The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes, Volume 08

The relation of Philips, I suppose, was true; but when all reasonable, all credible allowance is made for this friendly revision, the author will still retain an ample dividend of praise; for to him must always be assigned the plan of the work, the distribution of its parts, the choice of topicks, the train of argument, and, what is yet more, the general predominance of philosophical judgment and poetical spirit. Correction seldom effects more than the suppression of faults: a happy line, or a single elegance, may, perhaps, be added; but, of a large work, the general character must always remain; the original constitution can be very little helped by local remedies; inherent and radical dulness will never be much invigorated by extrinsick animation.

This poem, if he had written nothing else, would have transmitted him to posterity among the first favourites of the English muse; but to make verses was his transcendent pleasure, and, as he was not deterred by censure, he was not satiated with praise.

He deviated, however, sometimes into other tracks of literature, and condescended to entertain his readers with plain prose. When the Spectator stopped, he considered the polite world as destitute of entertainment; and, in concert with Mr. Hughes, who wrote every third paper, published, three times a week, the Lay Monastery, founded on the supposition that some literary men, whose characters are described, had retired to a house in the country to enjoy philosophical leisure, and resolved to instruct the publick, by communicating their disquisitions and amusements. Whether any real persons were concealed under fictitious names, is not known. The hero of the club is one Mr. Johnson; such a constellation of excellence, that his character shall not be suppressed, though there is no great genius in the design, nor skill in the delineation.

“The first I shall name is Mr. Johnson, a gentleman that owes to nature excellent faculties and an elevated genius, and to industry and application many acquired accomplishments. His taste is distinguishing, just, and delicate: his judgment clear, and his reason strong, accompanied with an imagination full of spirit, of great compass, and stored with refined ideas. He is a critick of the first rank; and, what is his peculiar ornament, he is delivered from the ostentation, malevolence, and supercilious temper, that so often blemish men of that character. His remarks result from the nature and reason of things, and are formed by a judgment free, and unbiassed by the authority of those who have lazily followed each other in the same beaten track of thinking, and are arrived only at the reputation of acute grammarians and commentators; men, who have been copying one another many hundred years, without any improvement; or, if they have ventured farther, have only applied in a mechanical manner the rules of ancient criticks to modern writings, and, with great labour, discovered nothing but their own want of judgment and capacity. As Mr. Johnson penetrates to the bottom of his subject, by which means his observations are solid and natural, as well as delicate, so his design is always to bring to light something useful and ornamental; whence his character is the reverse to theirs, who have eminent abilities in insignificant knowledge, and a great felicity in finding out trifles. He is no less industrious to search out the merit of an author, than sagacious in discerning his errors and defects; and takes more pleasure in commending the beauties, than exposing the blemishes of a laudable writing; like Horace, in a long work, he can bear some deformities, and justly lay them on the imperfection of human nature, which is incapable of faultless productions. When an excellent drama appears in publick, and by its intrinsick worth attracts a general applause, he is not stung with envy and spleen; nor does he express a savage nature, in fastening upon the celebrated author, dwelling upon his imaginary defects, and passing over his conspicuous excellencies. He treats all writers upon the same impartial footing; and is not, like the little criticks, taken up entirely in finding out only the beauties of the ancient, and nothing but the errors of the modern writers. Never did any one express more kindness and good-nature to young and unfinished authors; he promotes their interests, protects their reputation, extenuates their faults, and sets off their virtues, and, by his candour, guards them from the severity of his judgment. He is not like those dry criticks, who are morose because they cannot write themselves, but is himself master of a good vein in poetry; and though he does not often employ it, yet he has sometimes entertained his friends with his unpublished performances.”

The rest of the lay monks seem to be but feeble mortals, in comparison with the gigantick Johnson; who yet, with all his abilities, and the help of the fraternity, could drive the publication but to forty papers, which were afterwards collected into a volume, and called, in the title, a Sequel to the Spectators.

Some years afterwards, 1716 and 1717, he published two volumes of essays in prose, which can be commended only as they are written for the highest and noblest purpose, the promotion of religion. Blackmore’s prose is not the prose of a poet; for it is languid, sluggish, and lifeless; his diction is neither daring nor exact, his flow neither rapid nor easy, and his periods neither smooth nor strong. His account of wit, will show with how little clearness he is content to think, and how little his thoughts are recommended by his language.

