Deformities of Samuel Johnson, Selected from His Works

'We are by our occupations, education, and habits of life, divided almost into different species, who regard one another for the most part with scorn and malignity100.' The Doctor is himself a proof, that a man may look upon almost all of his own profession with scorn and malignity: So that between his precept and his practice, the world seems bad enough. But I hope every heart revolts at this gross insult on the characters of mankind. He brings as an instance the aversion which subsists between soldiers and sailors. There no doubt have been jealousies and bloodshed between these two classes of men, but the same accidents fall out more frequently between soldiers themselves. The scorn and malignity of admirals seldom affect any line of service but their own. His captain of foot101, who saw no danger in a sea-fight was a fool, and just such a specimen of English officers, as the Doctor himself is of English travellers. Our repulse at Carthagena was not owing to an antipathy between the common men. Our late victory at Savannah proves with what ardour they can unite. The Doctor has insulted almost every order of society.

Coblers with coblers smoke away the night,Even players in the common cause, unite.Authors alone with more than mortal rage,Eternal war with brother authors wage102.

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

In every point of view this maxim is 'the baseless fabrick of a vision.' And what had so far obumbrated the Rambler's powers of ratiocination, it is not easy to guess. We sometimes feel it impossible to esteem even our benefactor. 'I have received obligations (said Chatterton) without being obliged.' And of consequence, his benefactors had forfeited his esteem. The father of British literature has in forty other places contradicted his own words. He has proved that esteem is involuntary, and that benefits do not always procure it.

The Doctor says, 'That Cowley having, when very young, read Spenser, became irrecoverably a poet103.' And he adds a remark that shows his good sense: 'Such are the accidents which, sometimes remembered, and sometimes perhaps forgotten, PRODUCE that particular designation of mind and propensity for some certain science or employment, which is commonly called genius. The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction. The great painter of the present age had the first fondness for his art excited by a perusal of Richardson's treatise.' This drawling definition contradicts common sense. Does the Doctor mean that Cowley would have become a painter by perusing Richardson? or that Reynolds would have become a poet by perusing Spenser? This is the clear inference from his words, and its absurdity is 'too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation104.' At this rate Garrick might have eclipsed Newton, and Voltaire defeated Frederick. Plato possessed 'a mind of large general powers.' He read Homer. He wrote verses, and he found that he could not be a poet. The Doctor himself has 'large general powers;' but he could never have been made a decent dancing master. Marcel might have broke his heart, before his pupil had acquired three steps of a minuet. In his dictionary the Doctor, without a word of accidental determination, defines genius to be 'disposition of nature, by which any one is qualified for some peculiar employment.' And here I cannot help adding, that 'the great painter' has by stepping out of his own line, discovered the narrowness of even a great man's knowledge. He affirms105, That scarce a poet from Homer down to Dryden ever felt his fire diminished merely by his advance in years. There is nothing more absurd, says Cicero, than what we hear asserted by some of the philosophers. Even in painting, the President's own profession, that rule does not hold. Cellini tells us, that Michael Angelo's genius decayed with years; and he speaks of it as common to all artists. His notion was perhaps grafted on an opinion of the Doctor's about the durability of Waller's genius106. But Waller was a feeble poet; he never had a genius, so that we need not wonder he never lost it. All his verses are hardly worth one of Dr Johnson's imitations of Juvenal.

