lands might be seen not swaying the royal sceptre, or the pontiff's censer, on the pinnacle of the World, but gauging ale- 10 tubs in the little burgh of Dumfries ! Johnson came a little nearer the mark than Burns: but with him too "Strength was mournfully denied its arena;" he too had to fight Fortune at strange odds, all his life long. Johnson's disposition for royalty (had the Fates so 15 ordered it) is well seen in early boyhood. "His favorites," says Boswell, "used to receive very liberal assistance from him ; and such was the submission and deference with which he was treated, that three of the boys, of whom Mr. Hector was sometimes one, 20 used to come in the morning as his humble attendants, and carry him to school. One in the middle stooped, while he sat upon his back; and one on each side sup- ported him; and thus was he borne triumphant." The purfly, sand-blind lubber and blubber, with his 25 open mouth, and face of bruised honeycomb; yet already dominant, imperial, irresistible! Not in the "King's-chair" (of human arms) as we see, do his three satellites carry him along: rather on the TyranVs-saddle^ the back of his fellow-creature, must 30 he ride prosperous! — The child is father of the man. He who had seen fifty years into coming Time, would BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 105 have felt that little spectacle of mischievous school- boys to be a great one. For us, who look back on it, and what followed it, now from afar, there arise questions enough: How looked these urchins? What 5 jackets and galligaskins had they ; felt headgear, or of dogskin leather? What was old Lichfield doing then; what thinking? — and so on, through the whole series of Corporal Trim's "auxiliary verbs." A picture of it all fashions itself together ; — only un- 10 happily we have no brush and no fingers. Boyhood is now past; the ferula of Pedagogue waves harmless, in the distance: Samuel has struggled up to uncoutli bulk and youthhood, wrestling with Disease and Poverty, all the way; which two continue 15 still his companions. At College we see little of him; yet thus much, that things went not well. A rugged wild-man of the desert, awakened to .the feeling of himself; proud as the proudest, poor as the poorest; stoically shut up, silently enduring the incurable: 20 what a world of blackest gloom, with sun-gleams and pale tearful moon-gleams, and flickerings of a celestial and an infernal splendor, was this that now opened for him ! But the weather is wintry ; and the toes of the man are looking through his shoes. His muddy 25 features grow of a purple and sea-green color; a flood of black indignation mantling beneath. A truc- ulent, raw-boned figure ! Meat he has probably little ; hope he has less: his feet, as we said, have come into brotherhood with the cold mire. 30 " Shall I be particular," inquires Sir John Hawkins, " and relate a circumstance of his distress, that cannot be imputed to him as an effect of his own extravagance or irregularity, and con- lo6 CARLYLE ON sequently reflects no disgrace on his memory ? He had scarce any change of raiment, and, in a short time after Corbet left him, but one pair of shoes, and those so old that his feet were seen through them : a gentleman of his college, the father of an emi- nent clergyman now living, directed a servitor one morning to 5 place a new pair at the door of Johnson's chamber ; who seeing them upon his first going out, so far forgot himself and the spirit which must have actuated his unknown benefactor, that, with all the indignation of an insulted man, he threw them away." How exceedingly surprising! — The Rev. Dr. Hall lo remarks: "As far as we can judge from a cursory view of the weekly account in the buttery-books, Johnson appears to have lived as well as other commoners and scholars." Alas! such ''cursory view of the buttery books," now from the safe distance of a century, in 15 the safe chair of a College Mastership, is one thing; the continual view of the empty (or locked) buttery it- self was quite a different thing. But hear our Knight, how he farther discourses. "Johnson," quoth Sir John, "could not at this early period of his life divest 20 himself of an idea that poverty was disgraceful; and was very severe in his censures of that economy in both our Universities, which exacted at meals the attendance of poor scholars, under the several denom- inations of Servitors in the one, and Sizers in the 25 other: he thought that the scholar's, like the Christian life, levelled all distinctions of rank and worldly pre- eminence; but in this he was mistaken : civil polity," &c., &c. — Too true! It is man's lot to err. However, Destiny, in all ways, means to prove 30 the mistaken Samuel, and see what stuff is in him. He must leave these butteries of Oxford, Want like an armed man compelling him ; retreat into his father's BOSIVELVS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 107 mean home; and there abandon hunself for a season to inaction, disappointment, shame, and nervous mel- ancholy nigh run mad : he is probably the wretchedest man in wide England. In all ways, he too must 5 "become perfect through suffering^ — High thoughts have visited him ; his College Exercises have been praised beyond the walls of College; Pope himself, has seen that Trajishition^ and approved of it: Samuel had whispered to himself: I too am "one and some- 10 what." False thoughts; that leave only misery behind! The fever-fire of Ambition is too painfully extinguished (but not cured) in the frost-bath of Poverty. Johnson has knocked at the gate, as one having a right; but there was no opening: the world 15 lies all encircled as with brass; nowhere can he find or force the smallest entrance. An ushership at Market Bosworth, and "a disagreement between him and Sir Wolstan Dixie, the patron of the school," yields him bread of affliction and water of affliction; 20 but so bitter, that unassisted human nature cannot swallow them. Young Samson will grind no more in the Philistine mill of Bosworth; quits hold of Sir Wolstan, and the "domestic chaplaincy, so far at least as to say grace at table," and also to be "treated with 25 what he represented as intolerable harshness;" and so, after "some months of such complicated misery," feeling doubtless that there are worse things in the w^orld than quick death by Famine, "relinquishes a situation, which all his life afterwards he recollected 30 with the strongest aversion, and even horror." Men like Johnson are properly called the Forlorn Hope of the world: judge whether his hope was forlorn. or not. loS CARLYLE ON by this Letter to a dull oily Printer who called him- self Sylvanus Urban : " Sir, — As you appear no less sensible than your readers of the defect of your poetical article, you will not be displeased if (in order to the improvement of it) I communicate to you the senti- 5 ments of a person who will undertake, on reasonable terms, some- times to fill a column. " His opinion is, that the public would," &c. &c. " If such a correspondence will be agreeable to you, be pleased to inform me in two posts what the conditions are on which you 10 shall expect it. Your late offer (for a Prize Poem) gives me no reason to distrust your generosity. If you engage in any literary projects besides this paper, I have other designs to impart." Reader, the generous person, to whom this Letter goes addressed, is "Mr. Edmund Cave, at St. John's 15 Gate, London;" the addresser of it is Samuel John- son, in Birmingham, Warwickshire. Nevertheless, Life rallies in the man ; reasserts its right to be lived^ even to be enjoyed. "Better a small bush," say the Scotch, "than no shelter:" 20 Johnson learns to be contented with humble human things ; and is there not already an actual realized human Existence, all stirring and living on every hand of him? Go thou and do likewise! Iw Birmingham itself, with his own purchased goose-quill, he can earn 25 "five pounds;" nay, finally, the choicest terrestrial good: a Friend, who will be Wife to him! Johnson's marriage with the good Widow Porter has been treated with ridicule by many mortals, who apparently had no understanding thereof. That the purblind, seamy- 30 faced Wild-man, stalking lonely, woe-stricken, like some Irish Gallowglass with peeled club, whose speech BOSVVELVS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 109 no man knew, whose look all men both laughed at and shuddered at, should find any brave female heart to acknowledge, at first -sight and hearing of him, "This is the most sensible man I ever met with ;" and 5 then, with generous courage, to take him to itself, and say, Be thou mine ; be thou warmed here, and thawed to life! — in all this, in the kind Widow's love and pity for him, in Johnson's love and gratitude, there is actually no matter for ridicule. Their wedded life, as 10 is the common lot, was made up of drizzle and dry weather; but innocence and worth dwelt in it; and when death had ended it, a certain sacredness: John- son's deathless affection for his Tetty was always ven- erable and noble. However, be all this as it might, 15 Johnson is now minded to wed ; and will live by the trade of Pedagogy, for by this also may life be kept in. Let the world therefore take notice: ''At Edial near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young gentl email are boarded, and taught the Latin and Greek languages, by 20 Samuel Johnson." Had this Edial enterprise pros- pered, how different might the issue have been ! Johnson had lived a life of unnoticed nobleness, or swoln into some amorphous Dr. Parr, of no avail to us; Bozzy would have dwindled into official insig- 25 nificance, or risen by some other elevation ; old Auch- inleck had never been afflicted with "ane that keeped a schule," or obliged to violate hospitality by a: "Cromwell do? God, sir, he gart kings ken that there was a lith in their neck!" But the Edial enter- 30 prise did not prosper; Destiny had other work appointed for Samuel Johnson ; and young gentlemen got board where they could elsewhere find it. This no CARLYLE ON man was to become a Teacher of grown gentlemen, In the most surprising way; a Man of Letters, and Ruler of the British Nation for some time, — not of their bodies merely, but of their minds, not over them, but in them, 5 The career of Literature could not, in Johnson's day, any more than now, be said to lie along the shores of a Pactolus: whatever else might be gathered there, gold-dust was nowise the chief produce. The world, from the times of Socrates, St. Paul, and far lo earlier, has always had its teachers; and always treated them in a peculiar way. A shrewd Townclerk (not of Ephesus), once, in founding a Burgh-Semi- nary, when the question came. How the School- masters should be maintained? delivered this brief 15 counsel: "D — n them, keep them poor !'' Consider- able wisdom may lie in this aphorism. At all events, we see, the world has acted on it long, and indeed improved on it, — putting many a Schoolmaster of its great Burgh-Seminary to a death, which even cost it 20 something. The world, it is true, had for some time been too busy to go out of its way, and put any Au- thor to death; however, the old sentence pronounced against them was found to be pretty sufficient. The first Writers (being Monks) were sworn to a vow of 25 Poverty ; the modern Authors had no need to swear to it. This was the epoch when an Otway could still die of hunger; not to speak of your innumerable Scrogginses, whom "the Muse found stretched beneath a rug," with "rusty grate unconscious of a fire," stock- 30 ing-nightcap, sanded floor, and all the other escutch- BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. m eons of the craft, time out of mind the heirlooms of Authorship. Scroggins, however, seems to have been but an idler; not at all so diligent as worthy Mr. Boyce, whom we might have seen sitting up in bed, 5 with his wearing-apparel of Blanket about him, and a hole slit in the same, that his hand might be at liberty to work in its vocation. The worst was, that too frequently a blackguard recklessness of temper ensued, incapable of turning to account what good the logods even here had provided: your Boyces acted on some stoico-epicurean principle of carpe diem^ as men do in bombarded towns, and seasons of raging pesti- lence; — and so had lost not only their life and pres- ence of mind, but their status as persons of respec- 15 tability. The trade of Author was about one of its lowest ebbs when Johnson embarked on it. Accordingly we find no mention of Illuminations in the city of London when this same Ruler of the British nation arrived in it: no cannon-salvos are 20 fired ; no flourish of drums and trumpets greets his appearance on the scene. He enters quite quietly, with some copper halfpence in his pocket ; creeps into lodgings in Exeter Street, Strand; and has a Coronation Pontiff also, of not less peculiar equip- 25 ment, whom, with all submissiveness, he must wait upon, in his Vatican of St. John's Gate. This is the dull oily Printer alluded to above. " Cave's temper," says our Knight Hawkins, " was phlegmatic : though he assumed, as the publisher of the Magazine, the name 30 of Sylvanus Urban, he had few of those qualities that constitute urbanity. Judge of his want of them by this question, which he once put to an author : ' Mr. , I hear you have just published 112 CARLYLE OAT a pamphlet, and am told there is a very good paragraph in it, upon the subject of music : did you write that yourself ? ' His discern- ment was also slow ; and as he had already at his command some writers of prose and verse, who, in the language of Booksellers, are called good hands, he was the backwarder in making advances, 5 or courting an intimacy with Johnson. Upon the first approach of a stranger, his practice was to continue sitting ; a posture in which he was ever to be found, and for a few minutes to continue silent : if at any time he was inclined to begin the discourse, it was generally by putting a leaf of the Magazine, then in the press, lO into the hand of his visitor, and asking his opinion of it, . . . " He was so incompetent a judge of Johnson's abilities, that meaning at one time to dazzle him with the splendor of some of those luminaries in Literature, who favored him with their corre- spondence, he told him that if he would, in the evening, be at a 15 certain alehouse in the neighborhood of Clerkenwell, he might have a chance of seeing Mr. Browne and another or two of those illustrious contributors : Johnson accepted the invitation ; and being introduced by Cave, dressed in a loose horseman's coat, and such a great bushy wig as he constantly wore, to the sight of Mr. 20 Browne, whom he found sitting at the upper end of a long table, in a cloud of tobacco-smoke, had his curiosity gratified." — Haw- kins, 46-50. In fact, if we look seriously into the condition of Authorship at that period, we shall find that Johnson 25 had undertaken one of the ruggedest of all possible enterprises; that here as elsewhere Fortune had given him unspeakable Contradictions to reconcile. For a man of Johnson's stamp, the Problem was twofold: First, not only as the humble but indispensable con- 30 dition of all else, to keep himself, if so might be, alive; but secondly, to keep himself alive by speaking forth the Truth that was in him, and speaking it trttly, that is, in the clearest and fittest utterance the Heavens had enabled him to give it, let the Earth say to this BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOIINSOiY. 113 what she liked. Of which twofold Problem if it be hard to solve either member separately, how incalcu- lably more so to solve it, when both are conjoined, and work with endless complication into one another! He 5 that finds himself already kept alive can sometimes (unhappily not always) speak a little truth; he that finds himself able and willing, to all lengths, to speak lies^ may, by watching how the wind sits, scrape together a livelihood, sometimes of great splendor: 10 he, again, who finds himself provided with neither endowment, has but a ticklish game to play, and shall have praises if he win it. Let us look a little at both faces of the matter; and see what front they then offered our Adventurer, what front he offered 15 them. At the time of Johnson's appearance on the field, Literature, in many senses, was in a transitional state; chiefly in this sense, as respects the pecuniary subsistence of its cultivators. It was in the very act 20 of passing from the protection of patrons into that ot^ the Public; no longer to supply its necessities by laudatory Dedications to the Great, but by judicious Bargains with the Booksellers. This happy change has been much sung and celebrated ; many a "lord of 25 the lion heart and eagle eye" looking back with scorn enough on the bygone system of Dependency: so that now it were perhaps well to consider, for a moment, what good might also be in it, what gratitude we owe it. That a good was in it, admits not of doubt. 30 Whatsoever has existed has had its value: without some truth and worth lying in it, the thing could not have hung together, and been the organ and suste- 114 CARLYLE ON nance and method of action for men that reasoned and were alive. Translate a Falsehood which is wholly false into Practice, the result comes out zero; there is no fruit or issue to be derived from it. That in an age, when a Nobleman was still noble, still with his 5 wealth the protector of worthy and humane things, and still venerated as such, a poor Man of Genius, his brother in nobleness, should, with unfeigned rev- erence, address him and say: "I have found Wisdom here, and would fain proclaim it abroad; wilt thou, 10 of thy abundance, afford me the means?" — in all this there was no baseness ; it was wholly an honest pro- posal, which a free man might make, and a free man listen to. So might a Tasso, with a Gerusalemme in his hand or in his head, speak to a Duke of Ferrara ; 15 so might a Shakspeare to his Southampton ; and Continental Artists generally to their rich Protec- tors, — in some countries, down almost to these days. It was only when the reverence became feigned, that baseness entered into the transaction on both 20 sides ; and, indeed, flourished there with rapid lux- uriance, till that became disgraceful for a Dryden which a Shakespeare could once practise without offence. Neither, it is very true, was the new way of Book- 25 seller Maecenasship worthless; which opened itself at this juncture, for the most important of all transport- trades, now when the old way had become too miry and impossible. Remark, moreover, how this second sort of Maecenasship, after carrying us through nearly 30 a century of Literary Time, appears now to have well- nigh discharged its function also ; and to be working BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 115 pretty rapidly toward some third method, the exact conditions of which are yet nowise visible. Thus all things have their end; and we should part with them all, not in anger, but in peace. The Bookseller 5 System, during its peculiar century, the whole of the eighteenth, did carry us handsomely along; and many good Works it has left us, and many good Men it maintained: if it is now expiring by Puffery, as the Patronage System did by Flattery (for Lying is 10 ever the forerunner of Death, nay, is itself Death), let us not forget its benefits; how it nursed Literature through boyhood and school-years, as Patronage had wrapped it in soft swaddling-bands; — till now we see it about to put on the toga virilis^ could it but ^/z^/ any 15 such ! There is tolerable travelling on the beaten road, run how it may ; only on the new road not yet levelled and paved, and on the old road all broken into ruts and quagmires, is the travelling bad or impracticable. 