“As to its efficient cause, wit owes its production to an extraordinary and peculiar temperament in the constitution of the possessor of it, in which is found a concurrence of regular and exalted ferments, and an affluence of animal spirits, refined and rectified to a great degree of purity; whence, being endowed with vivacity, brightness, and celerity, as well in their reflections as direct motions, they become proper instruments for the sprightly operations of the mind; by which means the imagination can, with great facility, range the wide field of nature, contemplate an infinite variety of objects, and, by observing the similitude and disagreement of their several qualities, single out and abstract, and then suit and unite, those ideas which will best serve its purpose. Hence beautiful allusions, surprising metaphors, and admirable sentiments, are always ready at hand: and while the fancy is full of images, collected from innumerable objects and their different qualities, relations, and habitudes, it can at pleasure dress a common notion in a strange but becoming garb; by which, as before observed, the same thought will appear a new one, to the great delight and wonder of the hearer. What we call genius results from this particular happy complexion in the first formation of the person that enjoys it, and is nature’s gift, but diversified by various specifick characters and limitations, as its active fire is blended and allayed by different proportions of phlegm, or reduced and regulated by the contrast of opposite ferments. Therefore, as there happens in the composition of a facetious genius a greater or less, though still an inferior degree of judgment and prudence, one man of wit will be varied and distinguished from another.”

In these essays he took little care to propitiate the wits; for he scorns to avert their malice at the expense of virtue or of truth.

“Several, in their books, have many sarcastical and spiteful strokes at religion in general; while others make themselves pleasant with the principles of the christian. Of the last kind, this age has seen a most audacious example in the book entitled, a Tale of a Tub. Had this writing been published in a pagan or popish nation, who are justly impatient of all indignity offered to the established religion of their country, no doubt but the author would have received the punishment he deserved. But the fate of this impious buffoon is very different; for in a protestant kingdom, zealous of their civil and religious immunities, he has not only escaped affronts, and the effects of publick resentment, but has been caressed and patronised by persons of great figure, and of all denominations. Violent party-men, who differed in all things besides, agreed in their turn to show particular respect and friendship to this insolent derider of the worship of his country, till at last the reputed writer is not only gone off with impunity, but triumphs in his dignity and preferment. I do not know that any inquiry or search was ever made after this writing, or that any reward was ever offered for the discovery of the author, or that the infamous book was ever condemned to be burnt in publick; whether this proceeds from the excessive esteem and love that men in power, during the late reign, had for wit, or their defect of zeal and concern for the christian religion, will be determined best by those who are best acquainted with their character.”

In another place he speaks with becoming abhorrence of a “godless author,” who has burlesqued a psalm. This author was supposed to be Pope, who published a reward for any one that would produce the coiner of the accusation, but never denied it; and was afterwards the perpetual and incessant enemy of Blackmore.

One of his essays is upon the Spleen, which is treated by him so much to his own satisfaction, that he has published the same thoughts in the same words; first in the Lay Monastery; then in the Essay; and then in the preface to a Medical Treatise on the Spleen. One passage, which I have found already twice, I will here exhibit, because I think it better imagined, and better expressed, than could be expected from the common tenour of his prose:

“As the several combinations of splenetick madness and folly produce an infinite variety of irregular understanding, so the amicable accommodation and alliance between several virtues and vices produce an equal diversity in the dispositions and manners of mankind; whence it comes to pass, that as many monstrous and absurd productions are found in the moral, as in the intellectual world. How surprising is it to observe, among the least culpable men, some whose minds are attracted by heaven and earth, with a seeming equal force; some who are proud of humility; others who are censorious and uncharitable, yet self-denying and devout; some who join contempt of the world with sordid avarice; and others who preserve a great degree of piety, with ill-nature and ungoverned passions! Nor are instances of this inconsistent mixture less frequent among bad men, where we often, with admiration, see persons at once generous and unjust, impious lovers of their country, and flagitious heroes, good-natured sharpers, immoral men of honour, and libertines who will sooner die than change their religion; and though it is true that repugnant coalitions of so high a degree are found but in a part of mankind, yet none of the whole mass, either good or bad, are entirely exempted from some absurd mixture.”

He, about this time, Aug. 22, 1716, became one of the elects of the College of Physicians; and was soon after, Oct. 1, chosen censor. He seems to have arrived late, whatever was the reason, at his medical honours.