Rowe (the famous tragic poet) 'seldom moves either pity or terror107.' Paradise Lost is a work which 'the reader admires, and lays down, and forgets to take up again108,' But Rowe's Lucan, which is very little read, the Doctor pronounces to be 'one of the greatest productions of English poetry.' Dr Johnson's sycophants have asserted, that 'in the walks of criticism and biography he has long been without a rival.' And they are no doubt willing to support their idol in his infamous assertion, that Swift 'excites neither surprise nor admiration109.' The Doctor's disregard for the unanimous sentiments of mankind often excites surprize, but never admiration. Let us here apply his own observation, that 'there is often found in commentaries a spontaneous train of invective and contempt, more eager and venemous than is vented by the most furious controvertist in politics, against whom he is hired to defame110.' We may illustrate the Rambler's remark by his own example: 'Theobald, a man of narrow comprehension, and small acquisitions, with no native and intrinsick splendour of genius, with little of the artificial light of learning – his contemptible ostentation I have frequently concealed111.' The definer of a fiddlestick proceeds thus: 'I have in some places shewn him, as he would have shewn himself for the reader's diversion, that the inflated emptiness of some notes may justify or excuse the contraction of the rest.' – The advocate for tenderness and decorum goes on to tell us, that 'Theobald, thus weak and ignorant, thus mean and FAITHLESS, thus petulant and ostentatious, by the good luck of having Pope for his enemy, has escaped, and escaped alone with reputation from this undertaking. So easily is he praised whom no man can envy112.' How does it appear that Theobald was weak and ignorant? The Doctor himself had in the preceding page told us, that 'he (Theobald) collated the antient copies, and rectified many errors.' This assertion our author, with his wonted consistency, has flatly contradicted in the very next line. 'What little he (Theobald) did was commonly right.' Has the Doctor adduced, or has he attempted to adduce evidence, that Theobald was mean and faithless, or what provocation has he to load this man's memory with such injurious epithets? His burst of vulgarity can reflect disgrace on nobody but himself. It is evident, tho' he thinks proper to deny it, that he considered Theobald as an object of envy; yet he is obliged to confess that Theobald 'escaped, and escaped alone, with reputation,' from the talk of amending Shakespeare. In assigning a reason for this applause of Theobald, Dr Johnson pays a very poor compliment to the penetration of the public, for surely to combat a writer of so much merit and popularity as Pope, was not the plainest road to eminence in the literary world.

'In his (Shakespeare's) tragic scenes there is always something wanting' – NO113– 'In his comic scenes he is seldom very successful, when he engages his characters in reciprocations of smartness, and contests of sarcasms; their ideas are commonly gross, and their pleasantry licentious.' This accusation is cruel and unjust, as all the world knows already. But a great part of that preface is an incoherent jumble of reproach and panegyrick114. If any thing can be yet more faulty than what we have just now seen, it is what follows: 'Whenever he (Shakespeare) solicits his invention, or strains his faculties115, the offspring of his throes is tumour (i. e. puffy grandeur116), meanness, tediousness, and obscurity. His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak.' The set speeches (as the Doctor elegantly terms them) of Petruchio, of Jacques, of Wolsey, and of Hamlet, are perhaps neither cold nor weak. The conclusion of this period is worthy of such a beginning; he mentions certain attempts from which Shakespeare 'seldom escapes without the pity or resentment of his reader.' The Doctor himself is an object of pity. Shakespeare has been in his grave near two centuries – His life was innocent – His writings are immortal. To feel resentment against so great a man because his works are not every where equal, is an idea highly becoming the generosity of Dr Johnson.

What 'truth, moral or political,' is promoted by telling us, that, when Thomson came to London, his first want was a pair of shoes; that Pope 'wore a kind of fur doublet, under a shirt of very coarse warm linen, with fine sleeves117;' and a long string of such tiresome and disgusting trifles, which make his narrative seem ridiculous. Had Dr Johnson been Pope's apothecary, we would certainly have heard of the frequency of his pulse, the colour of his water, and the quantity of his stools.

'Though Pope seemed angry when a dram was offered him, he did not forbear to drink it118.' And who the Devil cares whether he did or not? The Doctor needed hardly to have told us, that 'his petty peculiarities were communicated by a female domestic;' for no gentleman would have confessed that they came within the reach of his observation.

The truly illustrious author of the Rambler, has exerted his venemous eloquence, through several pages, in order to convince us, that 'never were penury of knowledge and vulgarity of sentiment so happily disguised,' as in Pope's Essay on Man. For this purpose, the Doctor celebrates the character of Crousaz, whose intentions 'were always right, his opinions were solid, and his religion pure119.' In opposition to such authorities, let us hear the great and immortal citizen of Geneva.