20 The difficulty lies always in the transition from one method to another. In which state it was that John- son now found Literature; and out of which, let us also say, he manfully carried it. What remarkable mortal first paid copyright in England we have not 25 ascertained; perhaps, for almost a century before, some scarce visible or ponderable pittance of wages had occasionally been yielded by the Seller of books to the Writer of them: the original Covenant, stipulating to produce Paradise Lost on the one hand, and Five yi Pounds Sterling on the other, still lies (we have been told) in black-on-white, for inspection and purchase by the curious, at a Bookshop in Chancery Lane. Il6 CARLYLE OJSr Thus had the matter gone on, in a mixed confused way, for some threescore years; — as ever, in such things, the old system overlaps the new, by some gen- eration or two, and only dies quite out when the new has got a complete organization and weather-worthy 5 surface of its own. Among the first Authors, the very first of any significance, who lived by the day's wages of his craft, and composedly faced the world on that basis, was Samuel Johnson. At the time of Johnson's appearance there were still 10 two ways on which an Author might attempt proceed- ing: there were the Maecenases proper in the West End of London ; and the Maecenases virtual of St. John's Gate and Paternoster Row. To a considerate man it might seem uncertain which method were the 15 preferable: neither had very high attractions; the Patron's aid was now well-nigh 7iecessarily polluted by sycophancy, before it could come to hand: the Bookseller's was deformed with greedy stupidity, not to say entire wooden-headedness and disgust (so 20 that an Osborne even required to be knocked down by an Author of spirit), and could barely keep the thread of Ufe together. The one was the wages of suffering and poverty; the other, unless you gave strict heed to it, the wages of sin. In time, Johnson 25 had opportunity of looking into both methods, and ascertaining what they were; but found, at first trial, that the former would in nowise do for him. Listen, once again, to that far-famed Blast of Doom, pro- claiming into the ear of Lord Chesterfield, and, 30 through him, of the listening world, that Patronage should be no more! BOSWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 117 " Seven years, my Lord, have now past, 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 5 verge of publication, without one act of assistance, "•^ one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. " 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 10 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 till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it ; till I am solitary and cannot impart it ; till I am known 15 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 20 to any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less ; for I have long been awakened from that dream of hope in which I once boasted myself with so much exaltation, " My Lord, your Lordship's most humble, most obedient 25 servant, " Sam. Johnson." And thus must the rebellious "Sam. Johnson" turn him to the Bookselling guild, and the wondrous chaos of "Author by trade;" and, though ushered into it 30 only by that dull oily Printer, "with loose horseman's coat and such a great bushy wig as he constantly wore," ' The English Dictionary. 2 Were time and printer's space of no value, it were easy to wash away certain foolish soot-stains dropped here as " Notes ; " especially two : the one on this word and on Boswell's Note to it ; Il8 CARLYLE ON and only as subaltern to some commanding officer "Browne, sitting amid tobacco-smoke at the head of a long table in the alehouse at Clerkenwell," — gird himself together for the warfare; having no alterna- tive ! 5 Little less contradictory was that other branch of the twofold Problem now set before Johnson: the speaking forth of Truth. Nay, taken by itself, it had in those days become so complex as to puzzle strongest heads, with nothing else imposed on them for solu- lo tion ; and even to turn high heads of that sort into mere hollow vizards^ speaking neither truth nor false- hood, nor any thing but what the Prompter and Player (vTtoHpiri)^) put into them. Alas ! for poor Johnson, Contradiction abounded ; in spirituals and in tem- 15 porals, within and without. Born with the strongest unconquerable love of just Insight, he must begin to live and learn in a scene where Prejudice flourishes with rank luxuriance. England was all confused enough, sightless and yet restless, take it where you 20 would; but figure the best intellect in England nursed up to manhood in the idol-cavern of a poor Trades- man's house, in the cathedral city of Lichfield ! What is Truth? said jesting Pilate ; What is Tfuth? might earnest Johnson much more emphatically say. Truth, 25 no longer, like the Phoenix, in rainbow plumage, "poured, from her glittering beak, such tones of the other on the paragraph which follows. Let " Ed." look a second time ; he will find that Johnson's sacred regard for T-tuth is the only thing to be " noted " in the former case ; also, in the 30 latter, that this of " Love's being a native of the rocks" actually has a " meaning." BOSWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 119 sweetest melody as took captive every ear:" the Phoenix (waxing old) had well-nigh ceased her sing- ing, and empty wearisome Cuckoos, and doleful monotonous Owls, innumerable Jays also, and twitter- 5 ing Sparrows on the housetops, pretended they were repeating her. It was wholly a divided age, that of Johnson ; Unity existed no where, in its Heaven, or in its Earth, Society, through every fibre, was rent asunder; all 10 things, it was then becoming visible, but could not then be understood, were moving onwards, with an impulse received ages before, yet now first with a decisive rapidity, towards that great chaotic gulf, where, whether in the shape of French Revolutions, 15 Reform Bills, or what shape soever, bloody or blood- less, the descent and engulfment assume, we now see them weltering and boiling. Already Cant, as once before hinted, had begun to play its wonderful part (for the hour was come): two ghastly apparitions, 20 unreal simulacra both. Hypocrisy and Atheism are already, in silence, parting the world. Opinion and Action, which should live together as wedded pair, "one flesh," more properly as Soul and Body, have commenced their open quarrel, and are suing for a 25 separate maintenance, — as if they could exist sepa- rately. To the earnest mind, in any position, firm footing and a life of Truth was becoming daily more difficult: in Johnson's position it was more difficult than in almost any other. 30 If, as for a devout nature was inevitable and indis- pensable, he looked up to Religion, as to the pole-star of his voyage, already there was no fixed pole-star U I20 CARLYLE ON any longer visible; but two stars, a whole constella- tion of stars, each proclaiming itself as the true. There was the red portentous comet-star of Infidelity; the dimmer-burning and dimmer fixed-star (uncertain now whether not an atmospheric meteor) of orthodoxy: 5 which of these to choose? The keener intellects of Europe had, almost without exception, ranged them- selves under the former; for some half century, it had been the general effort of European Speculation to proclaim that Destruction of falsehood was the only 10 Truth ; daily had Denial waxed stronger and stronger, Belief sunk more and more into decay. From our Bolingbrokes and Tolands the sceptical fever had passed into France, into Scotland; and already it smouldered, far and wide, secretly eating out the 15 heart of England. Bayle had played his part ; Vol- taire, on a wider theatre, was playing his, — Johnson's senior by some fifteen years: Hume and Johnson were children almost of the same year. To this keener order of intellects did Johnson's indisputably belong; 20 was he to join them; was he to oppose them? A complicated question : for, alas ! the Church itself is no longer, even to him, wholly of true adamant, but of adamant and baked mud conjoined: the zealously Devout must find his Church tottering; and pause 25 amazed to see, instead of inspired Priest, many a swine-feeding Trulliber ministering at her altar. It is not the least curious of the incoherences which Johnson had to reconcile, that, though by nature contemptuous and incredulous, he was, at that time 30 of day, to find his safety and glory in defending, with his whole might, the traditions of the elders. BOSWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 12 1 Not less perplexingly intricate, and on both sides hollow or questionable, was the aspect of Pojitics^^ Whigs struggling blindly forward, Tories holding blindly back; each with some forecast of a half truth; 5 neither with any forecast of the whole! Admire here this other Contradiction in the life of Johnson ; that, though the most ungovernable, and in practice the most independent of men, he must be a Jacobite, and worshipper of the Divine Right. In politics also 10 there are Irreconcilables enough for him. As indeed how could it be otherwise? For when religion is torn asunder, and the very heart of man's existence set against itself, then in all subordinate departments ^ there must needs be hollowness, incoherence. The 15 English Nation had rebelled against a Tyrant; and, by the hands of religious tyrannicides, exacted stern vengeance of him: Democracy had risen iron-sinewed, and, "like an infant Hercules, strangled serpents in its cradle." But as yet none knew the meaning or 20 extent of the phenomenon: Europe was not ripe for it; not to be ripened for it but by the culture and various experience of another century and a half. And now, when the King-killers were all swept away, and a milder second picture was painted over the can- 25 vass of \\\^ first ^ and betitled "Glorious Revolution," who doubted but the catastrophe was over, the whole business finished, and Democracy gone to its long sleep? Yet was it like a business finished and not finished; a lingering uneasiness dwelt in all minds: 30 the deep-lying, resistless Tendency, which had still to be obeyed^ could no longer be recognized j thus was there half-ness, insincerity, uncertainty in men's ways ; 122 CARLYLE ON instead of heroic Puritans and heroic Cavaliers, came now a dawdling set of argumentative Whigs, and a dawdling set of deaf-eared Tories; each half-foolish, each half-false. The Whigs were false and without basis; inasmuch as their whole object was Resistance, 5 Criticism, Demolition, — they knew not why, or towards what issue. In Whiggism, ever since a Charles and his Jeffries had ceased to meddle with it, and to have any Russel or Sidney to meddle with, there could be no divineness of character; nor till, in these latter 10 days, it took the figure of a thorough-going, all-defy- ing Radicalism, was there any solid footing for it to stand on. Of the like uncertain, half-hollow nature had Toryism become, in Johnson's time; preaching forth indeed an everlasting truth, the duty of Loyalty; 15 yet now (ever since the final expulsion of the Stuarts) having no Person^ but only an Office to be loyal to; no living Soul to worship, but only a dead velvet- cushioned Chah'. Its attitude, therefore, was stiff- necked refusal to move; as that of Whiggism was 20 clamorous command to move, — let rhyme and reason, on both hands, say to it what they might. The con- sequence was: Immeasurable floods of contentious jargon, tending nowhither; false conviction; false resistance to conviction ; decay (ultimately to become 25 decease) of whatsoever was once understood by the words Principle or Honesty of heart; the louder triumph of Half-xiQss and Plausibility over JVliole-ness and Truth; — at last, this all-overshadowing efflorescence of Quackery, which we now see, with all its deaden- 30 ing and killing fruits, in all its innumerable branches, down to the lowest. How, between these jarring BOS WELL S L TFE OF JOHNSON. 1 2 3 extremes, wherein the rotten lay so inextricably inter- mingled with the sound, and as yet no eye could see through the ulterior meaning of the matter, was a . faithful and true man to adjust himself? 5 That Johnson, in spite of all drawbacks, adopted the Conservative side; stationed himself as the unyield- ing opponent of Innovation, resolute to hold fast the form of sound words, could not but increase, in no small measure, the difficulties he had to strive with. 10 We mean the moral difficulties; for in economical respects, it might be pretty equally balanced; the Tory servants of the Public had perhaps about the same chance of promotion as the Whig: and all the promotion Johnson aimed at was the privilege to live. 15 But, for what, though unavowed, was no less indis- pensable, for his peace of conscience, and the clear ascertainment and feeling of his Duty as an inhabitant of God's world, the case was hereby rendered much more complex. To resist Innovation is easy enough 20 on one condition: that you resist Inquiry. This is, and was, the common expedient of your common Conservatives; but it would not do for Johnson: he was a zealous recommender and practiser of Inquj j:yL;„ once for all, could not and would not believe, much 25 less speak and act, a Falsehood: the /^rw of sound words, which he held fast, must have a meaiwig in it. Here lay the difficulty: to behold a portentous mix- ture of True and False, and feel that he must dwell and fight there ; yet to love and defend only the True. 30 How worship, when you cannot and will not be an idolater ; yet cannot help discerning that the Symbol of your Divinity has half become idolatrous? This 124 CARLYLE ON was the question, which Johnson, the man both of clear eye and devout believing heart, must answer, — at peril of his life. The Whig or Sceptic, on the other hand, had a much simpler part to play. To him only the idolatrous side of things, nowise the divine one, lay 5 visible : not worships therefore, nay in the strict sense not heart-honesty, only at most lip- and hand-honesty, is required of him. What spiritual force is his, he can conscientiously employ in the work of cavilling, of pulling down what is False. For the rest, that 10 there is or can be any Truth of a higher than sensual nature, has not occurred to him. The utmost, there- fore, that he as man has to aim at, is Respectability, the suffrages of his fellow-men. Such suffrages he may weigh as well as count; or count only: according 15 as he is a Burke, or a Wilkes. But beyond these there lies nothing divine for him; these attained, all is attained. Thus is his whole world distinct and rounded in ; a clear goal is set before him ; a firm path, rougher or smoother; at Avorst a firm region 20 wherein to seek a path: let him gird up his loins, and travel on without misgivings! For the honest Con- servative, again, nothing is distinct, nothing rounded in: Respectability can nowise be his highest Godhead; not one aim, but two conflicting aims to 25 be continually reconciled by him, has he to strive after. A difficult position, as we said; which accord- ingly the most did, even in those days, but half defend, — by the surrender, namely, of their own too cumbersome honesty^ or even understanding j after 30 which the completest defence was worth little. Into this difficult position Johnson, nevertheless, threw BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOHNSON.^ 125 himself: found it indeed full of difficulties; yet held it out manfully as an honest-hearted, open-sighted man, while life was in him. Such was that same "twofold Problem" set before 5 Samuel Johnson. Consider all these moral difficul- ties; and add to them the fearful aggravation, which lay in that other circumstance, that he needed a con- tinual appeal to the Public, must continually produce a certain impression and conviction on the Public; 10 that if he did not, he ceased to have "provision for the day that was passing over him," he could not any longer live ! How a vulgar character once launched into this wild element; driven onwards by Fear and Famine; without other aim than to clutch what Prov- 15 ender (of Enjoyment in any kind) he could get, always if possible keeping quite clear of the Gallows and Pillory (that is to say, minding heedfully both "person" and "character"), — would have floated hither and thither in it; and contrived to eat some three repasts daily, 20 and wear some three suits yearly, and then to depart and disappear, having consumed his last ration : all this might be worth knowing, but were in itself a trivial knowledge. How a noble man, resolute for the Truth, to whom Shams and Lies were once for all 25 an abomination, — was to act init: here lay the mys- tery. By what methods, by what gifts of eye and hand, does a heroic Samuel Johnson, now when cast forth into that waste Chaos of Authorship, maddest of things, a mingled Phlegethon and Fleet-ditch, with its 30 floating lumber, and sea-krakens, and mud-spectres, — shape himself a voyage; of the transient driftwood, and the enduring iron, build him a seaworthy Life- 126 CARLYLE ON boat, and sail therein, undrowned, unpolluted, through the roaring "mother of dead dogs," onwards to an eternal Landmark, and City that hath foundations? This high question is even the one answered in Bos- well's Book; which Book we therefore, not so falsely, 5 have named a Heroic Foeui ; for in it there lies the whole argument of such. Glory to our brave Samuel! He accomplished this wonderful Problem ; and now through long generations we point to him, and say: Here also was a Man; let the world once more have 10 assurance of a Man! Had there been in Johnson, now when afloat on that confusion worse confounded of grandeur and squalor, no light but an earthly outward one, he too must have made shipwreck. With his diseased body, 15 and vehement voracious heart, how easy for him to become a carpe-diein Philosopher, like the rest, and live and die as miserably as any Boyce of that Brother- hood! But happily there was a higher light for him; shining as a lamp to his path; which, in all paths, 20 would teach him to act and walk not as a fool, but as wise, and in those evil days also, "redeeming the time." Under dimmer or clearer manifestations, a Truth had been revealed to him: I also am a Man; even in this unutterable element of Authorship, I may 25 live as beseems a Man! That Wrong is not only different from Right, but that it is in strict scientific terms infinitely different ; even as the gaining of the whole world set against the losing of one's own soul, or (as Johnson had it) a Heaven set against a Hell; 30 that in all situations (out of the Pit of Tophet), wherein a living Man has stood or can stand, there is actually BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 127 a Pnze_of quite infinite value placed within his reach, namely, a Duiy_S'^'^ ^^^^ ^^ ^<^' ^^^'^^ highest Gospel, which forms the basis and worth of all other Gospels whatsoever, had been revealed to Samuel Johnson ; 5 and the man had believed it, and laid it faithfully to heart. Such knowledge of the transcendental^ im- measurable character of Duty we call the basis of all Gospels, the essence of all Religion: he who with his whole soul knows not this as yet knows nothing, as 10 yet is properly nothing. This, happily for him, Johnson was one of those that knew; under a certain authentic Symbol it stood forever present to his eyes: a Symbol, indeed, waxing old as doth a garment; yet which had guided forward 15 as their Banner and celestial Pillar of Fire, innumer- able saints and witnesses, the fathers of our modern world; and for him also had still a sacred significance. It does not appear that at any time Johnson was what we call irreligious : but in his sorrows and isolation, 20 when hope died away, and only a long vista of suffer- ing and toil lay before him to the end, then first did Religion shine forth in its meek, everlasting clearness; even as the stars do in black night, which in the day- time and dusk were hidden by inferior lights. How 25 a true man, in the midst of errors and uncertainties, shall work out for himself a sure Life-truth ; and adjusting the transient to the eternal, amid the frag- ments of ruined Temples build up, with toil and pain, a little Altar for himself, and worship there; how 30 Samuel Johnson, in the era of Voltaire, can purify and fortify his soul, and hold real communion with the Highest, "in the Church of St. Clement Danes:" 128 CARLYLE ON this too stands all unfolded in his Biography, and Is among the most touching and memorable things there; a thing to be looked at with pity, admiration, awe. Johnson's Religion was as the light of life to him; without it his heart was all sick, dark, and had no 5 guidance left. He is now enlisted, or impressed, into that