Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson, with a Selection from his Essay on Johnson

15 23. For the Vanity of Human Wishes, see Hales's Longer English Poems or Syle's From Milton to Tennyson. As in the case of London, the student will wish to compare Dryden's translation.

16 8–9. And this was eleven years after the London had appeared; as Boswell says, his fame was already established.

16 13. Goodman's Fields. Garrick made this theater successful.

16 15. Drury Lane Theatre. Near Drury Lane. (See note to 8 34.) Other prominent actors in this famous old theatre were Kean, the Kembles, and Mrs. Siddons.

17 13. See page 7. The story on which Irene is based is as follows:—

Mahomet the Great, first emperor of the Turks, in the year 1453 laid siege to the city of Constantinople, then possessed by the Greeks, and, after an obstinate resistance, took and sacked it. Among the many young women whom the commanders thought fit to lay hands on and present to him was one named Irene, a Greek, of incomparable beauty and such rare perfection of body and mind, that the emperor, becoming enamored of her, neglected the care of his government and empire for two whole years, and thereby so exasperated the Janizaries, that they mutinied and threatened to dethrone him. To prevent this mischief, Mustapha Bassa, a person of great credit with him, undertook to represent to him the great danger to which he lay exposed by the indulgence of his passion: he called to his remembrance the character, actions, and achievements of his predecessors, and the state of his government; and, in short, so roused him from his lethargy, that he took a horrible resolution to silence the clamors of his people by the sacrifice of this admirable creature. Accordingly, he commanded her to be dressed and adorned in the richest manner that she and her attendants could devise, and against a certain hour issued orders for the nobility and leaders of his army to attend him in the great hall of his palace. When they were all assembled, himself appeared with great pomp and magnificence, leading his captive by the hand, unconscious of guilt and ignorant of his design. With a furious and menacing look, he gave the beholders to understand that he meant to remove the cause of their discontent; but bade them first view that lady, whom he held with his left hand, and say whether any of them, possessed of a jewel so rare and precious, would for any cause forego her; to which they answered that he had great reason for his affection toward her. To this the emperor replied that he would convince them that he was yet master of himself. And having so said, presently, with one of his hands catching the fair Greek by the hair of the head, and drawing his falchion with the other, he, at one blow, struck off her head, to the great terror of them all; and having so done, he said unto them, "Now by this judge whether your emperor is able to bridle his affections or not."—Hawkins's Life of Johnson.

17 20–21. Tatler, Spectator. It is to be hoped that the reader needs no introduction to these papers or to the account of them in Macaulay's essay on Addison.

17 30. Rambler. A suitable title for a series of moral discourses? At the time of the undertaking he composed a prayer to the effect that he might in this way promote the glory of Almighty God and the salvation both of himself and others.—Prayers and Meditations, p. 9, quoted by Boswell.

17 31–32. Boswell considers it a strong confirmation of the truth of Johnson's remark that "a man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly to it," that "notwithstanding his constitutional indolence, his depression of spirits, and his labour in carrying on his Dictionary, he answered the stated calls of the press twice a week from the stores of his mind during all that time."

17 34. Richardson. Samuel Richardson. When he was a boy, the girls employed him to write love letters for them; and his novels, written in after life, also took the form of letters. He wrote Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded; Clarissa Harlowe, or the History of a Young Lady; and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (about 1750). Johnson called him "an author who has enlarged the knowledge of human nature and taught the passions to move at the command of virtue."

18 2. Young. Johnson held a high opinion of Edward Young's most famous work, Night Thoughts, and Boswell writes, "No book whatever can be recommended to young persons, with better hopes of seasoning their minds with vital religion, than Young's Night Thoughts."—Hartley. David Hartley, prominent as a psychologist, and as a physician benevolent and studious. For intimate friends he chose such men as Warburton and Young.

18 3. Dodington. A member of Parliament who patronized men of letters and was complimented by Young and Fielding.