'M. de Crousaz has lately given us a refutation of the ethic epistles of Mr Pope, which I have read; but it did not please me. I will not take upon me to say, which of these two authors is in the right; but I am persuaded, that the book of the former will never excite the reader to do any one virtuous action, whereas our zeal for every thing great and good is awakened by that of Pope120.'

The Essay on Man, he says, 'affords an egregious instance of the predominance of genius, the dazzling splendour of imagery, and the seductive powers of eloquence. The reader feels his mind full, though he learns NOTHING; and when he meets it in its new array, no longer knows the talk of his mother, and his nurse121.' If the conversations of Dr Johnson's mother and his nurse were equal to Mr Pope's verses, it is a pity the Doctor had not preserved them. He could hardly have spent his time so well. And it is a wonder that with so many rare opportunities of improvement, the Doctor has never yet eclipsed his nurse. Voltaire pronounces Pope's Essay to be the finest didactick poem in the world, and he would no doubt have replied to the Doctor's objections in that tone of contempt with which the Doctor replied to some of his – 'These are the petty cavils of petty minds122.'

In the Essay on Man 'so little was any evil tendency discovered, that, as innocence is unsuspicious, many read it for a manual of piety123;' – and will continue to read it, when the cavils of Dr Johnson are forgotten or despised.

'He (Pope) nursed in his mind a foolish disesteem of Kings.' And again, 'He gratified that ambitious petulance with which he affected to insult the great124.'

Dr Johnson himself is by no means remarkable for his respect to the great. In the preface to his folio Dictionary, he tells us, that it was written 'without any patronage of the great,' which is a mistake; for he had published a pamphlet, some years before, wherein he acknowledges, that Chesterfield had patronized him; and why the Doctor should retract his own words, it is hard to say; for Chesterfield continued his friend to the last; and such a man was very likely the strongest spoke in the Doctor's wheel. But his Lordship is now dead, and the Doctor is always and eminently grateful.

'It has been maintained by some, who love to talk of what they do not know, that pastoral is the most antient poetry.' But in the next period, 'pastoral poetry was the first employment of the human imagination125.' The Doctor, therefore, by his own account, is one of those, who love to talk of (and what is yet worse, to assert) what they do not know. In North America, the natives have no conception of pastoral life among themselves, and their poetry, such as it is, hath no relation to that state of society.

Pastoral poetry 'is generally pleasing, because it entertains the mind with representations of scenes, familiar to almost every imagination, and of which all can equally judge whether they are well described, or not126.'

This period is so closely interwoven with nonsense, that it will take some pains to disentangle it. Rural scenes are not familiar to almost every imagination. In England half the people are shut up in large towns, and such is the gross ignorance of some of them, that an old woman in London once asked, whether potatoes grew on trees. Neither is every man an equal judge even of what is familiar to him. Observe how the Rambler confounds the distinction between all, and almost every. The whole number is in the same stile.

'At this time a long course of opposition to Sir Robert Walpole had filled the nation with clamours for liberty, of which no man felt the want, and with care for liberty which was not in danger127.'

No man was more violent than Dr Johnson in abusing Walpole. We have already seen some of those political definitions, which at this hour deform the Doctor's Dictionary. His late zeal for government could arise from self interest only. And to take his own words, he comes under suspicion as a wretch hired to vindicate the late measures of the Court128. He accuses Milton as a tool of authority, as a forger hired to assassinate the memory of Charles I. These charges came with a very bad grace from the Rambler. They are long since refuted in a separate publication, and yet they will be reprinted in every future edition of his book.

Will any man be the wiser, the better, or the merrier, by reading what follows – 'Lyttleton was his (Shenstone's) neighbour, and his rival, whose empire, spacious and opulent, looked with disdain on the petty state that appeared behind it. For a while the inhabitants of Hagley affected to tell their acquaintance of the little fellow that was trying to make himself admired; but when by degrees the Leasowes forced themselves into notice, they took care to defeat the curiosity which they could not suppress, by conducting their visitants perversely to inconvenient points of view, and introducing them at the wrong end of a walk to detect a deception; injuries of which Shenstone would heavily complain129.' The paragraph closes with a deep observation.