unspeak- able shoeblack-seraph Army of Authors; but can feel hereby that he fights under a celestial flag, and will quit him like a man. The first grand requisite, an assured heart, he therefore has: what his outward 10 equipments, and accoutrements are, is the next ques- tion ; an important, though inferior one. His intel- lectual stock, intrinsically viewed, is perhaps incon- siderable: the furnishings of an English School and English University; good knowledge of the Latin 15 tongue, a more uncertain one of Greek: this is a rather slender stock of Education wherewith to front the world. But then it is to be remembered that his world was England ; that such was the culture England commonly supplied and expected. Besides 20 Johnson has been a voracious reader, though a desul- tory one, and oftenest in strange scholastic, too obso- lete Libraries ; he has also rubbed shoulders with the press of actual Life, for some thirty years now: views or hallucinations of innumerable things are weltering 25 to and fro in him. Above all, be his weapons what they may, he has an arm that can wield them. Nature has given him her choicest gift: an open eye and heart. He will look on the world, wheresoever he can catch a glimpse of it, with eager curiosity: to the 30 last, we find this a striking characteristic of him; for BOSWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 1 29 all human interests he has a sense; the meanest handi- craftsman could interest him, even in extreme age, by speaking of his craft : the ways of men are all interesting to him; any human thing that he did not 5 know he wished to know. Reflection, moreover, Meditation, was what he practised incessantly with or without his will: for the mind of the man was earnest, deep as well as humane. Thus would the world, such fragments of it as he could survey, form 10 itself, or continually tend to form itself, into a coher- ent whole; on any and on all phases of which his vote and voice must be well worth listening to. As ai Speaker of the Word, he will speak real words; no idle jargon or hollow triviality will issue from him. 15 His aim, too, is clear, attainable, that of working for his ivages : let him do this honestly, and all else will follow of its own accord. With such omens, into such a warfare, did Johnson go forth. A rugged, hungry Kerne, or Gallowglass, as 20 we called him: yet indomitable; in whom lay the true spirit of a Soldier. With giant's force he toils, since such is his appointment, were it but at hewing of wood and drawing of water for old sedentary bushy-wigged Cave; distinguishes himself by mere quantity, if 25 there is to be no other distinction. He can write all things; frosty Latin verses, if these are the salable commodity; Book-prefaces, Political Philippics, Re- view Articles, Parliamentary Debates: all things he does rapidly; still more surprising, all things he does 30 thoroughly and well. How he sits there, in his rough- hewn, amorphous bulk, in that upper-room at St. John's Gate, and trundles off sheet after sheet of those 130 CARLYLE ON Senate-of-Lillipiit Debates, to the clamorous Printer's Devils waiting for them, with insatiable throat, down- stairs; himself perhaps imprausns all the while! Admire also the greatness of Literature; how a grain of mustard-seed cast into its Nile-waters, shall settle 5 in the teeming mould, and be found, one day, as a Tree, in whose branches all the fowls of heaven may- lodge. Was it not so with these Lilliput Debates? In that small project and act began the stupendous Fourth Estate; whose wide world-embracing in- 10 fluences what eye can take in; in whose boughs are there not already fowls of strange feather lodged? Such things, and far stranger, were done in that won- drous old Portal, even in latter times. And then figure Samuel dining "behind the screen," from a 15 trencher covertly handed in to him, at a preconcerted nod from the "great bushy wig;" Samuel too ragged to show face, yet "made a happy man of" by hearing his praise spoken. If to Johnson himself, then much more to us, may that St. John's Gate be a place we 20 can "never pass without veneration." ^ ^ All Johnson's places of resort and abode are venerable, and now indeed to the many as well as to the few ; for his name has become great ; and, as we must often with a kind of sad admira- tion recognize, there is, even to the rudest man, no greatness so 25 venerable as intellectual, as spiritual greatness ; nay, properly there is no other venerable at all. For example, what soul-sub- duing magic, for the very clown or craftsman of our England, lies in the word " Scholar "! " He is a Scholar : " he is a man 7viser than we ; of a wisdom to us boundless, infinite : who shall 30 speak his worth ! Such things, we say, fill us with a certain pathetic admiration of defaced and obstructed yet glorious man ; archangel though in ruins, — or, rather, though in rubbish, of BOS IVE LLS LIFE OF JOHN SOX. 1 3 1 Poverty, Distress, and as yet Obscurity, are his com-/^ panions; so poor is he that his Wife must leave him, and seek shelter among other relations; Johnson's household has accommodation for one inmate only. 5 To all his ever-varying, ever-recurring troubles, more- encumbrances and mud-incrustations, which also are not to be perpetual. Nevertheless, in this mad-whirling, all-forgetting London, the haunts of the mighty that were can seldom without a strange diffi- 10 culty be discovered. Will any man, for instance, tell us which bricks it was in Lincoln's Inn Buildings, that Ben Jonson's hand and trowel laid ? No man, it is to be feared, — and also grumbled at. With Samuel Johnson may it prove otherwise ! A Gentle- man of the British Museum is said to have made drawings of all 15 his residences : the blessing of Old Mortality be upon him ! We ourselves, not without labor and risk, lately discovered Gough Square, between Fleet Street and Holborn (adjoining both to Bolt Court and to Johnson's Court) ; and on the second day of search, the very House there, wherein the English Dictionary 20 was composed. It is the first or corner house on the right hand, as you enter through the arched way from the North-west. The actual occupant, an elderly, well-washed, decent-looking man, invited us to enter; and courteously undertook to h^ cicerone ; though in his memory lay nothing but the foolishest jumble and 25 hallucination. It is a stout, old-fashioned, oak-balustraded house : "I have spent many a pound and penny on it since then," said the worthy landlord ; ' ' here, you see, this Bedroom was the Doctor's study ; that was the garden " (a plot of delved ground somewhat larger than a bed-quilt), " where he walked for exer- 30 cise ; these three Garret Bedrooms " (where his three copyists sat_ and wrote) " were the place he kept his — Pupils in "! Tempus edax rerum ! Yet ferax also : for our friend now added, with a wistful look, which strove to seem merely historical : " I let it all in Lodgings, to respectable gentlemen ; by the quarter, or the 35 month ; it's all one to me." — " To me also," whispered the ghost of Samuel, as we went pensively our ways. 132 CARLYLE ON over, must be added this continual one of ill health, and its concomitant depressiveness: a galling load, which would have crushed most common mortals into desperation, is his appointed ballast and life-burden; he "could not remember the day he had passed free 5 from pain." Nevertheless, Life, as we said before, is always Life: a healthy soul, imprison it as you will, in squalid garrets, shabby coat, bodily sickness, or whatever else, will assert its heaven-granted indefeas- ible Freedom, its right to conquer difficulties, to do 10 work, even to feel gladness. Johnson does not whine over his existence, but manfully makes the most and best of it. "He said, a man might live in a garret at eighteenpence a-week: few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did, it was easy to say, 15 'Sir, I am to be found at such a place.' By spending threepence in a coffee-house, he might be for some hours every day in very good company; he might dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread-and-milk for a penny, and do without supper. On clean-shirt day he went 20 abroad and paid visits." Think by whom and of whom this was uttered, and ask then. Whether there is more pathos in it than in a whole circulating-library of Giaours and Harolds^ or less pathos? On another occasion, "when Dr. Johnson, one day, read his own 25 Satire, in which the life of a scholar is painted, with the various obstructions thrown in his way to fortune and to fame, he burst into a passion of tears: Mr. Thrale's family and Mr. Scott only were present, who, in a jocose way, clapped him on the back, and said, 30 'What's all this, my dear sir? Why, you and I and Hercules^ you know, were all troubled with melan- BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 133 choly.' He was a very large man, and made out the triumvirate with Johnson and Hercules comically- enough." These were sweet tears; the sweet victor- ious remembrance lay in them of toils indeed fright- 5 ful, yet never flinched from, and now triumphed over. "One day it shall delight you to remember labor done ! ' ' — Neither, though Johnson is obscure and poor, need the highest enjoyment of existence, that of heart freely communing with heart, be denied him. Savage 10 and he wander homeless through the streets; without bed, yet not without friendly converse; such another conversation not, it is like, producible in the proudest drawing-room of London. Nor, under the void Night, upon the hard pavement, are their own woes the only 15 topic: nowise; they "will stand by their country," they there, the two "Back-woods-men" of the Brick Desert! Of all outward evils Obscurity is perhaps in itself the least. To Johnson, as to a healthy-minded man, 20 the fantastic article, sold or given under the title of Fa/ne^ had little or no value but its intrinsic one. He prized it as the means of getting him employment and good wages ; scarcely as any thing more. His light and guidance came from a loftier source ; of which, in 25 honest aversion to all hypocrisy or pretentious talk, he spoke not to men; nay perhaps, being of a healthy mind, had never spoken to himself. We reckon it a striking fact in Johnson's history, this carelessness of /his to Fame. Most authors speak of their "Fame" 30 as if it were a quite priceless matter; the grand ulti- matum, and heavenly Constantine's-banner they had to follow, and conquer under. — Thy "Fame!" Un- 134 CARLYLE ON- happy mortal, where will it and thou both be in some fifty years? Shakespeare himself has lasted but two hundred ; Homer (partly by accident) three thousand : and does not already an Eternity encircle every Me and every Thee? Cease, then, to sit feverishly hatch- 5 ing on that ' 'Fame" of thine ; and flapping and shriek- ing with fierce hisses, like brood-goose on her last egg, if man shall or dare approach it! Quarrel not with me, hate me not, my brother: make what thou canst of thy egg, and welcome: God knows, I will not 10 steal it; I believe it to be addle. — Johnson, for his part, was no man to be "killed by a review"; con- cerning which matter, it was said by a benevolent person: "If any author can be reviewed to death, let it be, with all convenient despatch, doney Johnson 15 thankfully receives any word spoken in his favor; is nowise disobliged by a lampoon, but will look at it, if pointed out to him, and show how it might have been done better: the lampoon itself is indeed nothing^ a soap-bubble that next moment will become a drop of 20 sour suds; but in the meanwhile, if it do anything, it keeps him more in the world's eye, and the next bargain will be all the richer: "Sir, if they should cease to talk of me, I must starve." Sound heart and understanding head: these fail no man, not even 25 a Man of Letters ! Obscurity, however, was, in Johnson's case, whether a light or heavy evil, likely to be no lasting one. He is animated by the spirit of a true workin^^ resolute to do his work well; and he does his work 30 well; all his work, that of writing, that of living. A man of this stamp is unhappily not so common in the BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 135 literary or in any other department of the world, that he can continue always unnoticed. By slow degrees, Johnson emerges; looming, at first, huge and dim in the eye of an observant few; at last disclosed, in his 5 real proportions, to the eye of the whole world, and encircled with a "light-nimbus" of glory, so that whoso is not blind must and shall behold him. By slow degrees, we said ; for this also is notable ; slow but sure: as his fame waxes not by exaggerated clamor 10 of what he seems to be, but by better and better insight of what he /i", so it will last and stand wearing, being genuine. Thus indeed is it always, or nearly always, with true fame. The heavenly Luminary rises amid vapors; star-gazers enough must scan it with critical 15 telescopes ; it makes no blazing, the world can either look at it, or forbear looking at it ; not till after a time and times does its celestial eternal nature become indubitable. Pleasant, on the other hand, is the blaz- ing of a Tar-barrel; the crowd dance merrily round 20 it, with loud huzzaing, universal three-times-three, and, like Homer's peasants, "bless the useful light:" but unhappily it so soon ends in darkness, foul chok- ing smoke; and is kicked into the gutters, a name- less imbroglio of charred staves, pitch-cinders, and 25 vo/nissement du diable ! But indeed, from of old, Johnson has enjoyed all, or nearly all, that Fame can yield any man: the respect,> the obedience of those that are about him and inferior to him; of those whose opinion alone can have any 30 forcible impression on him. A little circle gathers round the Wise man ; which gradually enlarges as the report thereof spreads, and more can come to see, and 136 CARLYLE ON believe; for Wisdom is precious, and of irresistible attraction to all. "An inspired -idiot," Goldsmith, hangs strangely about him; though, as Hawkins says, "he loved not Johnson, but rather envied him for his parts; and once entreated a friend to desist from 5 praising him, 'for in doing so,' said he, 'you harrow up my very soul!' " Yet, on the wdiole, there is no evil in the "gooseberry-fool ; ' ' but rather much good ; of a finer, if of a weaker, sort than Johnson's; and all the more genuine that he himself could never become con- 10 scions of it, — though unhappily never cease attempting to become so: the author of the genuine Vicar of Wakefield^ nill he, wnll he, must needs fly towards such a mass of genuine Manhood ; and Dr. Minor keep gyrating round Dr. Major, alternately attracted 15 and repelled. Then there is the chivalrous Topham Beauclerk, with his sharp wit, and gallant courtly ways: there is Bennet Langton, an orthodox gentle- man, and worthy; though Johnson once laughed, louder almost than mortal, at his last will and testa- 20 ment; and "could not stop his merriment, but con- tinued it all the way till he got without the Temple- gate ; then burst into such a fit of laughter that he appeared to be almost in a convulsion ; and, in order to support himself, laid hold of one of the posts at 25 the side of the foot-pavement, and sent forth peals so loud that, in the silence of the night, his voice seemed to resound from Temple-bar to Fleet-ditch!" Lastly comes his solid-thinking, solid-feeding Thrale, the ^veil-beloved man; with Thralia, a bright papilionace- 30 ous creature, whom the elephant loved to play with, and wave to and fro upon his trunk. Not to speak BOSWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 137 of a reverent Bozzy, for what need is there farther? — Or of the spiritual Luminaries, with tongue or pen, who made that age remarkable; or of Highland Lairds drinking, in fierce usquebaugh, "Your health, Toctor 5 Shonson ! " — still less of many such as that poor "Mr. F. Lewis," older in date, of whose birth, death, and whole terrestrial res gestcE^ this only, and strange enough this actually, survives: "Sir, he lived in Lon- don and hung loose upon society ! " Stat Parvi no mi /its 10 uvibra. — In his fifty-third year he is beneficed, by the royal bounty, with a Pension of three hundred pounds. Loud clamor is always more or less insane: but prob- ably the insanest of all loud clamors in the eighteenth 15 century was this that was raised about Johnson's Peiy sion. Men seem to be led by the noses; but, in reality, it is by the ears, — as some ancient slaves w^ere, who had their ears bored; or as some modern quad- rupeds may be, whose ears are long. Very falsely 2owasitsaid, "Names do not change Things;" Names do change Things ; nay, for most part they are the only substance which mankind can discern in Things. The whole sum that Johnson, during the remaining twenty years of his life, drew from the public funds of 25 England, would have supported some Supreme Priest for about half as many weeks ; it amounts very nearly to the revenue of our poorest Church-Overseer for one twelvemonth. Of secular Administrators of Prov- inces, and Horse-subduers, and Game-destroyers, we 30 shall not so much as speak: but who were the Pri- mates of England, and the Primates of all England, during Johnson's days? No man has remembered. 138 CARLYLE ON Again, Is the Primate of all England something, or is he nothing? If something, then what but the man who, in the supreme degree, teaches and spiritually edifies, and leads towards Heaven by guiding wisely through the Earth, the living souls that inhabit Eng- 5 land? We touch here upon deep matters; which but remotely concern us, and might lead us into still deeper: clear, in the meanwhile, it is that the true Spiritual Edifier and Soul's-Father of all England was, and till very lately continued to be, the man 10 named Samuel Johnson, — whom this scot-and-lot-pay- ing world cackled reproachfully to see remunerated like a Supervisor of Excise ! If Destiny had beaten hard on poor Samuel, and did never cease to visit him too roughly, yet the last 15 section of his Life might be pronounced victorious, and on the whole happy. He was not idle; but now no longer goaded on by want; the light \vhich had shone irradiating the dark haunts of Poverty now illuminates the circles of Wealth, of a certain culture 20 and elegant intelligence; he w^ho had once been admitted to speak with Edmund Cave and Tobacco Browne, now admits a Reynolds and a Burke to speak with him. Loving friends are there; Listeners, even Answerers: the fruit of his long labors lies round him 25 in fair legible Writings, of Philosophy, Eloquence, Morality, Philology ; some excellent, all worthy and genuine Works; for which, too, a deep, earnest murmur of thanks reaches him from all ends of his Fatherland. Nay, there are works of Goodness, of 30 undying Mercy, which even he has possessed the power to do: "What I gave I have; what I spent I BOSWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 139 had!" ETarly friends had long sunk into the grave; yet in his soul they ever lived, fresh and clear, with soft pious breathings towards them, not without a still hope of one day meeting them again in purer union. 5 Such was Johnson's Life: the victorious Battle of a free, true Man. Finally he died the death of the free and true: a dark cloud of death, solemn and not untinged with haloes of immortal Hope, "took him away," and our eyes could no longer behold him; 10 but can still behold the trace and impress of his courageous honest spirit, deep-legible in the World's Business, wheresoever he walked and was. To estimate the quantity of Work that Johnson per- formed, how much poorer the World were had it 15 wanted him, can, as in all such cases, never be accur- ately done ; cannot, till after some longer space, be approximately done. All work is as seed sown ; it grows and spreads, and sows itself anew, and so, in endless palingenesia, lives and works. To Johnson's 20 Writings, good and solid, and still profitable as they are, we have already rated his Life and Conversation as superior. By the one and by the other, who shall compute what effects have been produced, and are still, and into deep Time, producing? 