18 7. Frederic. When Frederick, Prince of Wales, became the center of the opposition to Walpole, in 1737, among the leaders of his political friends, called "the Leicester House Party,"—at that time Leicester House was the residence of the Prince of Wales,—were Chesterfield, William Pitt, and Bubb Dodington.

18 25. In regard to the use of antiquated and hard words, for which Johnson was censured, he says in Idler No. 90, "He that thinks with more extent than another, will want words of larger meaning."

18 30–32. brilliancy … eloquence … humour. Johnson wrote many of these discourses so hastily, says Boswell, that he did not even read them over before they were printed. Boswell continues: "Sir Joshua Reynolds once asked him by what means he had attained his extraordinary accuracy and flow of language. He told him, that he had early laid it down as a fixed rule to do his best on every occasion, and in every company: to impart whatever he knew in the most forcible language he could put it in; and that by constant practice, and never suffering any careless expressions to escape him, or attempting to deliver his thoughts without arranging them in the clearest manner, it became habitual to him." One man who knew Johnson intimately observed "that he always talked as if he was talking upon oath."

18 32–19 10. Cf. Johnson's comment: "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison."—Boswell, 1750.

19 1–2. Sir Roger, etc. These two sets of allusions offer a good excuse for handling complete editions of the Spectator and the Rambler.

19 21. the Gunnings. "The beautiful Misses Gunning," two sisters, were born in Ireland. They went to London in 1751, were continually followed by crowds, and were called "the handsomest women alive."—Lady Mary. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Let one of the encyclopædias introduce you to this relative of Fielding who laughed at Pope when he made love to her, and whose wit had full play in the brilliant letters from Constantinople which added greatly to her reputation as an independent thinker.

19 23–24. the Monthly Review. This Whig periodical would not appeal to Johnson as did its rival, the Critical Review. It was the Monthly that Goldsmith did hack work for. Smollett wrote for the other. See Irving's Life of Goldsmith, Chapter VII.

19 31. It was published in 1755, price £4 10s., bound.

20 17. The letter, which needs no comment, is as follows:

February 7, 1755.

To the Right Honourable the Earl of Chesterfield.

My Lord,

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

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

Seven years, my Lord, have now 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 verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a Patron before.

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

Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, 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, 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 Publick should consider me as owing that to a Patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself.

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

My Lord,

Your Lordship's most humble,

Most obedient servant,

Sam. Johnson.

20 24. Horne Tooke. A name assumed by John Horne, a politician and philologist whose career is briefly outlined in The Century Dictionary. The passage which so moved him follows.

In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the authour, and the world is little solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it condemns; yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it that the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academick bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow. It may repress the triumph of malignant criticism to observe, that if our language is not here fully displayed, I have only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the aggregated knowledge, and co-operating diligence of the Italian academicians, did not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the embodied criticks of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its oeconomy, and give their second edition another form, I may surely be contented without the praise of perfection, which, if I could obtain, in this gloom of solitude, what would it avail me? I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.

This extract is taken from the fourth edition, London, MDCCLXXIII, the last to receive Johnson's corrections. If you possibly can get the opportunity, turn these volumes over enough to find a few of the whimsical definitions, such, for example, as that of lexicographer, according to Johnson "a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge." Other words worth looking up are excise, oats, and networks.

21 6. Junius and Skinner. Johnson frankly admitted that for etymologies he turned to the shelf which contained the etymological dictionaries of these seventeenth-century students of the Teutonic languages. This phase of dictionary making was not considered so deeply then as it is now.

21 13. spunging-houses. Johnson's Dictionary says: "Spunging-house. A house to which debtors are taken before commitment to prison, where the bailiffs sponge upon them, or riot at their cost."

21 26. Jenyns. This writer, who, according to Boswell, "could very happily play with a light subject," ventured so far beyond his depth that it was easy for Johnson to expose him.