Having succeeded so well in his book on Creation, by which he established the great principle of all religion, he thought his undertaking imperfect, unless he, likewise, enforced the truth of revelation; and, for that purpose, added another poem on Redemption. He had, likewise, written, before his Creation, three books on the Nature of Man.

The lovers of musical devotion have always wished for a more happy metrical version than they have yet obtained of the Book of Psalms: this wish the piety of Blackmore led him to gratify; and he produced, 1721, a new version of the psalms of David, fitted to the tunes used in churches; which, being recommended by the archbishops and many bishops, obtained a license for its admission into publick worship: but no admission has it yet obtained, nor has it any right to come where Brady and Tate have got possession. Blackmore’s name must be added to those of many others, who, by the same attempt, have obtained only the praise of meaning well.

He was not yet deterred from heroick poetry. There was another monarch of this island, for he did not fetch his heroes from foreign countries, whom he considered as worthy of the epick muse; and he dignified Alfred, 1723, with twelve books. But the opinion of the nation was now settled; a hero introduced by Blackmore was not likely to find either respect or kindness; Alfred took his place by Eliza, in silence and darkness: benevolence was ashamed to favour, and malice was weary of insulting. Of his four epick poems, the first had such reputation and popularity as enraged the criticks; the second was, at least, known enough to be ridiculed; the two last had neither friends nor enemies.

Contempt is a kind of gangrene, which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees. Blackmore, being despised as a poet, was, in time, neglected as a physician; his practice, which was once invidiously great, forsook him in the latter part of his life; but being by nature, or by principle, averse from idleness, he employed his unwelcome leisure in writing books on physick, and teaching others to cure those whom he could himself cure no longer. I know not whether I can enumerate all the treatises by which he has endeavoured to diffuse the art of healing; for there is scarcely any distemper, of dreadful name, which he has not taught his reader how to oppose. He has written on the smallpox, with a vehement invective against inoculation; on consumptions, the spleen, the gout, the rheumatism, the king’s evil, the dropsy, the jaundice, the stone, the diabetes, and the plague.

Of those books, if I had read them, it could not be expected that I should be able to give a critical account. I have been told that there is something in them of vexation and discontent, discovered by a perpetual attempt to degrade physick from its sublimity, and to represent it as attainable without much previous or concomitant learning. By the transient glances which I have thrown upon them, I have observed an affected contempt of the ancients, and a supercilious derision of transmitted knowledge. Of this indecent arrogance, the following quotation, from his preface to the treatise on the smallpox, will afford a specimen; in which, when the reader finds, what I fear is true, that, when he was censuring Hippocrates, he did not know the difference between aphorism and apophthegm, he will not pay much regard to his determinations concerning ancient learning.

“As for this book of aphorisms, it is like my lord Bacon’s of the same title, a book of jests, or a grave collection of trite and trifling observations; of which though many are true and certain, yet they signify nothing, and may afford diversion, but no instruction; most of them being much inferior to the sayings of the wise men of Greece, which yet are so low and mean, that we are entertained every day with more valuable sentiments at the table-conversation of ingenious and learned men.”

I am unwilling, however, to leave him in total disgrace, and will, therefore, quote, from another preface, a passage less reprehensible.

“Some gentlemen have been disingenuous and unjust to me, by wresting and forcing my meaning in the preface to another book, as if I condemned and exposed all learning, though they knew I declared that I greatly honoured and esteemed all men of superiour literature and erudition; and that I only undervalued false or superficial learning, that signifies nothing for the service of mankind; and that, as to physick, I expressly affirmed that learning must be joined with native genius, to make a physician of the first rank; but if those talents are separated, I asserted, and do still insist, that a man of native sagacity and diligence will prove a more able and useful practiser, than a heavy notional scholar, encumbered with a heap of confused ideas.”

He was not only a poet and a physician, but produced, likewise, a work of a different kind; a true and impartial History of the Conspiracy against King William, of glorious memory, in the year 1695. This I have never seen, but suppose it, at least, compiled with integrity. He engaged, likewise, in theological controversy, and wrote two books against the Arians; Just Prejudices against the Arian Hypothesis; and Modern Arians unmasked. Another of his works is Natural Theology, or Moral Duties considered apart from Positive; with some observations on the Desirableness and Necessity of a supernatural Revelation. This was the last book that he published. He left behind him the Accomplished Preacher, or an Essay upon Divine Eloquence; which was printed, after his death, by Mr. White, of Nayland, in Essex, the minister who attended his deathbed, and testified the fervent piety of his last hours. He died on the eighth of October, 1729.