25 So much, however, we can already see: It is now some three quarters of a century that Johnson has been the Prophet of the English ; the man by whose light (he English people, in public and in private, more than by any other man's, have guided their existence, 30 Higher light than that immediately practical one; higher virtue than an honest Prudence, he could I40 CARLYLE ON not then communicate; nor perhaps could they have received: such light, such virtue, however, he did communicate. How to thread this labyrinthic Time, the fallen and falling Ruin of Times; to silence vain Scruples, hold firm to the last the fragments of old 5 Belief, and with earnest eye still discern some glimpses of a true path, and go forward thereon, *'in a world where there is much to be done, and little to be known:" this is what Samuel Johnson, by act and word, taught his nation; what his nation received and 10 learned of him, more than of any other. We can view him as the preserver and transmitter of whatsoever was genuine in the spirit of Toryism ; which genuine spirit, it is now becoming manifest, must again embody itself in all new forms of Society, be what they may, 15 that are to exist, and have continuance — elsewhere than on Paper. The last in many things, Johnson was the last genuine Tory ; the last of Englishmen who, with strong voice and wholly-believing heart, preached the Doctrine of Standing-still ; who, without 20 selfishness or slavishness, reverenced the existing Powers, and could assert the privileges of rank, though himself poor, neglected, and plebeian; who had heart- devoutness \vith heart-hatred of cant, was orthodox- religious wnth his eyes open ; and in all things and 25 everywhere spoke out in plain English, from a soul wherein Jesuitism could find no harbor, and with the front and tone not of a diplomatist but of a man. The last of the Tories was Johnson: not Burke, as is often said ; Burke was essentially a Whig, and only 30 on reaching the verge of the chasm towards which Whiggism from the first was inevitably leading, re- BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. Hi coiled ; and, like a man vehement rather than earnest, a resplendent far-sighted Rhetorician rather than a deep, sure Thinker, recoiled with no measure, con- vulsively, and damaging what he drove back with 5 him. In a world which exists by the balance of Antagon- isms the respective merit of the Conservator and the Innovator must ever remain debatable. Great, in the meanwhile, and undoubted for both sides, is the lo merit of him who, in a day of Change, walks wisely, honestly. Johnson's aim was in itself an impossible one: this of stemming the eternal Flood of Time; of clutching all things and anchoring them down, and saying. Move not! — how could it, or should it, ever 15 have success? The strongest man can but retard the current partially and for a short hour. Yet even in such shortest retardation, may not an inestimable value lie? If England has escaped the blood-bath of a French Revolution ; and may yet, in virtue of this 20 delay and of the experience it has given, work out her deliverance calmly into a new Era, let Samuel John- son, beyond all contemporary or succeeding men, have the praise for it. We said above that he was appointed to be Ruler of the British nation for a season: whoso 25 will look beyond the surface, into the heart of the world's movements, may find that all Pitt Administra- tions, and Continental Subsidies, and Waterloo vic- tories rested on the possibility of making England, yet a little while, Toryish^ Loyal to the Old ; and 30 this again on the anterior reality, that the Wise had found such Loyalty still practicable, and recommend- able. England had its Hume, as France had its Vol- 142 CARLYLE ON taires and Diderots; but the Johnson was peculiar to us. If we ask now, by what endowment it mainly was that Johnson realized such a Life for himself and others ; what quality of character the main phenomena 5 of his Life may be most naturally deduced from, and his other qualities most naturally subordinated to in our conception of him, perhaps the answer were: The quality of Courage, of Valor; that Johnson was a Brave Man. The Courage that can go forth, once 10 and away, to Chalk-Farm, and have itself shot, and snuffed out, with decency, is nowise wholly what we mean here. Such Courage we indeed esteem an exceeding small matter; capable of coexisting with a life full of falsehood, feebleness, poltroonery, and 15 despicability. Nay oftener it is Cowardice rather that produces the result: for consider, Is the Chalk- Farm Pistoleer inspired with any reasonable Belief and Determination; or is he hounded on by haggard indefinable Fear, — how he will be cut at public 20 places, and "plucked geese of the neighborhood" will wag their tongues at him a plucked goose? If he go then, and be shot without shrieking or audible uproar, it is well for him : nevertheless there is nothing amazing in it. Courage to manage all this has not 25 perhaps been denied to any man, or to any woman. Thus, do not recruiting sergeants drum through the streets of manufacturing towns, and collect ragged losels enough; every one of whom, if once dressed in red, and trained a little, will receive fire cheerfully 30 for the small sum of one shilling /^r diem, and have BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOHNSOiV. 143 the soul blown out of him at last, with perfect pro- priety. The Courage that dares only die is on the whole no sublime affair; necessary indeed, yet uni- versal; pitiful when it begins to parade itself. On 5 this Globe of ours there are some thirty-six persons that manifest it, seldom with the smallest failure, during every second of time. Nay, look at Newgate : do not the offscourings of Creation, when condemned to the gallows, as if they were not men but vermin, 10 walk thither with decency, and even to the scowls and hootings of the whole Universe, give their stern good-night in silence? What is to be undergone only once, we may undergo; what must be, comes almost of its own accord. Considered as Duellist, what a 15 poor figure does the fiercest Irish Whiskerando make compared w^ith any English Game-cock, such as you may buy for fifteen -pence! The Courage we desire and prize is not the Courage to die decently, but to live manfully. This, when 20 by God's grace it has been given, lies deep in the soul; like genial heat, fosters all other virtues and gifts ; without it they could not live. In spite of our innumerable Waterloos and Peterloos, and such cam- paigning as there has been, this Courage we allude to 25 and call the only true one, is perhaps rarer in these last ages than it has been in any other since the Saxon Invasion under Hengist. Altogether extinct it can never be among men; otherwise the species Man were no longer for this world: here and there, in all times, sounder various guises, men are sent hither not only to demonstrate but exhibit it, and testify, as from heart to heart, that it is still possible, still practicable. 144 CARLYLE ON' Johnson, in the eighteenth century, and as Man of Letters, was one of such; and, in good truth, "the bravest of the brave." What mortal could have more to war with? Yet, as we saw, he yielded not, faltered not; he fought, and even, such was his blessedness, 5 prevailed. Whoso will understand what it is to have a man's lieart may find that, since the time of John Milton, no braver heart had beat in any English bosom than Samuel Johnson now bore. Observe, too, that he never called himself brave, never felt himself 10 to be so; the more completely was so. No Giant Despair, no Golgotha-Death-dance or Sorcerer's-Sab- bath of "Literary Life in London," appals this pil- grim; he works resolutely for deliverance; in still defiance steps stoutly along. The thing that is given 15 him to do, he can make himself do; what is to be endured, he can endure in silence. How the great soul of old Samuel, consuming daily his own bitter unalleviable allotment of misery and toil, shows beside the poor flimsy little soul of young 20 Boswell; one day flaunting in the ring of vanity, tarry- ing by the wine-cup and crying, Aha, the wine is red; the next day deploring his down-pressed, night- shaded, quite poor estate, and thinking it unkind that the whole movement of the Universe should go on, 25 while his digestive-apparatus had stopped ! We reckon Johnson's "talent of silence" to be among his great and too rare gifts. Where there is nothing farther to be done, there shall nothing farther be said: like his own poor blind Welshwoman, he accomplished some- 30 what, and also "endured fifty years of wretchedness with unshaken fortitude." Hoav grim was Life to BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHiVSOiV. 1 45 him; a sick Prison-house and Doubting-castle! "His great business," he would profess, "was to escape from himself." Yet towards all this he has taken his position and resolution; can dismiss it all "with frigid 5 indifference, having little to hope or to fear." Friends are stupid, and pusillanimous, and parsimo- nious; "wearied of his stay, yet offended at his depar- ture:" it is the manner of the world. "By popular delusion," remarks he with a gigantic calmness, "init- io erate writers will rise into renown:" it is portion of the History of English literature; a perennial thing, this same popular delusion; and will — alter the char- acter of the Language. Closely connected with this quality of Valor, partly 15 as springing from it, partly as protected by it, are the more recognizable qualities of Truthfulness in word and thought, and Honesty in action. There is a reciprocity of influence here: for as the realising of Truthfulness and Honesty is the Life-light and great 20 aim of Valor, so without Valor they cannot, in any- wise, be realised. Now, in spite of all practical short- comings, no one that sees into the significance of Johnson will say that his prime object was not Truth. In conversation, doubtless, you may observe him, on 25 occasion, fighting as if for victory; — and must pardon these ebulliences of a careless hour, which were not without temptation and provocation. Remark like- wise two things: that such prize-arguings were ever on merely superficial debatable questions; and then that 30 they were argued generally by the fair laws of battle and logic-fence, by one cunning in that same. If their purpose was excusable, their effect was harmless, 146 CARLYLE ON- perhaps beneficial: that of taming noisy mediocrity, and showing it another side of a debatable matter; to see both sides of which was, for the first time, to see the Truth of it. In his Writings themselves, are errors enough, crabbed prepossessions enough; yet theses also of a quite extraneous and accidental nature, nowhere a wilful shutting of the eyes to the Truth, Nay, is there not everywhere a heartfelt discernment, singular, almost admirable, if we consider through what confused conflicting lights and hallucinations it 10 had to be attained, of the highest everlasting Truth, and beginning of all Truths: this namely, that man is ever, and even in the age of Wilkes and Whitfield, a Revelation of God to man ; and lives, moves, and has his being in Truth only; is either true, or, in strict 15 speech, is not at all? Quite spotless, on the other hand, is Johnson's love of Truth, if we look at it as expressed in practice, as what we have named Honesty of action. "Clear your mind of Cant;" clear it, throw Cant utterly 20 away: such was his emphatic, repeated precept; and did not he himself faithfully conform to it? The Life of this man has been, as it were, turned inside out, and examined with microscopes by friend and foe; yet was there no Lie found in him. His Doings and 25 Writings are not shows but performances : you may weigh them in the balance, and they will stand weight. Not a line, not a sentence is dishonestly done, is other than it pretends to be. Alas ! and he wrote not out of inward inspiration, but to earn his wages: and 30 with that grand perennial tide of "popular delusion" flowing by; in whose waters he nevertheless refused BO SWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 147 to fish, to whose rich oyster-beds the dive was too muddy for him. Observe, again, with what innate hatred of Cant, he takes for himself, and offers to others, the lowest possible view of his business, which 5 he followed with such nobleness. Motive for writing he had none, as he often said, but money; and yet he wrote so. Into the region of Poetic Art he indeed never rose; there was no ideal without him avowing itself in his work: the nobler was that unavowed ideal 10 which lay within him, and commanded saying. Work out thy Artisanship in the spirit of an Artist ! They who talk loudest about the dignity of Art, and fancy that they too are Artistic guild-brethren, and of the Celestials, — let them consider well what manner of 15 man this was, who felt himself to be only a hired day- laborer. A laborer that was worthy of his hire; that has labored not as an eye-servant, but as one found faithful ! Neither was Johnson in those days perhaps wholly a unique. Time was when, for money, you 20 might have ware: and needed not, in all departments, in that of the Epic Poem, in that of the Blacking Bottle, to rest content with the xntxe persuasion that you had ware. It was a happier time. But as yet the seventh Apocalyptic Bladder (of Puffery) had not 25 been rent open, — to whirl and grind, as in a West- Indian Tornado, all earthly trades and things into wreck, and dust, and consummation, — and regenera- tion. Be it quickly, since it must be! That mercy can dwell only with Valor, is an old 30 sentiment or proposition; which in Johnson again receives confirmation. Few men on record have had a more merciful, tenderly affectionate nature than old 148 CARLYLE OX Samuel. He was called the Bear; and did indeed too often look, and roar, like one; being forced to it in his own defence: yet within that shaggy exterior of his there beat a heart warm as a mother's, soft as a little child's. Nay generally, his very roaring was 5 but the anger of affection : the rage of a Bear, if you will; but of a Bear bereaved of her whelps. Touch his Religion, glance at the Church of England, or the Divine Right; and he was upon you! These things were his Symbols of all that was good and precious 10 for men; his very Ark of the Covenant: whoso laid hand on them tore asunder his heart of hearts. Not out of hatred to the opponent, but of love to the thing opposed, did Johnson grow cruel, fiercely contradic- tory: this is an important distinction ; never to be for- 15 gotten in our censure of his conversational outrages. But observe also with what humanity, what openness of love, he can attach himself to all things: to a blind old woman, to a Doctor Levett, to a Cat "Hodge." "His thoughts in the latter part of his life were fre- 20 quently employed on his deceased friends; he often muttered these or such-like sentences: 'Poor man! and then he died.' " How he patiently converts his poor home into a Lazaretto; endures, for long years, the contradiction of the miserable and unreasonable; 25 with him unconnected, save that they had no other to yield them refuge! Generous old man ! Worldly possession he has little; yet of this he gives freely; from his own hard-earned shilling, the halfpence for the poor, that "waited his coming out," are not with- 30 held: the poor "waited the coming out" of one not quite so poor! A Sterne can write sentimentalities on BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 149 Dead Asses : Johnson has a rough voice ; but he finds the wretched Daughter of Vice fallen down in the streets, carries her home on his own shoulders, and like a good Samaritan gives help to the help-needing, 5 worthy or unworthy. Ought not Charity, even in that sense, to cover a multitude of Sins? No Penny-a- week Committee-Lady, no manager of Soup-kitchens, dancer at Charity-balls, was this rugged, stern-visaged man; but where, in all England, could there have 10 been found another soul so full of Pity, a hand so heavenlike bounteous as his? The widow's mite, we know, was greater than all the other gifts. Perhaps it is this divine feeling of affection, throughout manifested, that principally attracts us 15 towards Johnson. A true brother of men is he; and filial lover of the Earth ; who, with little bright spots of Attachment, "where lives and works some loved one," has beautified "this rougli solitary earth into a peopled garden." Lichfield, with its mostly dull and 2 J limited inhabitants, is to the last one of the sunny islets for him: Salve magna parens ! Or read those Letters on his Mother's death: what a genuine solemn grief and pity lies recorded there ; a looking back into the Past, unspeakably mournful, unspeakably 25 tender. And yet calm, sublime; for he must now act, not look: his venerated Mother has been taken , from him ; but he must now write a Rasselas to de- \ fray her interment. Again, in this little incident^-^ recorded in his Book of Devotion, are not the 30 tones of sacred Sorrow and Greatness deeper than in many a blank verse Tragedy; as, indeed, "the fifth act of a Tragedy" (though unrhymed) does ISO CARLYLE ON *'lie in every death-bed, were it a peasant's, and of straw:" "Sunday, October i8, 1767. Yesterday, at about ten in the morning, I took my leave forever of my dear old friend, Catherine Chambers, who came to live with my mother about 1724, and has 5 been but little parted from us since. She buried my father, my brother, and my mother. She is now fifty-eight years old. " I desired all to withdraw ; then told her that we were to part forever ; that as Christians, we should part with prayer ; and that I would, if she was willing, say a short prayer beside her, 10 She expressed great desire to hear me ; and held up her poor hands as she lay in bed, with great fervor, while I prayed kneel- ing by her * ' I then kissed her. She told me that to part was the greatest pain she had ever felt, and that she hoped we should meet again 15 in a better place. I expressed, with swelled eyes and great emo- tion of tenderness, the same hopes. We kissed and parted ; I humbly hope, to meet again, and to part no more." Tears trickling down the granite rock: a soft well of Pity springs within ! Still more tragical is this 20 other scene: "Johnson mentioned that he could not in general accuse himself of having been an undutiful son. 