22 10. Rasselas. Had Johnson written nothing else, says Boswell, Rasselas "would have rendered his name immortal in the world of literature.... It has been translated into most, if not all, of the modern languages."

22 12. Miss Lydia Languish. Of course plays are not necessarily written to be read, but Sheridan's well-known comedy, The Rivals, is decidedly readable. Every one should be familiar with Miss Languish and Mrs. Malaprop.

23 8. Bruce. The Dictionary of National Biography says that James Bruce—whose Travels to Discover the Sources of the Nile, five volumes, appeared in 1790—"will always remain the poet, and his work the epic, of African travel."

23 13. Mrs. Lennox. A woman whose literary efforts Johnson encouraged so much as he did Mrs. Lennox's is certainly worth looking up in the index to Boswell's Johnson.—Mrs. Sheridan, the dramatist's mother, gave Johnson many an entertaining evening in her home. She and her son entered heartily into the lively, stimulating conversations he loved.

23 25. Hector … Aristotle. The sacking of Troy is generally assigned to the twelfth century B.C. Aristotle lived eight centuries later.—Julio Romano. An Italian painter of the fifteenth century.

24 5. the Lord Privy Seal. Some documents require only the privy seal; others must have the great seal too. For Johnson's admission that the printer was wise in striking out the reference alluded to, see the index to Boswell's Johnson, under Gower.

24 14. Oxford. By recalling what Macaulay said in the early part of the essay (10 26, 27) about Oxford, and by bearing in mind what House [of Stuart? of Hanover?] George the Third belonged to, one sees point to "was becoming loyal."

24 14–18. Study these four short sentences in connection with the preceding sentence beginning "George the Third." To what extent are they a repetition? To what extent an explanation?

24 22. accepted. When, in answer to Johnson's question to Lord Bute, "Pray, my Lord, what am I expected to do for this pension?" he received the ready reply, "It is not given you for anything you are to do, but for what you have done," he hesitated no longer.

Three hundred a year was a large sum in Johnson's eyes at that time. Whether he wrote less than he would have written without it may be questioned, says Mr. Hill, but he adds that probably "without the pension he would not have lived to write the second greatest of his works—the Lives of the Poets."

25 19. a ghost … Cock Lane. If you will read Boswell's account of the affair, you will probably conclude that Johnson was not quite so "weak" as Macaulay implies.

25 26. Churchill. One of the reigning wits of the day, Boswell says.

26 3. The preface. Other critics speak with more enthusiasm of the good sense and the clear expression of the preface, and find that these qualities are not altogether lacking in the notes.

26 8. Wilhelm Meister. The hero of Goethe's novel of the same name. You may have read this passage on Hamlet in Rolfe's edition (p. 14), quoted from Furness's Hamlet, Vol. II, pp. 272 ff. Sprague also quotes it in his edition, p. 13.

26 26. Ben. The eighteenth-century Johnson has been followed by the nineteenth-century critics in putting a high estimate on the Jonson who wrote Every Man in His Humor. We are told that Shakspere took one of the parts in this play, acted in 1598. If you are not satisfied with the account in The Century Dictionary, or with any encyclopædia article, see The English Poets, edited by T. H. Ward, Vol. II (The Macmillan Company).

26 33–34. Æschylus, Euripides, Sophocles. Three great contemporary Greek tragedians.

27 3. Fletcher. Point out why an editor of Shakspere's plays should be familiar with the work of this group of Elizabethan dramatists.

27 11. Royal Academy. "His Majesty having the preceding year [1768] instituted the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Johnson had won the honour of being appointed Professor in Ancient Literature."—Boswell. Goldsmith was Professor in Ancient History in the same institution, and Boswell was Secretary for Foreign Correspondence. Look in The Century Dictionary under academy, the third meaning, and recall whatever you may have heard or read about the French Academy.

