Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

Samuel Johnson

Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

INTRODUCTION

Rasselas was written by Samuel Johnson in the year 1759, when his age was fifty.  He had written his London in 1738; his Vanity of Human Wishes in 1740; his Rambler between March, 1750, and March, 1752.  In 1755 his Dictionary had appeared, and Dublin, by giving him its honorary LL.D., had enabled his friends to call him “Doctor” Johnson.  His friends were many, and his honour among men was great.  He owed them to his union of intellectual power with unflinching probity.  But he had worked hard, battling against the wolf without, and the black dog within—poverty and hypochondria.  He was still poor, though his personal wants did not exceed a hundred pounds a year.  His wife had been seven years dead, and he missed her sorely.  His old mother, who lived to the age of ninety, died poor in January of this year, 1759.  In her old age, Johnson had sought to help her from his earnings.  At her death there were some little debts, and there were costs of burial.  That he might earn enough to pay them he wrote Rasselas.

Rasselas was written in the evenings of one week, and sent to press while being written.  Johnson earned by it a hundred pounds, with twenty-five pounds more for a second edition.  It was published in March or April; Johnson never read it after it had been published until more than twenty years afterwards.  Then, finding it in a chaise with Boswell, he took it up and read it eagerly.

This is one of Johnson’s letters to his mother, written after he knew that her last illness had come upon her.  It is dated about ten days before her death.  The “Miss” referred to in it was a faithful friend.  “Miss” was his home name for an affectionate step-daughter, Lucy Porter:—

“Honoured Madam,—

“The account which Miss gives me of your health pierces my heart.  God comfort and preserve you, and save you, for the sake of Jesus Christ.

“I would have Miss read to you from time to time the Passion of our Saviour; and sometimes the sentences in the Communion Service beginning—’Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’

“I have just now read a physical book which inclines me to think that a strong infusion of the bark would do you good.  Do, dear mother, try it.

“Pray, send me your blessing, and forgive all that I have done amiss to you.  And whatever you would have done, and what debts you would have paid first, or anything else that you would direct, let Miss put it down; I shall endeavour to obey you.

“I have got twelve guineas to send you” [six were borrowed.  There was a note in Johnson’s Diary of six guineas repaid to Allen, the printer, who had lent them when he wanted to send money to his dying mother], “but unhappily am at a loss how to send it to-night.  If I cannot send it to-night, it will come by the next post.

“Pray, do not omit anything mentioned in this letter.  God bless you for ever and ever.

“I am,“Your dutiful Son,“Sam. Johnson.

“Jan. 13, 1759.”

That is the personal side of the tale of Rasselas.  In that way Johnson suddenly, on urgent pressure, carried out a design that had been in his mind.  The success of Eastern tales, written as a form of moral essay, in the Rambler and Adventurer, upon suggestion, no doubt, of Addison’s Vision of Mirza, had prompted him to express his view of life more fully than in essay form by way of Oriental apologue; and his early work on Father Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia, caused him to choose Abyssinia for the land in which to lay his fable.

But Johnson’s Rasselas has also a close relation to the time when it was written, as Johnson himself had to the time in which he lived.  From the beginning of the century—and especially, in England, since the beginning of the reign of George the Second—there had been a growing sense of the ills of life, associated in some minds with doubt whether there could be a just God ruling this unhappy world.  Hard problems of humanity pressed more and more on earnest minds.  The feeling expressed in Johnson’s Vanity of Human Wishes had deepened everywhere by the year 1759.  This has intense expression in Rasselas, where all the joys of life, without active use of the energies of life, can give no joy; and where all uses of the energies of men are for the attainment of ideals worthless or delusive.  This life was to Johnson, and to almost all the earnest thinkers of his time, unhappy in itself—a school-house where the rod was ever active.  But in its unhappiness Johnson found no power that could overthrow his faith.  To him this world was but a place of education for the happiness that would be to the faithful in the world to come.  There was a great dread for him in the question, Who shall be found faithful?  But there was no doubt in his mind that the happiness of man is to be found only beyond the grave.  This was a feeling spread through Europe in the darkness gathering before the outburst of the storm of the great French Revolution.  Even Gray, in his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, regarded Eton boys at their sports as “little victims,” unconscious of the doom of miseries awaiting them in life.  Thus Johnson’s Rasselas is a book doubly typical.  We have in it the spirit of the writer when it best expressed the spirit of his time.

H. M.

CHAPTER I

DESCRIPTION OF A PALACE IN A VALLEY

Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

Rasselas was the fourth son of the mighty Emperor in whose dominions the father of waters begins his course—whose bounty pours down the streams of plenty, and scatters over the world the harvests of Egypt.

According to the custom which has descended from age to age among the monarchs of the torrid zone, Rasselas was confined in a private palace, with the other sons and daughters of Abyssinian royalty, till the order of succession should call him to the throne.