'Once, indeed,* said he, *I was disobedient: I refused to attend my father to Uttoxeter market. Pride was the source of that refusal, and the remem- 25 brance of it is painful. K few years ago I desired to atone for this fault.' " — But by what method? — What method was now possible? Hear it; the words are again given as his own, though here evidently by a less capable reporter: 30 " Madam, I beg your pardon for the abruptness of my departure in the morning, but I was compelled to it by conscience. Fifty years ago, madam, on this day, I committed a breach of filial BOS WELL S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 1 5 1 piety. My father had been in the habit of attending Uttoxeter market, and opening a stall there for the sale of his Books. Con- fined by indisposition, he desired me, that day, to go and attend the stall in his place. My pride prevented me ; I gave my father 5 a refusal. — And now to-day I have been to Uttoxeter ; I went into the market at the time of business, uncovered my head, and stood with it bare, for an hour, on the spot where my father's stall used to stand. In contrition I stood, and I hope the penance was expiatory." , lo Who does not figure to himself this spectacle, amid the "rainy weather, and the sneers," or wonder, "of the bystanders"? The memory of old Michael John- son, rising from the far distance; sad-beckoning in the "moonlight of memory:" how he had toiled faith- 15 fully hither and thither; patiently among the lowest of the low; been buffeted and beaten down, yet ever risen again, ever tried it anew — And oh! when the wearied old man, as Bookseller, or Hawker, or Tinker, or whatsoever it was that Fate had reduced him to, 20 begged help of thee for one day, — how savage, diabolic, was that mean Vanity, which answered, No! He sleeps now; after life's fitful fever, he sleeps: but thou, O Merciless, how now wilt thou still the sting of that remembrance? — The picture of Samuel John- 25 son standing bareheaded in the market there, is one of the grandest and saddest we can paint. Repent- ance! repentance! he proclaims, as with passionate sobs: but only to the ear of Heaven, if Heaven will give him audience: the earthly ear and heart, that 30 should have heard it, are now closed, unresponsive forever. That this so keen-loving, soft-trembling Affection- ateness, the inmost essence of his being, must have 152 CARLYLE ON looked forth, in one form or another, through John- son's whole character, practical and intellectual, modifying both, is not to be doubted. Yet through what singular distortions and superstitions, moping melancholies, blind habits, whims about "entering 5 with the right foot," and "touching every post as he walked along:" and all the other mad chaotic lumber of a brain that, with sun-clear intellect, hovered for- ever on the verge of insanity, — must that same inmost essence have looked forth; unrecognizable to all but 10 the most observant! Accordingly it was not recog- nized; Johnson passed not for a fine nature, but for a dull, almost brutal one. Might not, for example, the first-fruit of such a Lovingness, coupled with his quick Insight, have been expected to be a peculiarly cour- 15 teous demeanor as man among men? In Johnson's "Politeness," which he often, to the wonder of some, asserted to be great, there was indeed somewhat that needed explanation. Nevertheless, if he insisted always on handing lady-visitors to their carriage; 20 though with the certainty of collecting a mob of gazers in Fleet Street, — as might well be, the beau having on, by way of court dress, "his rusty brown morning suit, a pair of old shoes for slippers, a little shrivelled wig sticking on the top of his head, and the sleeves 25 of his shirt and the knees of his breeches hanging loose:"— in all this we can see the spirit of true Polite- ness, only shining through a strange medium. Thus again, in his apartments, at one time, there were unfortunately no chairs. "A gentleman who fre-30 quently visited him whilst writing his Idlers^ con- stantly found him at his desk, sitting on one with BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. 153 three legs; and on rising from it, he remarked that Johnson never forgot its defects; but would either hold it in his hand, or place it with great composure against some support ; taking no notice of its imper- 5 fection to his visitor," — who meanwhile, Ave suppose, sat upon folios, or in the sartorial fashion. "It was remarkable in Johnson," continues Miss Reynolds ("Renny dear"), "that no external circumstr.nces ever prompted him to make any apology, or to seem loeven sensible of their existence. Whether this was the effect of philosopljic pride, or of some partial notion of his respecting high-breeding, is doubtful." That it was.^ for one thing, the effect of genuine Politeness, is nowise doubtful. Not of the Pharisaical 15 Brummellean Politeness, which would suffer crucifixion rather than ask twice for soup: but the noble univer- sal Politeness of a man that knows the dignity of men, and feels his own; such as may be seen in the patri- archal bearing of an Indian Sachem; such as Johnson 20 himself exhibited, when a sudden chance brought him into dialogue with his king. To us, with our view of the man, it nowise appears "strange" that he should have boasted himself cunning in the laws of polite- ness; nor "stranger still," habitually attentive to 25 practise them. More legibly is this influence of the Loving heart to be traced in his intellectual character. What, indeed, is the beginning of intellect, the first induce- ment to the exercise thereof, but attraction towards 30 somewhat, affection for it? Thus, too, who ever saw, or will see, any true talent, not to speak of genius, the foundation of which is not goodness, love? From 154 CARLYLE aV Johnson's strength of Affection we deduce many of his intellectual peculiarities; especially that threaten- ing array of perversions, known under the name of "Johnson's Prejudices." Looking well into the root from which these sprung, we have long ceased to view 5 them with hostility, can pardon and reverently pity them. Consider with what force early-imbibed opinions must have clung to a soul of this Affection. Those evil-famed Prejudices of his, that Jacobitism, Church-of-Englandism, hatred of the Scotch, belief 10 in Witches, and suchlike, ^^hat were they but the ordinary beliefs of well-doing, well-meaning provincial Englishmen in that day? First gathered by his Father's hearth; round the kind "country fires," of native Staffordshire; they grew with his growth and 15 strengthened with his strength: they were hallowed by fondest sacred recollections; to part with them was parting with his heart's blood. If the man who has no strength of Affection, strength of Belief, have no strength of Prejudice, let him thank Heaven for 20 it, but to himself take small thanks. Melancholy it was, indeed, that the noble Johnson could not work himself loose from these adhesions; that he could only purify them, and wear them with some nobleness. Yet let us understand how they grew 25 out from the very centre of his being: nay, moreover, how they came to cohere in him with what formed the business and worth of his Life, the sum of his whole Spiritual Endeavor. For it is on the same ground that he became throughout an Edifier and 30 Repairer, not, as the others of his make were, a Puller- down ; that in an age of universal Scepticism, England BOS WELL'S LIFE OF JOHN SO IV. 155 was still to produce its Believer. Mark, too, his candor even here; while a Dr. Adams, with placid surprise, asks, "Have we not evidence enough of the soul's immortality?" Johnson answers, "I wish for 5 more." But the truth is, in Prejudice, as in all things, John- son was the product of England ; one of those good yeomen whose limbs were made in England: alas, the last of such Invincibles, their day being now done! 10 His culture is wholly English; that not of a Thinker but of a "Scholar:" his interests are wholly English; he sees and knows nothing but England; he is the John Bull of Spiritual Europe: let him live, love him, as he was and could not but be! Pitiable it is, no 15 doubt, that a Samuel Johnson must confute Hume's irreligious Philosophy by some "story from a Clergy- man of the Bishoprick of Durham;" should see nothing in the great Frederick but "Voltaire's lackey;" in Voltaire himself but a man acei'rimi ingenii^ pau- 2c>carwn litei'arum ; in Rousseau but one worthy to be hanged; and in the universal, long-prepared, inevi- table Tendency of European Thought but a green-sick milkmaid's crotchet of, for variety's sake, "milking the Bull." Our good, dear John! Observe, too, 25 what it is that he sees in the city of Paris: no feeblest glimpse of those D'Alemberts and Diderots, or of the strange questionable work they did; solely some Benedictine Priests, to talk kitchen-latin with them about Editiones Principes. ''Monsheer Noiigtong- 2,opa%v !'' — Our dear, foolish John: yet is there a lion's heart within him ! Pitiable all these things were, we say; yet nowise inexcusable; nay, as basis or as foil 156 CARLYLE ON to much else that was in Johnson, ahiiost venerable. Ought we not, indeed, to honor England, and Eng- lish Institutions and Way of Life, that they could still equip such a man ; could furnish him in heart and head to be a Samuel Johnson, and yet to love them, 5 and unyieldingly fight for them? What truth and liv- ing vigor must such Institutions once have had, when, in the middle of the Eighteenth century, there was still enough left in them for this ! It is worthy of note that, in our little British isle, the 10 two grand Antagonisms of Europe should have stood embodied, under their very highest concentration, in two men produced simultaneously among ourselves. Samuel Johnson and David Hume, as was observed, were children nearly of the same year: through life 15 they were spectators of the same Life-movement; o/ten inhabitants of the same city. Greater contrast, in all things, between two great men, could not be. Hume, well-born, competently provided for, whole in body and mind, of his own determination forces a way into 20 t/ Literature : Johnson, poor, moonstruck, diseased, forlorn, is forced into it "with the bayonet of neces- sity at his back." And what a part did they severally play there! As Johnson became the father of all suc- ceeding Tories; so was Hume the father of all sue- 25 ceeding Whigs, for his own Jacobitism was but an accident, as worthy to be named prejudice as any of Johnson's. Again, if Johnson's culture was exclu- sively English; Hume's, in Scotland, became Euro- pean; — for which reason, too, we find his influence 30 spread deeply over all quarters of Europe, traceable deeply in all speculation, French, German, as well as BOSWELVS LIFE OF JOHNSON. i57 domestic; while Johnson's name, out of England, is hardly anywhere to be met with. In spiritual stature they are almost equal; both great, both among the greatest; yet how unlike in likeness! Hume has 5 the widest, methodising, comprehensive eye; John- son the keenest for perspicacity and minute detail : so had, perhaps chiefly, their education ordered it. Neither of the two rose into Poetry; yet both to some approximation thereof: Hume to something of an epic 10 clearness and method, as in his delineation of the Commonwealth Wars; Johnson to many a deep lyric tone of plaintiveness and impetuous graceful power, scattered over his fugitive compositions. Both, rather to the general surprise, had a certain rugged humor 15 shining through their earnestness: the indication, in- deed, that they were earnest men, and had subdued their wild world into a kind of temporary home and safe dwelling. Both were, by principle and habit, Stoics: yet Johnson with the greater merit, for he alone had 20 very much to triumph over; farther, he alone ennobled his Stoicism into Devotion. To Johnson Life was as a Prison, to be endured with heroic faith; to Hume it was little more than a foolish Bartholomew-Fair Show- booth, with the foolish crowdings and elbowings of 25 which it was not worth while to quarrel; the whole would break up, and be at liberty, so soon. Both realized the highest task of manhood, that of living like men; each died not unfitly, in his way: Hume as one, with factitious, half-false gayety, taking leave of 30 what was itself wholly but a Lie: Johnson as one, with awe-struck, yet resolute and piously expectant heart, taking leave of a Reality, to enter a Reality 158 BO SWELLS LIFE OF JOHNSON. Still higher. Johnson had the harder problem of it, from first to last: whether, with some hesitation, we can admit that he was intrinsically the better-gifted, — may remain undecided. These two men now rest ; the one in Westminsters Abbey here ; the other in the Calton Hill Churchyard of Edinburgh. Through Life they did not meet: as contrasts, "like in unlike," love each other; so might they two have loved, and communed kindly, — had not the terrestrial dross and darkness that was in them 10 withstood! One day, their spirits, what Truth was in each, will be found working, living in harmony and free union, even here below. They were the two half- men of their time: whoso should combine the intrepid Candor and decisive scientific Clearness of Hume, 15 with the Reverence, the Tove, and devout Humility of Johnson, were the whole man of a new time. Till such whole man arrive for us, and the distracted time admit of such, might the Heavens but bless poor Eng- land with half-men worthy to tie the shoe-latchets of 20 these, resembling these even from afar! Be both attentively regarded, let the true Effort of both pros- per; — and for the present, both take. our affectionate farewell ! NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. The text is in the revised form in which it has appeared since Macaulay's Essays were, reprinted in England in 1843. The, foot- notes are those then appended by the author. P^or the circumstances under which the essay was written, see the Introduction, Parts II. and III. For Macaulay's later treatment of Johnson, see the article "Johnson " in the Encycloptedia Britaymica, contributed in 1856. References to volume and page of Bosvvell are to tlie edition by G. Birkbeck Hill, 6 vols., 1887. The accompanying dates will en- able the passages to be found without difficulty in other editions. Occasional reference is made to the original Croker, 5 vols., 1831. Johnson's works are cited in the edition by Murphy, 12 vols., 1823. Hawkins is cited in his second edition, and Mrs. Thralein Johnsoniana, collected and edited by Robina Napier, 1884. I : 13, as bad as bad could be. See the Life, June 3, 1784 (iv. 284). This was Johnson's last visit to Oxford. 2: 10, Derrick. Samuel Derrick, an Irish poet, who succeeded Beau Nash as " King of Bath." Appears in ^m.oW^i'Cs, Humphrey Clinker. 3:7, the lines. Marmion IV. Intr. 131-6. — 14, Allan Ram- say, the painter. Born 1709, died 1784, as given by Croker. The second version is Boswell's error. Here designated " the painter " to distinguish him from his father, Allan Ramsay, the poet (1686- 1758), author of The Gentle Shepherd.— 20, Mrs. Thrale. Hester Lynch Salisbury (or Salusbury), born in 1741 ; married Henry Thrale, a wealthy brewer, and M. P. for Southwark, in 1763 ; met Johnson in 1764. Her intimacy with Johnson lasted nearly twenty years. After Thrale's death (1781) she quarreled with Johnson, preparatory to marrying Gabriel Piozzi, an Italian music-master, 159 l6o NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. resident at Bath, in 1784. She died in 1821. She was a woman of great vivacity, with a smattering of several languages, and a fondness for literary society. Besides her Anecdotes of Johnson, consult her Autobiography, Letters, and Literary Remaiiis, edited by Abraham Hay ward, 1861. 4:15, visit to Paris. In the autumn of 1775, with the Thrales. See the Life, September 18, 1775 (ii. 384-401), where may be found what has been preserved of Johnson's own record of the journey. — 19, Prince Titi. See the Life of Johnson, by F. Grant {Great Writers Series), pp. 105-7, for an account of this book and of the controversy over it. — 21, Frederick Prince of Wales. Born 1707, died 1751 : son of George II., father of George III. During his father's reign he figured in politics as patron of the opposition. 5 : 10, Enfans. The present standard spelling is enfants. So priniemps for printems, 6 : 10. — 13, Henry Bate. See English N'e-wspapers, by H. R. Fox Bourne, 1887 (i. 122). Henry Bate (1745-1824), afterward Sir Henry Bate Dudley. Bart., edited the Morning Post, 1775-80, and afterward the Morning Herald. The former, founded in 1772 as the organ of the King's party, is a high Tory journal and recognized dispenser of fashionable news, still in existence. The latter began under Dudley's editorship in 1780 as the organ of the Prince of Wales, and was continued until 1869. 6:11, Lord Hailes. See note to 59:20. — 15, Montrose. James Graham, first marquis C1612-50), the leader of the Scot- tish cavaliers from 1644 to 1646. Hanged, afterwards beheaded and dismembered. Clarendon gives the sentence at length, but in telling of his death merely says, " The next day they executed every part and circumstance of that barbarous sentence with all the inhumanity imaginable." Bk. XII \ May 21, 1650. 7:17, Byng. Admiral the Hon. John Byng (1704-57). Shot by order of a court martial for neglect of duty in not doing his best to relieve the British garrison in Minorca, besieged by the French. His sentence was the subject of much controversy. Johnson wrote three pamphlets on Byng's behalf. The prosecu- tion of Byng was ordered by the Newcastle ministry, but as Macaulay points out, the trial was begun under the Devonshire administration, in which Pitt held office. NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. l6l 9 : lo, Vicar of Wakefield. See the Life of Goldsmith^ by Austin Dobson {Great Writers Series), pp. 86-87, 110-117, for an account of the difficulties which still surround the " celebrated scene." The date 1762 is now accepted. Mrs. Thrale had not met Johnson at this time. Boswell's account is under date of June 25, 1763 (i. 415). 10 : 27, Brookes' s. Brooks's, a famous Whig club, at first known as Almack's, established in 1764 in Pall Mall. In 1778, removed to 60, St. James's Street. Among the ' wits of Brooks's ' were Horace Walpole, Fox, Sheridan, George Selwyn, and Charles Townshend. II : I, his Doctor's degree. Johnson left Oxford without taking a degree. In 1755 (not 1754, as given below by Macaulay) the University of Oxford gave him the honorary degree of M.A., which appeared on the title-page of his Dictionary ^ and in 1775 that of D.C.L. He also received the degree of LL.D. from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1765. — 18, a//, therefore, that is nezu, etc. Between this sentence and the preceding occurs in Croker's note the following, which Macaulay curiously omits : " Everyone knows that Dr. Johnson said of Ossian that ' many men, many women, and many children might have written it.' " The restor- ation of this sentence affords a clew to what Croker meant by " all that is new," and refutes Macauley's assertion, " the only real objection to the story Mr. Croker has missed." — 31, Blair, The Rev. Dr. Hugh Blair (1718-1800), author of Lectures on Rhetoric and of Sermons. 13 : 8, satires of Juvenal. See the Life, January, 1749 (i. 193). The satire of Horace referred to is the second of the First Book. — 10, Prior's tales. See the Life, September 22, 1777 iii. 192) ; Croker iv. 45, n. — 30, one blunder. Croker iii. 20, n. 14:8, epigra?n. Life, 1743 (i. 157 and 71. 5). Ad LMut'am parituram. "To Laura in childbirth" — 15, secular ode. Car- men Seculare, line 15. — 20, another ode. iii. 22, 2. — 21, laborantes titero puellas. " Girls in childbirth." — 22. fourth-form. The classes or grades in English schools are called fortns, numbered from first to sixth, beginning with the lowest. — 24, an inscription. See the Tour, September 21 (v. 234). The sentence quoted here is intended to mean : " John Macleod, chief of his clan, united in 1 62 NO TES TO MA CA ULA V 'S ESSA V. marriage to Flora Macdonald, restored in the year 1686 of the common era, this tower of Dunvegan, by far the most ancient abode of his ancestors, which had long fallen utterly into decay," The Latin is contemptible, not because of its "incorrect structure," but because of the many words used that do not occur in classical writers. The text contains proavorum (wrong) and labefactaiam, where Boswell gwes proavorum and lahefectatam (wrong). 15:15, i/.6ao under that date (i. 477-81). Macaulay gives here a partial list of members. See Stephen's Johnson, pp. 64-83. For the difference in age between Johnson and his friends, see the chart in Hill's Life, vol. vi. 34 : 29, Congreve, etc. Of the authors enumerated in this para- graph or mentioned elsewhere in the essay, Macaulay has discussed in his Essays Congreve {Comic Dramatists of the Restoration) and Addison, and in the Encyc . Brit. Goldsmith. Johnson has ac counts and criticisms of Denham, Milton, Waller, Dorset, Step- ney, Dryden, Smith, Montagu (whom he calls by his title Halifax) Parnell, Rowe, Addison, Hughes, Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Gay, Tickell, Savage, Swift, Pope, Thomson, Ambrose Philips Young, Mallet, and Gray, in his Lives of the Poets. 35 : 12, his first comedy. The Old Bachelor, first performed in 1693 ; Congreve was born in 1670. He was appointed, at one time or another, a commissioner for licensing hackney coaches, a commissioner for wine licenses, and Secretary of Jamaica, and held places in the Pipe Office and in the Custom House. — 13, Smith. Edmund Neale (1662-17 10) ; changed his name to Smith to gratify an uncle who brought him up after his father's death. Phcedra and Hippolytns was acted in 1680. Halifax had promised Smith a place of ;!^300 a year for the dedication, which Smith did not take the trouble to write. — 16, Rotve. Nicholas Rowe (1673- 1718) ; wrote the tragedies. The Fair Penitent and Jane Shore ; edited Shakespeare (1709) ; and translated Lucan. — 19, Presenta- tions. The Secretary of Presentations to the Lord Chancellor had the duty of registering nominations to livings in the Lord Chan- cellor's gift. — 20, Hughes. John Hughes (1677-1720), author of The Siege of Damascus, a tragedy. — -21, Ambrose Philips (1671- 1749). Remembered for his relations with Pope, and for his nick- name of Namby Pamby. — 24, Stepney. George Stepney (1663- 1 68 NOTES TO MACAU LAY'S ESSAY. 