27 12. the King. "His Majesty expressed a desire to have the literary biography of this country ably executed, and proposed to Dr. Johnson to undertake it."—Boswell. Read Boswell's account of the interview. In consulting the index look under George III.

27 22. colloquial talents. Madame d'Arblay once said that Johnson had about him more "fun, and comical humour, and love of nonsense" than almost anybody else she ever saw.

28 23. Goldsmith. Macaulay's article on Goldsmith in The Encyclopædia Britannica is short, and so thoroughly readable that there is no excuse for not being familiar with it. Boswell is continually giving interesting glimpses of Dr. Oliver Goldsmith, and by taking advantage of the index in the Life of Johnson one may in half an hour learn a great deal about this remarkable man. According to Boswell, "he had sagacity enough to cultivate assiduously the acquaintance of Johnson, and his faculties were gradually enlarged by the contemplation of such a model."

28 24. Reynolds. We can learn from short articles about Sir Joshua's career, but the index to Boswell's Johnson will introduce us to the good times the great portrait painter had with the great conversationalist whom we are studying. Reynolds was the first proposer of the Club, and "there seems to have been hardly a day," says Robina Napier, "when these friends did not meet in the painting room or in general society." Ruskin says, "Titian paints nobler pictures and Vandyke had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of human heart and temper." The business of his art "was not to criticise, but to observe," and for this purpose the hours he spent at the Club might be as profitable as those spent in his painting room. It will be interesting to make a list of some of the most notable "subjects" Reynolds painted.—Burke. Be sure to read Boswell's account of the famous Round Robin. It will make you feel better acquainted with Burke, Johnson, Reynolds, and Goldsmith. The student will find valuable material in Professor Lamont's edition of Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America, published by Ginn & Company.

28 25. Gibbon. You noticed on the Round Robin the autograph of the author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?

28 26. Jones. Sir William Henry Rich Jones was "the first English scholar to master Sanskrit, and to recognize its importance for comparative philology," says The Century Dictionary.

29 9. Johnson's Club. The Club still flourishes. Both Scott and Macaulay belonged to it.

29 14. James Boswell. "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 individual, at whose cost we now enjoy ourselves; perhaps 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 anywhere exists; his recompense in solid 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."

So Carlyle writes of the man; the book, he says, is "beyond any other product of the eighteenth century"; it draws aside the curtains of the Past and gives us a picture which changeful Time cannot harm or hide. The picture charms generation after generation because it is true. "It is not speaking with exaggeration, but with strict measured sobriety, to say that this Book of Boswell's will give us more real insight into the History of England during those days than twenty other Books, falsely entitled 'Histories,' which take to themselves that special aim.... 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 terrestrial existence, its outward environment, its inward principle; how and what it was; whence it proceeded, whither it was tending....

"Hence, indeed, comes it that History, which should be 'the essence of innumerable Biographies,' will tell us, question it as we like, less than one genuine Biography may do, pleasantly and of its own accord!"

Mr. Leslie Stephen says that "Macaulay's graphic description of his absurdities, and Carlyle's more penetrating appreciation of his higher qualities, contain all that can be said"; but the more recent testimony of Dr. George B. Hill, in Dr. Johnson, His Friends and His Critics, should count for something. Dr. Hill points out that while Macaulay grants Boswell immortality he refuses him greatness, and calls attention to what he considers elements of greatness. In regard to the accuracy of a biographer who would "run half over London, in order to fix a date correctly," he says: "That love, I might almost say that passion for accuracy, that distinguished Boswell in so high a degree does not belong to a mind that is either mean or feeble. Mean minds are indifferent to truth, and feeble minds can see no importance in a date."

29 27. Wilkes. John Wilkes, a notorious politician, was imprisoned for writing an article in which he attacked George the Third. The liberty of the press was involved and Wilkes was released, much to the delight of the people. For a brief summary of the Bill of Rights, see Brewer's Historic Note-book or A Handbook of English Political History, by Acland and Ransome.