The place which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had destined for the residence of the Abyssinian princes was a spacious valley in the kingdom of Amhara, surrounded on every side by mountains, of which the summits overhang the middle part.  The only passage by which it could be entered was a cavern that passed under a rock, of which it had long been disputed whether it was the work of nature or of human industry.  The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick wood, and the mouth which opened into the valley was closed with gates of iron, forged by the artificers of ancient days, so massive that no man, without the help of engines, could open or shut them.

From the mountains on every side rivulets descended that filled all the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the middle, inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every fowl whom nature has taught to dip the wing in water.  This lake discharged its superfluities by a stream, which entered a dark cleft of the mountain on the northern side, and fell with dreadful noise from precipice to precipice till it was heard no more.

The sides of the mountains were covered with trees, the banks of the brooks were diversified with flowers; every blast shook spices from the rocks, and every month dropped fruits upon the ground.  All animals that bite the grass or browse the shrubs, whether wild or tame, wandered in this extensive circuit, secured from beasts of prey by the mountains which confined them.  On one part were flocks and herds feeding in the pastures, on another all the beasts of chase frisking in the lawns, the sprightly kid was bounding on the rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in the trees, and the solemn elephant reposing in the shade.  All the diversities of the world were brought together, the blessings of nature were collected, and its evils extracted and excluded.

The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants with all the necessaries of life, and all delights and superfluities were added at the annual visit which the Emperor paid his children, when the iron gate was opened to the sound of music, and during eight days every one that resided in the valley was required to propose whatever might contribute to make seclusion pleasant, to fill up the vacancies of attention, and lessen the tediousness of time.  Every desire was immediately granted.  All the artificers of pleasure were called to gladden the festivity; the musicians exerted the power of harmony, and the dancers showed their activity before the princes, in hopes that they should pass their lives in blissful captivity, to which those only were admitted whose performance was thought able to add novelty to luxury.  Such was the appearance of security and delight which this retirement afforded, that they to whom it was new always desired that it might be perpetual; and as those on whom the iron gate had once closed were never suffered to return, the effect of longer experience could not be known.  Thus every year produced new scenes of delight, and new competitors for imprisonment.

The palace stood on an eminence, raised about thirty paces above the surface of the lake.  It was divided into many squares or courts, built with greater or less magnificence according to the rank of those for whom they were designed.  The roofs were turned into arches of massive stone, joined by a cement that grew harder by time, and the building stood from century to century, deriding the solstitial rains and equinoctial hurricanes, without need of reparation.

This house, which was so large as to be fully known to none but some ancient officers, who successively inherited the secrets of the place, was built as if Suspicion herself had dictated the plan.  To every room there was an open and secret passage; every square had a communication with the rest, either from the upper storeys by private galleries, or by subterraneous passages from the lower apartments.  Many of the columns had unsuspected cavities, in which a long race of monarchs had deposited their treasures.  They then closed up the opening with marble, which was never to be removed but in the utmost exigences of the kingdom, and recorded their accumulations in a book, which was itself concealed in a tower, not entered but by the Emperor, attended by the prince who stood next in succession.

CHAPTER II

THE DISCONTENT OF RASSELAS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY

Here the sons and daughters of Abyssinia lived only to know the soft vicissitudes of pleasure and repose, attended by all that were skilful to delight, and gratified with whatever the senses can enjoy.  They wandered in gardens of fragrance, and slept in the fortresses of security.  Every art was practised to make them pleased with their own condition.  The sages who instructed them told them of nothing but the miseries of public life, and described all beyond the mountains as regions of calamity, where discord was always racing, and where man preyed upon man.  To heighten their opinion of their own felicity, they were daily entertained with songs, the subject of which was the Happy Valley.  Their appetites were excited by frequent enumerations of different enjoyments, and revelry and merriment were the business of every hour, from the dawn of morning to the close of the evening.

These methods were generally successful; few of the princes had ever wished to enlarge their bounds, but passed their lives in full conviction that they had all within their reach that art or nature could bestow, and pitied those whom nature had excluded from this seat of tranquillity as the sport of chance and the slaves of misery.

Thus they rose in the morning and lay down at night, pleased with each other and with themselves, all but Rasselas, who, in the twenty-sixth year of his age, began to withdraw himself from the pastimes and assemblies, and to delight in solitary walks and silent meditation.  He often sat before tables covered with luxury, and forgot to taste the dainties that were placed before him; he rose abruptly in the midst of the song, and hastily retired beyond the sound of music.  His attendants observed the change, and endeavoured to renew his love of pleasure.  He neglected their officiousness, repulsed their invitations, and spent day after day on the banks of rivulets sheltered with trees, where he sometimes listened to the birds in the branches, sometimes observed the fish playing in the streams, and anon cast his eyes upon the pastures and mountains filled with animals, of which some were biting the herbage, and some sleeping among the bushes.  The singularity of his humour made him much observed.  One of the sages, in whose conversation he had formerly delighted, followed him secretly, in hope of discovering the cause of his disquiet.  Rasselas, who knew not that any one was near him, having for some time fixed his eyes upon the goats that were browsing among the rocks, began to compare their condition with his own.