1707). Johnson gives little beyond his epitaph and a list of his em- bassies. — Moutagiie. Charles Montagu, created Baron, then Earl, of Halifax (1661-171 5), wrote 7'//^' City ajid Country Mouse {iti%'])\n conjunction with Prior. It was a burlesque of Dryden's Bind and Panther. See Horace, Sat. ii. 6, 80-117. — 31, his garter, etc. "At the accession of George the First [he] was made Earl of Halifax, Knight of the Garter, and first commissioner of the treasury, with a grant to his nephew of the reversion of the aud- itorship of the exchequer." Lives of the Poets (Halifax). A slight slip by Macaulay. 36:1, Oxford. Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford. He and Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, were the leaders of the Tory ministry (1710-14). The " white staff" was the symbol of his office as Lord High Treasurer. — 3, Parnell. Thomas Par- nell (1679-17 1 8), author of The Hermit^ a narrative poem. — 4, Steele. He was expelled from the House of Commons in 1714, for political writings, and re-elected in 171 5. Commissioner of stamps, 1710-14. — 6, Mainwaring. (1668-1712). Editor of The Medley^ a political newspaper, and from 1710 to 1712 a member of Parliament. Pronounced as if spelled Mannering. — 7, the imprest. ISIoney advanced as a loan to a government officer, for use in a public service. — Tickell. Thomas Tickell (1686- 1740), poet ; friend of Addison. — 8, Addison. Secretary of State in Lord Stanhope's administration (1717-18). — 1 1, Dorset. Charles Sackville, sixth Earl (1637-1706). Macaulay intim.ates that the poetry of Sheffield, Rochester, and Roscommon owed its interest chiefly to the rank of the writers. — 21, the house of Hanover. Came in with George I. in 1714. The "supreme power" was in the hands of Sir Robert Walpole, from 1721 to 1742. 37:1, Sir Charles Hanbury Williatns. (1709-1759). Diplo- matist, and writer of political verse. — 8, befriended a single f?ian. See 40 : 21. — 12, tinjust war. The war with Spain (1739-42). — 16, St. Ja7}ies's. The London residence of the English kings from William IH. to George IV. — Leicester house. In Leicester Square. Here Frederick, Prince of Wales, lived, from 1737 to his death in 1751. — 19, literary career. It must be borne in mind that this description in great part is applicable, not to Johnson, but to his earlier associates, like Savage and Boyse. NO TES TO MA CA ULA Y ' S E SSA V. 169 Johnson was never dissipated or improvident. Some months after his first visit to London he returned to Lichfield, and brought Mrs. Johnson to live in London with him, and she was provided with shelter continuously until her death in 1752. Bos well gives a list of Johnson's houses in a note to the Lt/e, under September 21, 1779 (iii- 405, ^- 6). The famous story of Johnson and Savage walking the streets together all night for want of a lodging pre- sents difficulties. See the Lt/e, 1744, and Hill's note (i. 163, n. 2), Macaulay's description of the Grub Street poet applies equally well to the Elizabethan dramatist. — 22, The prices paid. Johnson received ten guineas for London. In 1738-39 he made only £i\()/']. in nine months. — 25, p?'ovide for the day. " Much of my life has been lost under the pressure of disease ; much has been trifled away ; and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was passing over me," Preface to the Diction- ary, loth page. — 26, The lean kine. See Gen. xli. 38 : 2, Kind's Bench. The King's Bench was a prison, which took its name from the Court of King's Bench. The Common Side Avas the most miserable part of the prison, where inmates were lodged that could not pay the fees for better quarters. — 3, the Fleet. A prison in Fleet Street, demolished in 1844. 11, Grtib Street. The proverbial abode of the small author. Now known as Milton Street, after one Milton, a builder. — 13, St. Martin's. The church of St. Martin's in the Fields, Trafalgar Square. " The labyrinthine alleys near the church, destroyed in the forma- tion of Trafalgar Square, were known as ' the Bermudas.' " Kvi- gnstus Hare, IValhs in London, ii. ^. — 12, l>ttlh . . . glass-house. American stall, green-house. — 18, Kitcat. This was a Whig club in Shire Lane, Fleet Street. It was named after Christopher Cat, or Katt, a pastry-cook. Among the members were Addison, Steele, Congreve, and Mainwaring. — 19, Scriblerus club. An earlier political club, founded by Pope. Swift, Arbuthnot, Gay, Parnell, and Prior were members. — 20, the High Allies. The Emperor, Prussia, the Dutch, and England, allied against Louis XIV. (1701) — 23, Albetnarle Street. In this street is the famous publishing house of John Murray. — Paternoster R010. The headquarters of the London book-trade. 39: 5, third night. The profits of every third performance of lyo KOl'ES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. a play were given to the author as his benefit. — 12, Savage. Richard Savage (169S-1744), author of The Bastard and The Wanderer. See the Life^ 1744 (i. 161-174), and Johnson's Life of Savage. — 13, Boyse. Samuel Boyse (1708-1749), a forgotten literary drudge. For the anecdote cited by Carlyle (ill : 3), see Hawkins, p. 157, n. — 18, Betty Careless. A notorious character of the time, whose name has become proverbial. — 19, Porridge island. An alley near St. Martin's Church, filled with cheap cook-shops. See Thrale's Anecdotes, p. 44 (Croker iv. 381). — 28, the wild ass, the unicorn. See/od xxix. 5-9. 40:18, Tope. For his translation of Homer (1715-1725) he received something like ;!^9000. — 21, Yomig. The Rev. Edward Young (i68r-i765), author of Alight Thoughts. — 25, Thomson. From 1737 to 1748 enjoyed a pension of ;^ioo from Frederick, Prince of Wales. — 26, Mallet. David Mallet, or Malloch (1705 ?- 1765), poet and dramatist. Appointed under-secretary to the Prince of Wales, with a salary of ;^200 a year. — 28, kept his shop. Richardson was a printer, and master of the Stationers' Company, one of the London guilds. " Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee," is proverbial. 41 : \, Johnson. Arrested for debt in 1756, See Hill's note to the Life (i. 303, n. i). — Collins. Not known to have been actually arrested, though described as "in hiding from bailiffs." — Fielding. Frequently in difficulties, but no actual arrest is recorded. In his Amelia, Lieutenant Booth, understood to rep- resent the author, is arrested for debt (bk. viii.). Macaulay has doubtless taken this incident literally. — 2, Thomson. The story is that after losing his position as Secretary of the Briefs (1737), he was arrested for a debt of about ^^70, and that Quin the actor called upon him at the sponging house, introduced him- self, and presented him with a supper and a ;!^ioo note, as a return for the pleasure he had received from reading Thomson's poems. 42 : 8, Curll, etc. Edmund Curll and Thomas Osborne were booksellers. The first is notorious for his connection with Pope ; the second for having been knocked down by Johnson : * ' Sir, he was impertinent to me, and I beat him," Life, 1742 (i. 154). Curll and Osborne are ridiculed in the Dunciad, Bk. ii. — 14, Pope. In the Dunciad, Bk. ii. NO TES TO MA CA ULA V ' S ESSA V. 1 7 1 43 : 2, Streatham Park. Thrale's house, situated at Streatham in Surrey, close to London. — 3, behind the screen. Johnson dined with Cave, his publisher, at his house in St. John's Gate at Clerkenwell, in 1744, " Siiortly after the publication of the Life of Savage,'' and sat behind a screen, that another guest might not see his shabby clothing. See Malone's note to the Life, 1744 (i. 163, n, i). — II, tore his dinner. See the Life, under August 5, 1763 (i. 468). — 22, %aant of meat. Johnson signed one of his letters to Cave, " Your's, impransns ;" i. e., "without dinner," Life, 1738 (i. 137). See also the Life, under August 5, 1763 (i. 468), and the Tour, October 4 (v. 284). — 24, insincerity of patrons. An allusion to the story of Johnson and Chesterfield. See Carlyle, pp. 116-17, and i\iQ Life, 1754 (i. 256-257).— 25, l^hat bread, etc. From Dante, Paradiso xvii. 58-60. " Thou shall have proof how savoureth of salt The bread of others, and how hard a path The going up and down another's stairs." — Longfellow's translation. — 27, deferred hope. Proverbs xii. 12. — 31, eo ivtmitior, etc. " So much the harsher, because he had endured," Tacitus, Annals i. 20. Said of Aufidienus Rufus, an officer risen from the ranks. 44:8, starving girl. See the Zz/^, under June 19, 1784 (iv. 321). See Carlyle 149 : i. — 20, with Mrs. Thrale. See her Anec- dotes, p. 45. — 25, the Good-natured Man. See Dobson, Gold- smith, pp. 130-136 ; Thrale, p. 98. 45:1. Lady Tavistock. From Mrs. Thrale's Anecdotes, p. 64; Croker ii. 94. — g, in the ordinary intercourse of society. Mis- placed ; should more properly follow likely. — 13, Holofernes. See Love's Labor Lost iv. 2, etc. " When the newspapers had tacked them [Johnson and Goldsmith] together as the pedant and his flatterer in Love's Labour Lost," Thrale, p. 75. — 14, Mrs. Carter. Elizabeth Carter (17 17-1806), a learned lady. See the Life, April 20, 1 78 1 (iv. 97). 46:12, the Arabian tale. 'LdiXiQ, Thousand and One Nights, i. 69. 47 ; 2, LLogarth. From Thrale's Anecdotes, p. 58. See Hill 172" NOTES TO MACAU LAY'S ESSAY. iii. 229, n. 3, and Psalms cxvi. 11. — 6, hurricane. Thrale, p. 59 (Croker iv. 3S6). — 8, red-hot balls. Thrale, p. 5S (Croker iv. 3S5). Fired by garrison (1782) in the thirteenth siege (1779-83) of Gibraltar, then held by the English against France and Spain. — 13, earthquake at Lisbon. November I, 1755. See Thrale, p. 59 (Croker iv, 386). In this earthquake and in the fire which followed, between 30,000 and 40,000 persons were killed. — 16, saw a ghost. Life, April 9, 10, 1772 (ii. 178, 182). — 18, Cock Layie. See the Life, under June 13, 1763 (i. 406). Churchill ridiculed Johnson for this ghost-hunt. For a full account of the Cock Lane ghost, see Harper's Magazine, August, 1893 (vol. Ixxxvii. p. 327). — iC),John Wesley (1703-91). The founder of Methodism. See the Life, under April 15, 1778 (iii. 297), and May 4, 1779 (iii- 394)- — 21, Celtic genealogies. See the Tour, September 18 (v. 224-5). The poems referred to are the pretended translations from Ossian by James Macpherson (1738-96), fre- quently mentioned in the Life and the Tour. — 23, willing to be- lieve. Life, March 24, 1775 (ii. 318). The subject is frequently discussed in Boswell. — 30, Lord Rosconunon. Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon (1634-85), author of an Essay on Trans- lated Verse. When ten years old, Johnson tells, he had "some preternatural intelligence of his father's death " in Ireland, he being at Caen in Normandy. Works ix. 212. 48:6, enlarged. Here in the Biblical sense, "set free," as in Psalms iv. I. — 20, stripping the lace. From Thrale, p. 84 (Croker ii. 77). — 25, Hudibras, Ralpho. See Hudibras, by Samuel Butler (1612-S0), The former is a burlesque knight- errant, the latter his squire. Both are caricatures of religious fanaticism. 49 : 3, Campbell. Dr. John Campbell, political and biographi- cal writer (1708-75). See the Life, July i, 1763 (i. 418). — 10, Roundhead. " The original of which name is not certainly known. Some say it was because the Puritans then commonly wore short hair, and the King's party long hair ; some say it was because the Queen at Strafford's trial asked who that round- headed man was, meaning Mr. Pym, because he spoke so strongly." Baxter, Narrative of his Life and Times (quoted by Trench, On the Study of Words, Lecture V.). — Solomon's si?igers. NOTES TO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. i73 Their names have not been transmitted. See 2 Chronicles v, 12. — 22, celebrating the redemption. On Good Friday. Boswell tells of tea without milk. Life^ April 17, 1778 (iii. 300), and April 18, 1783 (203). — 25, patriotism. " Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," Johnson once said ; Life., April 7, 1 775 (ii. 348), It must be remembered that there had been a political faction calling themselves the " Patriots." 50 : 6, Squire Western. A coarse, blustering country squire in Fielding's Tom Jones. — 8, Pococurante. Italian, " little caring." Apparently not a proper name here, though there is a character so named in Voltaire's Candide. — 12, zvell-knozon lines. See the Life, February, 1766 (ii. 5-6), for Johnson's share in the Traveller. It was published in 1765. The lines cited by Macaulay are 429-30. — ig, Rasselas. See ch. xxviii, ^ 2. — 21, the Long Parliament. The fifth parliament of Charles I. It sat from November 3, 1640, to April 20, 1653, — 25, Sir Adam Ferguson. See the Life, March 31, 1772 (ii. 170), and Leslie Stephen's y£?/m- son, pp. 183-4. 51 : 8. Lord Bacon tells. In his Apophthegms, Old and New, § 221. The story is of Thales, told by Diogenes Laertius, Life of Thales, § 9. 52 : 29, on the other side. When Macaulay wrote, the principal courts of justice were held in Westminster Hall, which adjoins the chamber in which the House of Commons sits. 53:20, Denhajn. Sir John Denham (1615-68), architect and poet, author of Cooper's Hill. — 25, greater man than Virgil. See the Life, under September 22, 1777 (iii. 193). In his note on the passage, Boswell tells of a debate on this subject between Johnson and Burke, in which Johnson argued for the superiority of Homer, He compares the two in his Life of Dryden {Works ix. 425). — 27, preferred Popes Lliad. There is nothing in Johnson's conver- sations or in his Life of Pope to justify this assertion. Johnson says that Pope " made him [Homer] graceful, but lost him some of his sublimity." Works xi. 187. — 29, Tasso. The Geru- salemme Liberata (1574) was translated by Edward Fairfax (d. 1635) in 1600 ; by John Hoole in 1763. Johnson wrote for Hoole the dedication to the Queen. See the Life, 1763 (i. 383). — 30, old English ballads. See, for instance, his Li fe of Addison : "In 174 NOTES rO MACAULAY'S ESSAY. Chevy Chase there is not much of either bombast or affectation, but there is chill and lifeless imbecility. The story cannot possi- bly be told in a manner that shall make less impression on the mind." — 32, Percy's. Thomas Percy (1728-1811), Bishop of Dromore, published his Reliques of English Poetry in 1765. He also wrote poems in imitation of the ballad style ; it is these of M'hich Johnson " spoke with provoking contempt," Life, April 3, 1773 (ii. 212). 54:4, Tom Jones. Life, April 6, 1772 (ii. 174). — Gulliver'' s Travels. Life, March 24, 1775 (ii. 319). Johnson said, " When once you have«thought of big men and little men, it is easy enough to do the rest." — Tristram Shandy. Appeared 1760-65. In 1776 Johnson spoke of it in the past tense: " Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last," Life, under March 19 (ii. 449). — 6, cold commendation. "The last piece that he lived to publish was the ' Castle of Indolence,' which was many years imder his hand, but was at last finished with great accuracy. The first canto opens a scene of lazy luxury that fills the imagination." Johnson, Life of Thomson ( Works xi. 232). — 9, Blackmore. (1650 ?-i729). A voluminous writer of blank verse. To his Creation Johnson ascribes a "general predominance of philo- sophical judgment and poetical spirit." Woj'ks x. 213. — dialect. A contemptuous use of the word, in the sense of a man's customary set of terms, as revealing his prejudices or points of view. — barren rascal. It was Fielding whom Johnson so designated ; Gray he called a "dull fellow." Zzy>, April 6, 1772, and under March 27, 1775 (ii- 174 and 327). Yet Johnson read Amelia through without stopping. Life, April 12, 1776 (iii. 43). — 10, blockhead. Life, July i, 1763 (i. 419). Fielding, too, received this compli- ment. Life, April 6, 1772 (ii. 173). — 23, Pope's Epitaphs. The Dissertation on this subject was appended to the Life of Pope, Works xi. 200-218. It was written in 1756 for the Universal Visitor. — 26, Rymer. Thomas Rymer (1646-1713), histori- ographer to William and Mary. His Short View of Tragedy, 1693, contains his celebrated criticism of Othello. — 30, touched every post. See Hill's note to the Life (i. 485, «. i). 55 : 2, Smollett. See the Tour, October 28 (v. 366).— 4, Gold- smith. See the Life, June 22, 1776 (iii. 81-5). His epitaph was NO TES TO MA CA ULA V ' S ESSA Y. 1 75 written by Johnson. Some members of the club sent Johnson a Round Robin, asking him to substitute English for Latin, but he refused. Burke, Reynolds, and Gibbon were among the signa- tories. — 18, iinfortiinate chiefs. Chain-mail came into general use in the fifteenth century. Knights in full armor who had been unhorsed were helpless. — 28, Directions to Servants. A set of ironical rules for slovenliness and dishonesty, not published until after Swift's death. It is curious to speak of this work as a " book on the practical art of living." 56 : 8, rural life. See Hill (iii, 450). Johnson knew a great deal about rural life. His first twenty-seven years were spent in small country towns. He also made frequent excursions from London. — 1 1 , Country gentle??ien. See the Tour, August 25 (v. 108). — 18, The Athenians. See the Life, April 3, 1773, and March 31, 1772 (ii. 211 and 171). 57 : I, books alone. One of Macaulay's rare ambiguities ; he means, "only by means of books," but might be understood to in- tend, " without other means than books." — 5, Bolt Court. Where Johnson lived from 1776 to his death. — 12, shield of Achilles. See the Iliad yi\\n. 478-608. — Death of Argus. See the Odysseyi^yii, 290-327. Argus is the hound of Ulysses ; he dies of joy at recog- nizing his master on the latter's return to Ithaca. — 25, black Frank. Francis Barber, Johnson's negro servant. Johnson sent him to school, as related in the Life, April 26, 1768, and March 21, 1772 (ii. 62, 146).— 32, at Paris. See note to 4 : 15. John- son spoke Latin ; Life, under November 12, 1775 (ii. 404). 58:6, M. Simond. Louis Simond (1767-1831) ; author of Voyage d'un Francais en Angleterre, pendant les anne'es 18 lO et i8ii (published in 1816). — 12, the sage. Also, "my illustrious friend." — 16, the bills of mortality. The urban district compris- ing the city of London and its neighborhood, organized for certain objects, among them the making of weekly returns of births and deaths. — 19, Zeluco. A novel (1786) by Dr. John Moore (1729- 1802). The sentences quoted are from ch. Ixxiii. — 21, that there laiv. The Salic law. A law of the Salian Franks in the fifth century, concerning the inheritance of estates ; first applied to the succession in 13 16. By it women were excluded from the throne of France. 176 A^Ol'ES 7'6> MACAULAY'S ESSAY. 59 : 2, his Journey. A Journey to the Western Islands of ^r^/Za//^ (published in 1775). "Having passed my time almost wholly in cities, I may have been surprised by modes of life and appearances of nature that are familiar to men of wider survey and more varied conversation. Novelty and ignorance must always be reciprocal, and I cannot but be conscious that my thoughts on national manners, are the thoughts of one who has seen but little," Works viii. 412. — 1 1, fierce and boisterous contempt. See Hill (iii, 449-459). Up to the age of fifty-three Johnson had not the means to travel. After receiving his pension he traveled much in England, went through Scotland and Wales and visited Paris. What Johnson ridiculed was the "tour of Europe," then part of the fashionable education of youth. — 14, Charlemont. James Caulfeild (1728-99), Earl of Charlemont ; a member of the Club. See the Life, under May 12, 1728 (iii. 352). — 17, Lord Plunkett. William Conyngham, Baron Plunket (1764-1854), Lord Chancellor of Ireland(i830-35, 1835-41). —20, Z^r^iTazV^fj. Sir David Dalrym- ple (1726-92). Johnson praises his Annals of Scotland; Life, under April 29, 1776 (iii. 58).— -22, Robertson. In the Z?y>, 1768 (ii- 53). Johnson evaded discussing him by saying, " Sir, I love Rob- ertson, and I won't talk of his book." In the Zzy>, April 30, 1773 (ii. 236-8), he condemns him for his " romance," his " cumbrous detail," and his "verbiage." He also says, "I have not read Hume." — 24, Catiline's conspiracy. " I asked him once concern- ing the conversation powers of a gentleman with whom I was my- self unacquainted — ' He talked to me at club one day (replies our Doctor) concerning Catiline's conspiracy — so I withdrew my atten- tion and thought about Tom Thumb,'" Thrale, p. 36. — 25, Punic war. Thrale, p. 36. 