As the Doctor's own associates130 have lamented the existence of this beautiful and important passage, I have only to say, that Poor Lyttleton (as the Doctor calls him) patronized Fielding, and that the Rambler patronizes William Shaw: That his Lordship was an elegant writer: That he did not adopt Johnson's new words: That Lexiphanes was dedicated to him: That he was a great and an amiable man: And that he is dead.

With all his affectation of hard words, the Doctor becomes at once intelligible when he wishes to reprobate a rival genius, or insult the ashes of a benefactor. In defiance of Addison, and a thousand other shallow fellows, he asserts that Milton 'both in prose and verse had formed his stile by a perverse and pedantick principle131.'

Speaking of Mr Walmsley, he says, 'At this man's table I enjoyed many chearful and agreeable hours, with companions such as are not often to be found. – I am not able to name a man of equal knowledge. He never received my notions with contempt. – He was one of the first friends whom literature procured me, – and I hope that at least my gratitude made me worthy of his notice. It may be doubted whether a day now passes, in which I have not some advantage from his friendship132.' But then, 'He was a Whig with ALL the virulence and malevolence of his party.' This is a most beautiful conclusion; and quite in the Doctor's stile. His accusation is incredible. A monster, such as he draws here, can seldom deform existence.

We are told that at St. Andrews Cardinal Beaton 'was murdered by the ruffians of Reformation133.' And it seems to be the fashion of the day, to censure that action. Yet it is allowed on all hands that Wishart's doctrine, in spite of its incomprehensibilities, was better than Popery – that Beaton, a profligate usurping Priest, had committed every human vice – that, without civil authority, he dragged our Apostle to the stake – and that his avowed design was to expell or exterminate the whole Protestant party. Had the Cardinal been permitted to complete his plan, we durst not at this day have disputed, 'Whether it is better to worship a piece of rotten wood134, or throw it in the fire?' It is therefore evident that to kill this tyrant was highly proper and laudable. We may just as well censure the centurion who slew Caligula. When a philosopher, who truly deserves that title, was once in conversation reprobating Melvil, he was interrupted by this, simple question, Whether if his own antagonist had conducted him to the stake, he would not have pardoned a pupil for avenging his blood? 'I would most certainly,' he replied, and such must be the real sentiments of all men, whatever they may chuse to print. When we attempt to hide the feelings of nature, that we may support a favourite system, we never fail to become ridiculous. In this age and nation, if a magistrate shall rise above the law; if he rob us of life with the most barbarous exulation; if his guilt equal whatever history hath recorded; if he want nothing but the purple and the legions to rival Domitian, the voice of nature will be heard. The brave will reject such unmanly, such fatal refinements of speculation. Like Hambden and Melvil, they will stand forth in defence of themselves, and their posterity. They will relieve their fellow citizens from temporal perdition. They will drive insolence and injustice from the seat of power. They will exult in danger, and rush to revenge or death. They will plunge their swords in the heart of their oppressor; or they will teach him, like Charles, to atone upon the scaffold for the tears and the blood of his people; and while in the eyes of their countrymen, they read their glory135, they will perhaps reflect with a smile, that some slavish pedant, some pensioned traitor to the rights of mankind, is one day to mark them out as objects of public detestation136.

'The theatre, when it is under any other direction, is peopled by such characters as were never seen, conversing in a language which was never heard, upon topics which will never arise in the commerce of mankind. – Upon every other stage the universal agent is love, by whose power all good and evil is distributed, and every action quickened or retarded. To bring a lover, a lady and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in contradictory obligations, perplex them with oppositions of interest, and harrass them with violence of desires inconsistent with each other; to make them meet in rapture, and part in agony; to fill their mouths with hyperbolical joy, and outrageous sorrow; to distress them as nothing human ever was distressed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered, is the business of a modern dramatist. For this probability is violated, life is misrepresented, and language is depraved137.' The weakest of Dr Johnson's admirers will blush in reading this passage. He very fairly denies every degree of merit, to every dramatic writer, of every age or nation, Shakespeare alone excepted. What can be more ridiculous than this?