“What,” said he, “makes the difference between man and all the rest of the animal creation?  Every beast that strays beside me has the same corporal necessities with myself: he is hungry, and crops the grass; he is thirsty, and drinks the stream; his thirst and hunger are appeased; he is satisfied, and sleeps; he rises again, and is hungry; he is again fed, and is at rest.  I am hungry and thirsty, like him, but when thirst and hunger cease, I am not at rest.  I am, like him, pained with want, but am not, like him, satisfied with fulness.  The intermediate hours are tedious and gloomy; I long again to be hungry that I may again quicken the attention.  The birds peck the berries or the corn, and fly away to the groves, where they sit in seeming happiness on the branches, and waste their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds.  I likewise can call the lutist and the singer; but the sounds that pleased me yesterday weary me to-day, and will grow yet more wearisome to-morrow.  I can discover in me no power of perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself delighted.  Man surely has some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification; or he has some desire distinct from sense, which must be satisfied before he can be happy.”

After this he lifted up his head, and seeing the moon rising, walked towards the palace.  As he passed through the fields, and saw the animals around him, “Ye,” said he, “are happy, and need not envy me that walk thus among you, burdened with myself; nor do I, ye gentle beings, envy your felicity; for it is not the felicity of man.  I have many distresses from which you are free; I fear pain when I do not feel it; I sometimes shrink at evils recollected, and sometimes start at evils anticipated: surely the equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.”

With observations like these the Prince amused himself as he returned, uttering them with a plaintive voice, yet with a look that discovered him to feel some complacence in his own perspicacity, and to receive some solace of the miseries of life from consciousness of the delicacy with which he felt and the eloquence with which he bewailed them.  He mingled cheerfully in the diversions of the evening, and all rejoiced to find that his heart was lightened.

CHAPTER III

THE WANTS OF HIM THAT WANTS NOTHING

On the next day, his old instructor, imagining that he had now made himself acquainted with his disease of mind, was in hope of curing it by counsel, and officiously sought an opportunity of conference, which the Prince, having long considered him as one whose intellects were exhausted, was not very willing to afford.  “Why,” said he, “does this man thus intrude upon me?  Shall I never be suffered to forget these lectures, which pleased only while they were new, and to become new again must be forgotten?”  He then walked into the wood, and composed himself to his usual meditations; when, before his thoughts had taken any settled form, he perceived his pursuer at his side, and was at first prompted by his impatience to go hastily away; but being unwilling to offend a man whom he had once reverenced and still loved, he invited him to sit down with him on the bank.

The old man, thus encouraged, began to lament the change which had been lately observed in the Prince, and to inquire why he so often retired from the pleasures of the palace to loneliness and silence.  “I fly from pleasure,” said the Prince, “because pleasure has ceased to please: I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others.”  “You, sir,” said the sage, “are the first who has complained of misery in the Happy Valley.  I hope to convince you that your complaints have no real cause.  You are here in full possession of all the Emperor of Abyssinia can bestow; here is neither labour to be endured nor danger to be dreaded, yet here is all that labour or danger can procure or purchase.  Look round and tell me which of your wants is without supply: if you want nothing, how are you unhappy?”

“That I want nothing,” said the Prince, “or that I know not what I want, is the cause of my complaint: if I had any known want, I should have a certain wish; that wish would excite endeavour, and I should not then repine to see the sun move so slowly towards the western mountains, or to lament when the day breaks, and sleep will no longer hide me from myself.  When I see the kids and the lambs chasing one another, I fancy that I should be happy if I had something to pursue.  But, possessing all that I can want, I find one day and one hour exactly like another, except that the latter is still more tedious than the former.  Let your experience inform me how the day may now seem as short as in my childhood, while nature was yet fresh, and every moment showed me what I never had observed before.  I have already enjoyed too much: give me something to desire.”  The old man was surprised at this new species of affliction, and knew not what to reply, yet was unwilling to be silent.  “Sir,” said he, “if you had seen the miseries of the world, you would know how to value your present state.”  “Now,” said the Prince, “you have given me something to desire.  I shall long to see the miseries of the world, since the sight of them is necessary to happiness.”