60 : 14, accidents zvith essential properties. An accident is, in logic, anon-essential; "a character which may be present in or absent in a member of a natural class," Cent. Diet. 61:4, Johnsonese, A word coined in this place by Macaulay. — 10, recorded in the Journey. Johnson's Works viii. 261. The incident happened at Glenelg, in the Highlands. For the other account, see Hill's Letters of Samuel Johnson, i. 251. — 14, The Rehearsal. A burlesque play (1672), in ridicule of Dryden and Other contemporary dramatists. The principal author was George NO TES TO MA CA ULA Y'S ESSA V. 1 7 7 Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (1627-88). See the Life, under June 19, 1784 (iv. 320), whence Macaulay drew the anecdote and its application. — 18, Mannerism, etc. This paragraph is dissected and criticised in Minto's English Prose, p. 100. 62:5, t^^^ king's English. The expression was first used by Thomas Wilson in his Art of Rhetoric, 1553 (Minto). — 13, great old writers. Such authors as Burton, Jeremy Taylor, and Sir Thomas Browne are probably intended. — 18, fable about little fishes. From i\iQ Life, April 27, 1773 (ii. 231). — 25, Sir Piercy Shafton. An affected young courtier of Elizabethan times, in Scott's Monastery. His language, intended by Scott to be euphu- istic, resembles most closely that used in Sidney's Arcadia. The allusion is to the incident in the Monastery, ch. xxviii., where Shaf- ton, escaping from custody in the disguise of a milkmaid, betrays his identity by his answer to a challenge. — Enphiiistic. Strictly speaking, in the style of the Eitphiies (1579-80) of John Lyly, or Lillie (1554-1606). Loosely applied, as here, to the " Italianate" language affected by other Elizabethan writers. — 26, Euphelia, etc. Imlac is the poet in Rasselas. Seged {Rambler, Nos. 204-5) is a monarch who learns the futility of planning to be happy. Euphe- lia, Rhodoclia, Cornelia, and Tranquilla appear in other numbers of the Rambler (42 and 46 ; 62 ; 51 ; 119). 63 : 13, Falstaff. See the Merry Wives of Windsor iv, 2. Sir Hugh Evans's title by courtesy and his broken English are accounted for by his being a parson and a Welshman. — 27, canvass of Reynolds. In separate portraits ; not in any group. NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. [The text is that of the original article in Fraser's Magazine for May, 1832 (vol. v., no. xxviii.). The original capitals and punctuation have been retained. In connection with this essay the introductory article on Bio- graphy {^Fraser's, April, 1832, reprinted in the Miscellanies) should be read. Compare also Carlyle's remarks on Johnson and Bos- well in Heroes and Hero- Worship, ch. v.] 65 : I, ALsop's Fly. " It was prettily devised of yEsop : * The fly sat upon the axle-tree of the chariot-wheel, and said, " What a dust do I raise ! " ' " — Bacon, Essay LIV., Of Vain-Glory. — 18, in very trnth. Very — veritable, real. 66:2, National Omnibus. A cheap magazine, then in exist- ence. — 4, throats of brass and of leather. The hostile reviews are compared to trumpets sounding notes of defiance ; the friendly notices are compared to puffs of the bellows. — 5,Io Paeans. 'Iw Ilamv, " Hail, Apollo ! " — g, zvhat degree of tumult. Ironical. The Hi a of cannot be said to have been "ushered in" at all; Paradise Lost attracted little immediate attention. Carlyle's (im- plied) argument is. Great works appear without clamor ; Croker's Boswell appeared with clamor ; hence . . . — 21. Johnson once said. With reference to The Spectator. •See the Life, April 3, 1773 (ii. 212) ; quoted inCroker's Preface (I. vi., «. i). Croker's edition' came out forty years after the original. — 26, voluntary resolution. Ironical, implying that no one had asked Croker to edit Boswell. — 27, archives. Here used in its primary sense: place where records are kept. 67 : 19, reconciling the distant with the present. Emending or annotating the text where it appears to contradict itself. John- son's utterances at different times are sometimes inconsistent. — 178. NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 179 23, even Greek. Ironical, as if this were a still greater feat of scholarship. — 28, ^od manners. See 21 : 12. 68 : 28, express Dissertation. Most writers would have inserted "or "after this word. — 31, what was dark. See Paradise Lost i. 22. — 32, had thereby been enlightened. The use of had=. "would have" and of «/^r^=" would be" is frequent with Carlyle. 69 : 8, punctually. Minutely ; to a point. Ordinarily only of time. — 16, Carteret. See note to 17 : 18. — 20, Ma foi, monsieur. " Faith, sir, our happiness depends upon the way that our blood circulates." See the Zzy>, 1759 (^- 3431 Croker i. 333). Croker errs in ridiculing Boswell's French, though in literary style dont would be substituted for que. 70 : 22, Pudding . . . Praise. See the Dunciad, i. 54. — 27, Is it not. Croker i, 66, n. i. 72 : 2, Four Books. See note to 22 : 6. — 6, sextum quid. " A sixth something." — 9, virtue. Power. — 20, cup and the lip. Proverbially, " There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip." Consult a classical dictionary under Ancceus. — 25, Entire. Por- ter. See the Cent. Diet. s. v. " entire." 73 • 3' ^^^ Moralists. Something like this doctrine is to be found in Leibnitz. — 6, How much more^ etc. Not clear. Carlyle means to say that Croker's failure is owing not so much to his not having done enough, as to his utter unfitness to perform his task properly, despite his industry. 74:10, solid pudding. Cf, note to 70 • 22. — 32, Shakspeare Jubilee. Cf . note to 27 : 8. 75 : 4, The very look. Referring to a sketch or caricature of Boswell by Sir Thomas Lawrence, the frontispiece to Croker's fourth volume. — 15, flunky. The Cent. Diet, explains this word as Scotch, and "recent in literature," giving besides the present passage a citation from Burns. — 22, Touchivood. A chcwacter in the farce of What Next? (1816) by John Thomas Dibdin (1771- 1841). — 23, Auchinleck. Alexander Boswell, father of the bio- grapher. " Pronounced ^j^/f/c/^," Life, under January 10, 1776 (ii. 413). This story and others were communicated to Croker by Sir Walter Scott. See Jennings, Crokei-'s Correspondence and Diaries, ii. 28-34. — 24, land-louper. Runabout ; cf. Ger. luufen. I So NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 76 : 18, Gamaliel. See Acts v. 34. — 19, pedigrees. Boswell claimed descent from the Bruce, and kinship with George III. Tour, August 15 (v. 25, n. 2), and November 4 (v. 379). — 27, ^rst sheriff appointed. Of Wigtonshire, 1743. Boswelliajia,-^. 5. 77 : 8, gigmatiity. A coinage by Carlyle. The present passage is the earliest in which it was actually printed. The trial of the mur- derer John Thurtell took place in 1823 ; see DeQuincey's Works, ed. Masson, xiii. 43, n. 2, Carlyle never tired of this allusion ; he rings endless changes on "gigs," " gigmen," " gigmania," " gigmanity with its thousand gigs," "gigimnity disgigged," " anti-gigmanic," " gigmanism," etc. 78 : 13, poor rusty-coated '''scholar." See Hill's Dr. Johnson : his Friends and his Critics {A/r. Carlyle on Boswell). In 1763 Johnson was already the leader of the literary world, had an income larger than Boswell's allowance, and numbered among his friends men of the highest rank. — 16, the glass of fashion. See Hamlet iii. I, 121 — 28, innumerable observers. See Hatnlet iii. I, 122, 79 : 4, Feast of Tabernacles. See Leviticus xxiii. 33-44. — 8, blind old zvoman. Mrs. Williams, so called by brevet. See the Life, October 26, 1769 (ii. 99 and «. 2), where Boswell retracts this unpleasant charge. — 29, Llenry Erskine. This story in Scott's annotations to the l^our, Croker ii. 274, n. The " Outer- House " is the great hall in the " Parliament-House " at Edinburgh, the building in which the high courts of justice of Scotland sit. 80 : 10, welters. A frequent word with Carlyle, of vague sig- nificance. The metaphor here is not clear. — 23, Hero-worship. This word represents one of Carlyle's principal dogmas. See Lferoes and Hero- Worship. — 27, martyr. In its etymological sense of zvitness {iidprvQ). 81 : 3, which the Supreme Quack should inherit. In which the greatest" impostor should have the most prosperity. — 5, yellow leaf. See Macbeth v. 3, 23. — 6, Prophet. In the sense of " spokesman," not that of " foreteller of the future." Boswell is meant. — 11, treacle. In allusion to the proverbial custom of sweet- ening with syrup the edge of the cup from which a bitter potion must be drunk. See, for instance, Lucretius, iv. 11. — 18, an in- corruptible. See I Corinthians xv. 53. NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. i8l 82 : 2, Johnsoniad. Coined by Carlyle in imitation of Iliad. The comparison of the Life to the Odyssey originated with Bos- well ; see his Advertisement to the Second Edition (i. 12). — 21, Thus does, etc. This paragraph is unnecessarily complicated by the side-remark, " in which . . . there well might ". (83:1-3.) This digression omitted, the argument is as follows : " Boswell's character was a mixture of good and evil : so is that of every man, and can be symbolized by^ union of god and beast. Thus the Greeks represented Pan, their god of Nature, as half god, half goat. Now man may be regarded as the epitome of the universe, unless, indeed, as Idealism holds, the universe itself is only the creation of mind. In either case, what is in substance true of the world is equally true of the human mind. The peculiarity in "Boswell's case was a lack of amalgamation : his good and evil qualities existed side by side, in apparent incompatibility," — 28, All, or Pan. Greek ■nav, "all": IJdv, "Pan." Cf. Faust ii. 1261 : Das All der Welt Wird vorgestellt Im grosser! Pan. 83 : 2, panic Awe. ^eina rraviKov, the term applied by the Greeks to the unaccountable fear which sometimes seizes an army in battle. Pan's voice was believed to be able to cause such fear. — 6, fearful and wonderful. See Psalms cxxxix. 14. — waste fantasy. " ' This mad Universe,' says Novalis, ' is the waste pic- ture of your own Dream.' " Latter-Day Pamphlets, vii. — 21, cat- tle on a thousand hills. Psalms 1. 10. Z^',1, Prolegomena . . . Scholia. Keeping up the comparison of the Life to an epic. — 22, import of Reality. See Carlyle's essay. Biography. The ' ' speculation ' on the import of locality ' " is an extract from a fictitious work : " Professor Gottfried Sauer- teig's yEsthetische Springwiirzel" {'' ^^sthetic Picklocks," Carlyle explains). 86: II, local habitation. See Midsummer Alight' s Dream v. i. 17. — 15, Critics insist, etc. More idiomatically, " Critics insist much that the poet should," etc., or " demand of the poet that,'' etc. — 17, transcendental. Intended in the Kantian sense, " apart 1 82 NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. from space and time," but the passage cannot be definitely para- phrased. 87 ; 3, thesis. Here accurately, in the sense of proposition; often used loosely for dissertation. — 18, bootjacks. The word must here mean, "servants who pull off boots." The word in this sense is not in the dictionaries, but is so used by Thackeray, Esmond, ch. i, — 29, Prosperous air-vision. See The Ternpesi iv. i. 131. « Z^li^slozver. Adjective for adverb. — '], Edict of Destiny. In imitation of the phrase, "revocation of the edict of Nantes." — 25, Smolletts. Besides his novels he wrote a History of Eng- land. — Belsharns. William Belsham (1752-1827), the author of some political essays, and of a History of Great Britain to the Conchisio7i of the Peace of Amiens in 1802. 88 : 28, IValpole, etc. The ministries here mentioned held office between 1721 and 1784. The list is not complete or chrono- logical. 89 : 3, enclosure-bills. For acquiring possession of waste or common lands (1801 and 1845), — 8, sat in Cha^icery. The Lord Chancellor is the head of the English judicial system. As speaker of the House of Lords, he sits upon the Woolsack. — 13, specific — levity. Parody of " specific gravity." — 32, had their being. Acts xvii. 28. 90 : 4, Mr. Senior and Air. Sadler. Nassau William Senior and Michael Thomas Sadler, two contemporary writers on political economy. Senior's Three Lectures on Wages and Sad- ler's Law of Population both appeared in 1830. The latter was " smashed " by Macaulay. 91 : 2, yEneas Sylvius. Eneo Sylvio Piccolomini (1405-64), Pope Pius II. — 5, the Reformation. See Heroes atid Hero- Wor- ship for Carlyle's treatment of John Knox. — 21, Mary Sttiart. Carlyle commends the biography of Johnson as better than any history of England ; he then condemns Robertson's history of Scotland for being only a biography of Mary Stuart and Darnley. A biography of John Knox would probably have satisfied him. 92 : 3, with burning candle. Illuminated, from the inside, like a transparency. A similar expression in Latter-Day Pamphlets^ p. 300. — 31, dialects. Cf. note to 54 :9. NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 183 93 : II, Father of Lies. See Jo-hn viii. 44. — 16, taking notes. Allusion to Burns' lines, On Captain Grose's Peregrinations through Scotland : " If there's a hole in a' your coats, I rede ye, tent it ; A chiel's amang ye takin' notes, And faith, he'll prent it." — 21, needs not care. Need is more usual. — 31, or inserted. Sarcastically, implying that the heedless talker is likely to become a felon. 94:1, Halfness. A translation by Carlyle of the German Halbhcit. — 8, Watch thy tongue. See Proverbs iv. 23. — 32, ass- skin. Boswell of course wrote on paper ; parchment is made of sheepskin. Carlyle employs the word ass-skin for its ludicrous effect. 95 : 6, iron leaf. In Past and Present (III. x. 3) Carlyle whites : " Things, as my Moslem friends say, ' are written on the iron leaf.' " The Koran mentions recording angels, but tells nothing of their writing on iron. — 13, nnich-endtning man. The translation of the common epithet of Ulysses, tcoA.vt^mq. 96:8, Natus sum, etc. " I was born ;• I hungered, I sought ; I rest now, having taken my fill." 98 : 3, fact which tue owe. We owe to Jean Paul not the fact, but its observation and record. — -Jean Paul. Johann Friedrich Richter. See Carlyle's essay on him. 100:1, Vanity- fair. See \h^ Pilgrim's Progress^ Part I. — 9, Popinjays. See Scott's Old Mortality, ch. ii. 101 : 14, believe and tremble. See James ii. 19. 102 : 18, hujuan face divine. " A confession, said to have been made by him, that he never saw the ' human face divine,' " Haw- kins, p. 33. See Paradise Lost iii. 44. — 32, Ariel, Caliban. See The Tempest. 103:4, the fewest men. After the German, wenigsten. — 26, A chacun, etc. " To each according to his capacity ; to each capacity according to its works." One of the maxims of the social- istic writer, Claude Henri, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825). At this time (1829-32) there was actually a Saint-Simonian com- munity, founded by some of his followers. 184 NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 104 : 16, His favorites, etc; From the Life, 1712 (i. 47). — 25, blubber. The same as ' ' blubberer. " — 31 , The child is father of the man. From Wordsworth's lines, beginning, " My heart leaps up." 105 : 8, Corporal Trim. Uncle Toby's orderly in Tristram Shandy. See vol. iii. ch, 42-43, for the "auxiliary verbs"; they are not Trim's but Walter Shandy's. They practically mean every possible question that can be asked on a given subject. — 30, in- quires Sir John. The extract is from his Life, p. ii. The story is also told by Boswell in the Life, 173 1 (i. 76). Carlyle selects Hawkins's account in order to ridicule it. 106 : 10, Dr. Hallretnarks. In a note communicated to Croker (i. 46, n. I of his edition of the Life). Dr. Hall was the Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, at this time. As to Carlyle's com- ments, Hill disposes of them {Friends and Critics, pp. 24-25) by pointing out that the students dined in common. "Whatever was Johnson's want of proper clothing and of ready cash, he lived, so far as food went, as the accounts show, in the same way as his fellow-students." Johnson was a commoner (Hawkins, p. 59). — 19, he further discourses. Hawkins's Life, p. 18. In the orig- inal, " civil policy," not polity. 107 '5' perfect through suffering. See Hebrews ii. 10. — 8, Translation. Into Latin, of Pope's Messiah, which is itself an imitation of Vergil's fourth eclogue, the Pollio. See the Life, 1728 (i. 61). — 17, Market Boszvorth. See the Life, 1732 (i. 85-86), whence Carlyle borrows the expressions quoted, except, "re- linquishes, etc.," which is from Hawkins, p. 21. — 21, Samson. StQ Judges xvi. 21. 108 : I, this Letter. From the Life, 1734 (i. 91-92). — 2, Sylva- nus Urban. So Cave (whose first name was Edward) called him- self in his capacity as editor of the Gentleman's Magazine. — 24, Go thou, etc. Ltike x. 37. — 26, five pounds. For his translation from the French of Lobo's V^oyage to Abyssinia. 109 : 17, At Edial, etc. The advertisement inserted by Johnson in the Gentleman s Magazine, 1736 {Life i. 97). — 23, Dr. Parr. Samuel Parr (i 747-1 825), Master of Harrow, mentioned here as a typical bookworm. — 28, Cromwell do? etc. One of Scott's stories ; cf. note to 75 : 23. — gart kings ken that there was a lith. " Made kings know that there was a joint." NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 185 IIO : 8, Pactohis. A small stream of Lydia, flowing from Mt. Tmolus and emptying into the Hermus. In ancient times its bed was said to contain gold-dust. — 13, not of Ephesus ; i. e., in some modern city. See Acts xix. 35. — 2^^ first Writers. That is, in England. — 27, Otway. I'homas Otway (1651-85), author of the tragedies Venice Preserved and The Orphan. It is said that he was choked by some bread which he devoured in a rage of hun- ger. — 2g, Scrogginses. Scroggen is the poet in Goldsmith's short poem, A Description of an Author's Bedchamber^ which Carlyle here quotes. Ill: 3, Mr. Boyce. Samuel Boyse ; see note to 43: 18. — II, carpe diem. "Seize the day"; make hay while the sun shines. Horace, Odes I. xi. 8. — 28, Caves temper, etc. Haw- kins, pp. 45-48, 49-50. 113 : 24, lord of the lion heart. Smollett, Ode to Independence. 114:26, Msecenasship. "Patronage"; from Maecenas, the patron of Horace. 115 : I, some third method. Carlyle's prophecy has not yet been fulfilled. — 14, toga virilis. The " garb of manhood," assumed by Roman boys at sixteen, when they came of age. 116:25, the wages of sin. See Rotnans vi. 23. Patronage involved lying, and lying is moral death, according to Carlyle. 117:1, Seven years, etc. See note to 43:24. This is the latter part of Johnson's letter to Chesterfield, February 7, 1755, provoked by learning that the earl was the author of an anony- mous complimentary notice of the Dictionary in a miscellany called The World. — ^, one act of assistance. Croker was puzzled by Boswell's admission that Johnson had at one time received ten guineas from Chesterfield, but there is no inconsistency ; Johnson had received no assistance during the seven years since he had been repulsed. The money must have been given in 1747, w^hen the Plan of the dictionary was published. — 7, The shepherd in Virgil. See the Eclogues viii. 43-45. — 14, solitary. Alluding to the death of his wife, which had occurred in 1752. 118 : 12, vizards. Alluding to the ancient Athenian custom of actors on the stage wearing masks. — 14, vTzoKpcTr/g. "Actor," but inserted by Carlyle with suggestion of its later, post-classical meaning, " hypocrite." — 22, idol-cavern. In Bacon's sense of the 1 86 .VOTES TO CARLYLES ESSAY. word " idol," as " false notion." " Idols are the deepest fallacies of the human mind. . . Idols are imposed upon the understand- ing, either, i. by the general nature of mankind ; 2. the nature of each particular man ; or 3, bywords, or communicative nature . . . idols of the tribe (tribus) ... of the den {species), of the market {fori). There is also a fourth kind, which we call idols of the theatre {iheairi), being superinduced by false theories or philoso- phies . . . "The idols of the den have their origin . . . from education, custom, and the accidents of particular persons," Advancement of Learning, v. 4, p. 207 (Bohn). — 23, What is Truth? See Bacon, Essays, I., Of Truth, dLwdJohn xviii. 