'Every man finds his mind more strongly seized by the tragedies of Shakespeare than of any other writer; others please us by particular speeches, but he always makes us anxious for the event, by exciting restless and unquenchable138 curiosity, and compelling him that reads his work to read it through139.' But the Doctor overthrows all this within a few pages, for Shakespeare has 'perhaps not one play, which, if it were now exhibited as the work of a cotemporary writer, would be heard to the conclusion140.' The Rambler cannot always suppress his thorough contempt for the taste of the public. He no doubt laughs internally at their folly in admiring him.

I proceed to the Doctor's English Dictionary, and shall begin with quoting the remarks already made by a judicious friend, on this subject.

'Among the many foibles of the human race, we may justly reckon this to be one, that when they have once got any thing really useful, they apply it in all cases, proper or improper, till at last they make it quite ridiculous. Nothing can possibly be more useful than a just and accurate definition, because by this only we are able to distinguish one thing from another. It is obvious, however, that in definitions we ought always to define a thing less known, by one which is more so, and those things which are known to every body, neither can be defined, nor ought we to attempt a definition of them at all; because we must either explain them by themselves, or by something less known than themselves, both of which give our definitions the most ridiculous air imaginable.

'A certain right reverend gentleman, not many miles from Edinburgh, and whom, out of my great regard for the cloth, I put in the first place, gave the following definition of a thief. "A thief," says he, "my friends, is a man of a thievish disposition." Now though this definition is somewhat imperfect, for a thief also exerts that thievish disposition which lurks in his breast, I intend to take it for my model, on account of its great conformity to many of the definitions given by the most celebrated authors. – I remember to have seen in one of the Reviews a definition of Nature, which began in the following manner. "Nature is that innate celestial fire." – The rest has in truth escaped my memory, though I remember the Reviewers indecently compared it to the following lines, which they say were a description of a dog-fish.

'And his evacuationsWere made a parte post.A parte post! these words so hardIn Latin though I speak 'em,Their meaning in plain English is,He made pure Album Græcum.

'This definition rather goes a step beyond that of the clergyman, as it explains the words a parte post by Album Græcum, which are more obscure than the former, and neither of which, out of my great regard to decency, I choose to translate. – Whether Dr Johnson composed his dictionary, after hearing the above-mentioned clergyman's sermon, or not, I cannot tell, but he seems very much to have taken him for his model, even though the said clergyman was a Presbyterian, and Dr Johnson has an aversion at Presbyterians. Thus, when he tells us, that short is not long, and that long is not short, he certainly might as well have told us that a thief is a man of a thievish disposition. I am surprised indeed how the intellects of a human creature could be obscured by pedantry, and the love of words, to such a degree, as to insert this distinction in a book, pretended to be written for the instruction and benefit of society. Much more am I surprised how the authors of all dictionaries of the English language have followed the same ridiculous plan, as if they had positively intended to make their books as little valuable as possible. Nay, I am almost tempted to think, that the readers have a natural inclination to peruse nonsense, and cannot be satisfied without a considerable quantity of that ingredient in every book which falls into their hands. Long and short are terms merely relative, and which every body knows; to explain them therefore by one another, is to explain them by themselves. But besides this ridiculous way of explaining a thing by itself, pedants, of whom we may justly reckon Dr Johnson the Prince, have fallen upon a most ingenious method of explaining the English by the Latin, or some other language still further beyond the reach of vulgar ken. Thus, when Dr Johnson defines fire, he tells us it is the igneous element. To water (the verb) he tells us, is to irrigate, by which no doubt we are greatly edified. To do is to practise, and to practise is to do, &c.