CHAPTER IV

THE PRINCE CONTINUES TO GRIEVE AND MUSE

At this time the sound of music proclaimed the hour of repast, and the conversation was concluded.  The old man went away sufficiently discontented to find that his reasonings had produced the only conclusion which they were intended to prevent.  But in the decline of life, shame and grief are of short duration: whether it be that we bear easily what we have borne long; or that, finding ourselves in age less regarded, we less regard others; or that we look with slight regard upon afflictions to which we know that the hand of death is about to put an end.

The Prince, whose views were extended to a wider space, could not speedily quiet his emotions.  He had been before terrified at the length of life which nature promised him, because he considered that in a long time much must be endured: he now rejoiced in his youth, because in many years much might be done.  The first beam of hope that had been ever darted into his mind rekindled youth in his cheeks, and doubled the lustre of his eyes.  He was fired with the desire of doing something, though he knew not yet, with distinctness, either end or means.  He was now no longer gloomy and unsocial; but considering himself as master of a secret stock of happiness, which he could only enjoy by concealing it, he affected to be busy in all the schemes of diversion, and endeavoured to make others pleased with the state of which he himself was weary.  But pleasures can never be so multiplied or continued as not to leave much of life unemployed; there were many hours, both of the night and day, which he could spend without suspicion in solitary thought.  The load of life was much lightened; he went eagerly into the assemblies, because he supposed the frequency of his presence necessary to the success of his purposes; he retired gladly to privacy, because he had now a subject of thought.  His chief amusement was to picture to himself that world which he had never seen, to place himself in various conditions, to be entangled in imaginary difficulties, and to be engaged in wild adventures; but, his benevolence always terminated his projects in the relief of distress, the detection of fraud, the defeat of oppression, and the diffusion of happiness.

Thus passed twenty months of the life of Rasselas.  He busied himself so intensely in visionary bustle that he forgot his real solitude; and amidst hourly preparations for the various incidents of human affairs, neglected to consider by what means he should mingle with mankind.

One day, as he was sitting on a bank, he feigned to himself an orphan virgin robbed of her little portion by a treacherous lover, and crying after him for restitution.  So strongly was the image impressed upon his mind that he started up in the maid’s defence, and ran forward to seize the plunderer with all the eagerness of real pursuit.  Fear naturally quickens the flight of guilt.  Rasselas could not catch the fugitive with his utmost efforts; but, resolving to weary by perseverance him whom he could not surpass in speed, he pressed on till the foot of the mountain stopped his course.

Here he recollected himself, and smiled at his own useless impetuosity.  Then raising his eyes to the mountain, “This,” said he, “is the fatal obstacle that hinders at once the enjoyment of pleasure and the exercise of virtue.  How long is it that my hopes and wishes have flown beyond this boundary of my life, which yet I never have attempted to surmount?”

Struck with this reflection, he sat down to muse, and remembered that since he first resolved to escape from his confinement, the sun had passed twice over him in his annual course.  He now felt a degree of regret with which he had never been before acquainted.  He considered how much might have been done in the time which had passed, and left nothing real behind it.  He compared twenty months with the life of man.  “In life,” said he, “is not to be counted the ignorance of infancy or imbecility of age.  We are long before we are able to think, and we soon cease from the power of acting.  The true period of human existence may be reasonably estimated at forty years, of which I have mused away the four-and-twentieth part.  What I have lost was certain, for I have certainly possessed it; but of twenty months to come, who can assure me?”

The consciousness of his own folly pierced him deeply, and he was long before he could be reconciled to himself.  “The rest of my time,” said he, “has been lost by the crime or folly of my ancestors, and the absurd institutions of my country; I remember it with disgust, yet without remorse: but the months that have passed since new light darted into my soul, since I formed a scheme of reasonable felicity, have been squandered by my own fault.  I have lost that which can never be restored; I have seen the sun rise and set for twenty months, an idle gazer on the light of heaven; in this time the birds have left the nest of their mother, and committed themselves to the woods and to the skies; the kid has forsaken the teat, and learned by degrees to climb the rocks in quest of independent sustenance.  I only have made no advances, but am still helpless and ignorant.  The moon, by more than twenty changes, admonished me of the flux of life; the stream that rolled before my feet upbraided my inactivity.  I sat feasting on intellectual luxury, regardless alike of the examples of the earth and the instructions of the planets.  Twenty months are passed: who shall restore them?”

These sorrowful meditations fastened upon his mind; he passed four months in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves, and was awakened to more vigorous exertion by hearing a maid, who had broken a porcelain cup, remark that what cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.

This was obvious; and Rasselas reproached himself that he had not discovered it—having not known, or not considered, how many useful hints are obtained by chance, and how often the mind, hurried by her own ardour to distant views, neglects the truths that lie open before her.  He for a few hours regretted his regret, and from that time bent his whole mind upon the means of escaping from the Valley of Happiness.