38. 119 : 20, simulacra. " Images." 120: 12), Bolingbrokes. Henry St. John, Viscount B. (1678- 175 1 ), author of various political, historical, and philosophical writings. — Tolands. John Toland (1679-1722), author of Christianity not Mysterious (1696). — 16, Bayle. Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), French philosopher and critic. — 27, Trulliber. In Fielding's y<7j-^// Andrews (bk. ii. ch. xiv.) : " Mr. Trulliber was a parson on Sundays, but all the other six days might more properly be called a farmer. . . The hogs fell chiefly to his care," etc. 121 : 18, infant Hercules. Said of Johnson by Boswell, Life, May 9, 1773 (ii. 260). 122 : 7, a Charles. Charles II. — '^, Jeffries. George Jeffreys, Baron Jeffreys of Wem (1648-89). As chief justice of the court of King's Bench, presided at the trials of Russell and Sidney. Lord Chancellor under James II. — 9, Russel, Sidney. William Russell, Lord Russell (1639-83) ; Algernon Sidney (or Sydney) (1622-83); beheaded for alleged complicity in a plot for "com- passing the death of the king." 124 : 16, a Burke ; or a Wilkes. A statesman or a demagogue. John \Yilkes (1727-97) was several times expelled from the House of Commons by a ministry to whom he w^as obnoxious, and re-elected by the county of Middlesex. 125 : 10, provision for the day. See note to 37 : 25. — 29, Phlegethon, etc. Phlegethon {^Tisyeduv, " blazing ") was a river of fire in Hades. Fleet-ditch, once a river, is a London sewer. NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 187 Carlyle occasionally uses " mud " as a contemptuous prefix \ e. g., mud-gods. "Mother of dead dogs" is a nickname of the Thames ; though that can hardly be intended here. 126:11, assurance of a Man. See Hamlet iii. 4, 62. — 13, confusion worse confounded. Paradise Lost ii. 996. — 22, redeem- ing the ti??ie. See Colossians iv. 5 ; Ephesians v. 15-16. — 28, the whole world. See Matthew xvi. 26. 127 : 6, transcendental. All-transcending ; supreme. — 12, au- thentic Symbol. The English Church.— 13, waxing old, etc. Hebrews i. ii ; Psalms cii. 26 ; Isaiah 1. 9, li. 6. — 15, Pillar of Fire, '^qq Exodus yC\\\. 21. — \t>^ witnesses. Martyrs ; see note to 80 : 27. — 24, inferior lights. The sun and moon. — 32, St. Clement Danes. The church where Johnson worshiped. See the Life, April 9, 1773 (ii. 214). 128 : 9, qtdt him like a man. See Samuel iv. 9. 129 : 22, hewing of ivoody etc. StQ Joshua ix. 21 ; Deut. xxix. II. — 23, sedentary. With special allusion; see 112:7. — 28, Parliamentary Debates. The " Senate of Lilliput " Debates for the Gentle fuaiz' s Magazine. See the Life, 1738 (i. 115-118) and 1741 (i. 150). See also Hill's Appendix A to vol. i. (i. 501-512). 130 : 3, impransus. See note to 43 : 22. — 4, grain of mustard- seed. See Matthezv xiii. 31 ; Mark iv. 31 ; Luke xiii. 19. — 10, Fourth Estate. The public press. — i^, behind the screen. See note to 43 : 3. — 19, his praise spoken. For the Life of Savage. 131 : 2, his Wife mttst leave him. Not related by Boswell, but an inference from the story of Johnson's walking the streets all night with Savage, or from an otherwise incredible story in Hawkins (p. 89) of an estrangement between Johnson and his wife, so that " while he was in a lodging in Fleet Street, she was harbored by a friend near the Tower." — 13, Gentleman of the British Museum. See Croker v. -^Zo.—i^, Old Mortality. In Scott's novel of the same name, an itinerant antiquary, who cleaned the moss from grave-stones and restored the epitaphs. — 31, Tempus edax rerum. " Time, the devourer of (all) things." Ovid, Metamorphoses xv. 234. — 32, ferax. " Productive." 132:13, He said, etc. Quoted from the Life, 1737 (i. 105). The speaker is "an Irish painter," whom Johnson knew at Bir- mingham and was interrogating as to the expense of London life. 1 88 NOTES TO CARLYLKS ESSAY. — 24, Giaours «;2^ Harolds. The Giaour i\%\'}^ 2l\\6, Childe Harold (i8t2, 1S16, 1818), both by Byron. — On another occasion. From Thrale, p. 23 (Croker i. 169). — 25, his own Satire. The Vanity of Human Wishes, in which occurs the well-known couplet : Yet mark what ills the scholar's life assail, Toil, envy, want, the Patron, and the jail. For Patron had originally stood garret. — 32, Hercules. At one time went mad, according to legend. 133:16, the Brick Desert. Evidently London. — 26, being, " Because he was." — 31, Constantine s-banner . Constantine, A. D. 312, marching at the head of his army, is said to have seen in the sky a cross, with the words, " In hoc signo vinces " (" In this sign thou wilt conquer "), whereupon he embraced Christianity and adopted the cross and motto as his standard. 134 : 12, killed by a review. Alluding to the death of Keats (1821). 136 : 2, inspired-idiot. See note to 29 : i. — 3, as Hawkins says. Hawkins, p. 416. — 8, the gooseberry-fool. So Goldsmith humor- ously termed himself in Retaliation : a Poem, written as a reply to Garrick's " Poor Poll " epitaph. This nonsense-epithet is really the name of a dish, and the /r. Minor, Dr. Major. So Goldsmith and Johnson were respectively dubbed by the Rev. George Graham (d. 1767), assistant master at Eton and author of Telemachus, a Mask. Tour, August 24 (v. 97). — 19, worthy. Boswell often calls Langton " our worthy friend." — 21, could not stop. Life, May 9, 1773 (ii. 262). — 30, Thralia. So Johnson Latinized Mrs. Thrale's name in his verses written in Skye : Thralise discant resonare nomen Littora Skiae. Tour, September 6 (v. 158). 137 : 3> Highland Lairds. In Skye ; Tour, September 27 (v. 261). — 5, Mr. F. Lewis. The Rev. Francis Lewis, who translated some mottoes from Latin for the Rambler. Johnson afterward described him as given in the text. Life, 1750 (i. 225). ^ — 7, res gestse. "Affairs transacted." — 9, Stat parvi, etc, " The shade stands of a little name." Lucan says of Pompey {Phar- NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 189 salia {. 135), " Stat magni nominis umbra," "of a mighty name." — 17, sotne ancient slaves. See Exodtis xxi. 6 ; Dent. xv. 16-17. — 25, Supreme Priest. Archbishop. Carlyle allows the archbishop an expenditure of ;!^3 1,200 a j'ear and the bishop a salary of ;^66oo a year. — 27, Church-Overseer, Bishop ; the word is derived from the Greek eTciaKOTog, " over-seer." — 28, secular Administrators. Lords lieutenant, and magistrates, of counties. — 29, Horse-subduers, and Game-destroyers. The landed gentry and aristocracy, whom Carlyle is fond of ridiculing for their devotion to sport and their indifference to the " condition- of-England question." " Horse-subduers" is in imitation of the Homeric epithet LTcirodaiioq. — 30, Primates. The Archbishop of Canterbury is called " Primate of all England," and the Arch- bishop of York, " Primate of England." 138 : 32, What I gave, etc. Carlyle's alteration of a sentiment sometimes found in old epitaphs, to the effect : " What I spent, I have ; what I saved, I have lost." 139 : I, Early friends, etc. Of Johnson's friends, Savage died in 1743 ; Richardson in 1761 ; Goldsmith, 1774 ; Garrick, 1779 ; Beauclerk, 1780 ; Thrale, 1781. — 13, To estimate, etc. More idiomatically, " The quantity of work . . . can never be accu- rately estimated." 141 : 27, Continental Subsidies. The subsidies granted to the sovereigns of the Continent by the younger Pitt during the struggle against the French Revolution and Napoleon. 1/^2 '. 1, Diderots. Denis Diderot (1713-84), chiefly famous for his work upon the EncyclopMie Methodique (1751-72). — ii, Chalk- Farm. The popular dueling ground in the first part of the present century. The last fatal duel at Chalk Farm was in 1843. On Primrose Hill, north of Regent's Park in London. Hare, ii. 141. 143: 15, Whiskerando. The name is taken from that of Don Ferolo Whiskerandos in Sheridan's Critic. — 23, Peterloos. " The Field of Peterloo " ; St. Peter's Field, near Manchester, where, in 1819, July 16, a reform meeting was dispersed by the yeomanry cavalry. 144 : 3, bravest of the brave. The term applied to Marshal Ney by his soldiers. — 11, Giant Despair. See the Pilgrim's Prog- 190 NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. ress, first part. — 12, Golgotha. See Mark xv. 22. — Sorcerer'S'- Sabbath. The witches' festival on the Brocken on May-day eve. — 11, Jlaiinting in the ring. Boswell is compared to a young knight, disporting himself in the pastimes of chivalry. — tarrying by the wine-cup. See Proverbs xxiii. 30 and the note to 28 : 2. — 30, Welshwoman. Mrs. Williams. 145: I, Doubting-castle. Giant Despair's abode, where Chris- tian and Hopeful were imprisoned and beaten. — 4, zvith frigid indifference. From the last ^ (tenth page) of the Preface to the Dictionary. — 8, By popular delusion. " Illiterate writers will at one time or another, by publick infatuation, rise into renown, who, not knowing the original import of words, will use them with col- loquial licentiousness, confound distinction and forget propriety." Preface to Dictionary (last ^ of ninth page). 146 : 6, accidental. See note to 60 : 14. — 13, Whitfield. George Whitfield (1714-70), a Methodist popular preacher, with the Wesleys from 1734 to 1741. Frequently mentioned in the Life. — 14, lives, moves, etc. See Acts xvii. 28. — 19, Clear your mind of Cant. Seethe Life, May 15, 17S3 (iv. 221). 147: 16, worthy of his hire. See Luke x. 7. — 24, Apocalyptic Bladder. Grotesque parody of the " apocalyptic vials " ; see Revelation xv,, xvi. The modern art of advertising or "puffing" often furnishes Carlyle with a subject for declamation. 148 : 3, shaggy exterior. Goldsmith said of Johnson, " He has nothing of the bear but his skin." Life, under May 28, 1768 (ii. 66). — II, Ark of the Covenant. See Exodus xxv. 10-22 ; XXX vii. 1-9. — laid hand on them, See I Chronicles xiii. g-io ; 2 Samuel \i. 6-7, — 32, on Dead Asses. In A Sentimental Journey^ vol. i. {Nampont^. 149 : 2, Daughter of Vice. See note to 44 : 8. — 4, good Samar- itan. See Luke x. 25-37, — 6, multitude of Sins. See i Peter iv. 8. — II, widows mite. See Mark xii. 41-44. — 21, Salve magna parens. " Hail, great mother," Vergil, Georgics II. 173, in apostrophe to Italy. In the original edition of Johnson's Z)/V/^/^/n ary, vol. ii. , appears among the definitions : " LiCH. n. s. [lice, Saxon.] A dead carcase ; whence . . . Lichfield, the field of the dead, a city in Staffordshire, so named from martyred Christians. Salve magna parens,'' NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. 191 Lice should be lie (Anglo-Saxon). 150 'S* Sunday, October 18, etc. Quoted by Boswell, Life, 1767 (ii. 43), from Johnson's Praye7's and Meditations. See note to 15 I 22. — 23, ' Once, indeed,' said he. These sentences are from the Life, under August 12, 1784 (iv. 373). — 31, '' Madavi, 1 beg your pardon,'' etc. This extract is an abridgment by Carlyle of a passage from Warner's Tour through the Northern Counties of England (1802), which he found in Croker v. 288, n. 3. John- son is represented as thus excusing himself to "the lady of the house " that he visited on the occasion of his last trip to Lichfield, for an unannounced absence of an entire day. The last sentence of the extract Carlyle took from Boswell's account, which is some- what different. For an American account of a visit to Lichfield and Uttoxeter, see Hawthorne's Our Old LLotne, fifth essay. 151 : 14, moonlight of tnemory. Carlyle uses the phrase in his Journal, February 8, 1835, and adds, "a pathetic phrase of Richter's." Froude, Carlyle in London, i. 17. — 22, life's fitful fever. See Macbeth iii. 2, 2-3. 152 :6, the right foot. Life, 1764 (i. 484). — 20, lady-msitors. The visitor in question was the Comtesse de Boufflers, who visited England in 1763. The story is told in the Life, under November 5> 1775 (ii- 405). — 30, A gentleman who, etc. From Recollections of Dr. Johnson, by Miss Reynolds (Croker v. 391, in his General Appendix). 153 : 8, Renny dear. Miss Frances Reynolds (1727-1807), sister of Sir Joshua. Johnson speaks of her as Renny in his letters to Mrs. Thrale. — 15, Bru?nmellean. From George Bryan Brummell (1778-1840), known as Beau Brummell. Famous dandy. He had left England in 18 16. — 21, with his king. George IIL See the Life, February, 1767 (ii. 33-42). 154 : 15, grew with his growth, etc. See Pope's Essay on Man, 135-136. 155* 7) good yeomen. See Henry V. iii. i, 25-26. — i^, John Bull. So Boswell had called him ; Tour, introduction (v. 20). — 16, Clergytnan. " Hume owned to a clergyman in the bishop- rick of Durham, that he had never read the New Testament with attention," Life, 1766 (ii. 9). — 18, Voltaire's lackey. Life, 1763 (i. 434). — 19, acerrimi ingenii, etc. " Of keenest intellect, 192 NOTES TO CARLYLE'S ESSAY. and of little learning." Life^ under November 5, 1775 (ii. 406). — 20, Rousseau. Johnson said he ought to be irajtsported ; Life, 1766 (ii. 12). — 23, milking the Bull. An old proverbial metaphor for fruitless speculation. Johnson used it of " Hume and other sceptical innovators." Life., 1763 (i. 444). — 26, UAlemberts. Jean le Rond D'Alembert (1713-84), associated with Diderot in the production of the EncyclopMie — 28, kitchen-latin. Not in the dictionaries ; a translation by Carlyle of the German Kuchen- latein, " dog-latin." — 29, Editiones Principes. First editions (of the classics). Life, October 31, 1775 (ii. 399). — Monsheer Nong- tongpaw ! Evidently meant to represent a British mispronuncia- tion of Monsieur N'eniend-pas, " Mr. Doesn't-understand." The connection with what precedes is not clear. '^S^'-'^'S^ ^^^^^'h' ^/^^^^ ^'^^'^^y^^^'' Johnson, 1709 ; Hume, 1711. — 22, 7vith the bayonet, etc. Quoted from Memoirs of Johiison, by Richard Cumberland; l^di^itr'sjohjtsoniana, p. 211. 157 : 23, Bartholomew-Fair. The Smithfield cattle-fair, orig- inally held on the eve of St. Bartholomew's Day, the day itself, and the day after. Established under Henry I.; abolished 1852. 15S • 7> ^^^ '^^^ meet. In 1769 they once called on Boswell on the same day ; Boswelliana, p. 61. — 20, tie the shoe-latchets. See Mark i. 7. THE END. lenoUsb IReaMngs tor Stubente. This collection is planned to supply English master- pieces in editions at once competently edited and inex- pensive. The aim will be to fill vacancies now existing because of subject, treatment, or price. The volumes will be of convenient size and serviceably bound. Coleridge : Prose Extracts. Selections chosen and edited with introduction and notes by Henrv A. Beers, Professor in Yale College, xxix + 148 pp. i6mo. Boards. Teachers' price, 30 cents ; postage 4 cents additional. The selections, varying in length from a paragraph to ten or twenty pages, will be mainly from Table Talk and Biographia Literaria^ but also in part from The Friend^ Notes on Shakspeare, and other writings. They have been chosen, so far as may be, to illustrate the range and variety of Coleridge's thought, and, to emphasize this purpose, have been grouped by subjects. The introduc- tion briefly summarizes the author's intellectual position and influence. De Quincey : Joan of Arc and The English Mail Coach. Edited with an introduction and notes by James Morgan Hart, Professor in Cornell University, xxvi + 138 pp. i6mo. Boards. Teachers' price, 30 cents ; postage 4 cents additional. These essays have been chosen as fairly representative of the two most notable phases of the author's work, and as at the same time attractive to the novice in literary study. The introduction sketches the leading facts of De Quincey's life, and indicates some of the prominent I English Readings for Students. features of his style. Allusions and other points of un- usual difficulty are explained in the notes. This volume and the one containing the Essays on BoswelFs JoJmsoji (see below) are used at Cornell University as foundation for elementary rhetorical study. Dryden : Select Plays. Edited with a brief introduction and notes by James W. Bright, Assistant Professor in the Johns Hopkins University. About loo pp. i6mo. \In pi^eparation.^ Aside from their representing the principal literary ac- tivity, in point of quantity, of one of the foremost English writers, Dryden's plays have a peculiar interest in having been among the first to be played upon the reopening of the theatres under Charles II. Goldsmith : Present State of Polite Learning. Edited with introduction and notes by J. M. Hart, Professor in Cornell University. About loo pp. i6mo. \In preparatioti.'\ There are many reasons, some of them obvious, for giving this essay a place in the English Readings series. One that may be mentioned is the remarkably clear insight it affords into the entire eighteenth-century way of criticising. The introduction and notes will direct the student's attention along this line of observation. Lyly : Endimion. With introduction and notes by George P. Baker, Instructor in Harvard College. i6mo, pp. cxcvi -\- 109. Lyly's plays really show him to a better advantage than does the Euphues^ by which he is chiefly remembered> and his place in English dramatic history makes it de- sirable that one at least should be easily accessible. English 'Readings for Students. Macaulay and Carlyle : Essays on Samuel Johnson. The complete essays, with introduction and notes by William Strunk, Jr., Instructor in English in Cornell University, xl-figi pp. i6mo. Boards. These parallel treatments of Croker's editing, and of the characters of Boswell and Dr. Johnson, afford an unusual opportunity for comparative study. The two essays present a constant contrast in intellectual and moral methods of criticism which cannot fail to turn the attention of students to important principles of biographi- cal writing, while equally important principles of diction are impressively illustrated in the two strongly marked styles. The essays also offer an excellent introduction to the study of the literary history of Johnson's times. Marlowe : Edward II. With the best passages from Tamburlaine the Great, and from his Poems. With brief notes and an introductory essay by Edward T. Mc- Laughlin, Professor in Yale College. Aside from the intrinsic value of Edivard II., as Mar- lowe's most important work, the play is of great interest in connection with Shakespere. The earlier chronicle drama was in Shakespere's memory as he was writing Richard II., as various passages prove, and a comparison of the two plays (sketched in the introduction) affords basis for a study in the development of the Elizabethan drama. Since Tamburlaine has really no plot and character-development, extracts that illustrate its poeti- cal quality lose nothing for lack of a context. The unobjectionable beginning of Hero and Leander is per- haps the finest narrative verse of the sixteenth century. English 'fadings for Students, Specimens of Argumentation. I. Classic. Chosen and edited by George P. Baker, Instructor in Eng:lish in Harvard College, and Non-resident Lecturer on Argumentative Composition in Wellesley College. {Iti p)-eparation.'\ Specimens of Argumentation. II. Modern. Chosen and edited by George P. Baker. i6mo. 186 pp. Boards. This compilation includes Lord Chatham's speech on the withdrawal of troops from Boston, Lord Mansfield's argument in the Evans case, the first letter of Junius, the first of Huxley's American addresses on evolution, Erskine's defence of Lord George Gordon, and an ad- dress of Beecher's in Liverpool during the cotton riots. The choice and editing has been controlled by the needs of the courses in " Forensics" in Harvard College. The earlier selections offer excellent material for practice in drawing briefs, a type of such a brief being given in the volume. The notes aim to point out the conditions under which each argument was made, the difficulties to be overcome, and wherein the power of the argument lies. It is thought that the collection, as a whole, will be found to contain available illustrations of all the main principles of argumentation, including the handling of evidence, persuasion, and scientific exposition. HENRY HOLT & CO., Publishers, New York. p RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMEf LOANPERiOD 1 12 P Books ma, be Renewedbv«llm9jfi«_ UNIV pnPAA NO. DD6, •Keiey U .n GENERAL LIBRARY- U.C. BERKELEY B00mMMS30 5Vf^<^ THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY m^ ^' k'' ■' m J- III A ,| ;::;■;;■ a ^( "^^