Blackmore, by the unremitted enmity of the wits, whom he provoked more by his virtue than his dulness, has been exposed to worse treatment than he deserved. His name was so long used to point every epigram upon dull writers, that it became, at last, a by-word of contempt; but it deserves observation, that malignity takes hold only of his writings, and that his life passed without reproach, even when his boldness of reprehension naturally turned upon him many eyes desirous to espy faults, which many tongues would have made haste to publish. But those who could not blame, could, at least, forbear to praise, and, therefore, of his private life and domestick character there are no memorials.

As an author he may justly claim the honours of magnanimity. The incessant attacks of his enemies, whether serious or merry, are never discovered to have disturbed his quiet, or to have lessened his confidence in himself; they neither awed him to silence nor to caution; they neither provoked him to petulance, nor depressed him to complaint. While the distributors of literary fame were endeavouring to depreciate and degrade him, he either despised or defied them, wrote on as he had written before, and never turned aside to quiet them by civility, or repress them by confutation.

He depended with great security on his own powers, and perhaps was, for that reason, less diligent in perusing books. His literature was, I think, but small. What he knew of antiquity, I suspect him to have gathered from modern compilers; but, though he could not boast of much critical knowledge, his mind was stored with general principles, and he left minute researches to those whom he considered as little minds.

With this disposition he wrote most of his poems. Having formed a magnificent design, he was careless of particular and subordinate elegancies; he studied no niceties of versification; he waited for no felicities of fancy; but caught his first thoughts in the first words in which they were presented: nor does it appear that he saw beyond his own performances, or had ever elevated his views to that ideal perfection, which every genius, born to excel, is condemned always to pursue, and never overtake. In the first suggestions of his imagination he acquiesced; he thought them good, and did not seek for better. His works may be read a long time without the occurrence of a single line that stands prominent from the rest.

The poem on Creation has, however, the appearance of more circumspection; it wants neither harmony of numbers, accuracy of thought, nor elegance of diction: it has either been written with great care, or, what cannot be imagined of so long a work, with such felicity as made care less necessary.

Its two constituent parts are ratiocination and description. To reason in verse, is allowed to be difficult; but Blackmore not only reasons in verse, but very often reasons poetically; and finds the art of uniting ornament with strength, and ease with closeness. This is a skill which Pope might have condescended to learn from him, when he needed it so much in his Moral Essays.

In his descriptions, both of life and nature, the poet and the philosopher happily coöperate; truth is recommended by elegance, and elegance sustained by truth.

In the structure and order of the poem, not only the greater parts are properly consecutive, but the didactick and illustrative paragraphs are so happily mingled, that labour is relieved by pleasure, and the attention is led on, through a long succession of varied excellence, to the original position, the fundamental principle of wisdom and of virtue.

As the heroick poems of Blackmore are now little read, it is thought proper to insert, as a specimen from Prince Arthur, the song of Mopas, mentioned by Molineux.

But that which Arthur with most pleasure heard,Were noble strains, by Mopas sung, the bardWho to his harp in lofty verse began,And through the secret maze of nature ran.He the great spirit sung, that all things fill’d,That the tumultuous waves of chaos still’d:Whose nod dispos’d the jarring seeds to peace,And made the wars of hostile atoms cease.All beings we in fruitful nature find,Proceeded from the great eternal mind;Streams of his unexhausted spring of power,And cherish’d with his influence, endure.He spread the pure cerulean fields on high,And arch’d the chambers of the vaulted sky,Which he, to suit their glory with their height,Adorn’d with globes, that reel, as drunk with light.His hand directed all the tuneful spheres,He turn’d their orbs, and polish’d all the stars.He fill’d the sun’s vast lamp with golden light,And bid the silver moon adorn the night.He spread the airy ocean without shores,Where birds are wafted with their feather’d oars.Then sung the bard how the light vapours riseFrom the warm earth, and cloud the smiling skies:He sung how some, chill’d in their airy flight,Fall scatter’d down in pearly dew by night;How some, rais’d higher, sit in secret steamsOn the reflected points of bounding beams,Till, chill’d with cold, they shade th’ ethereal plain,Then on the thirsty earth descend in rain;How some, whose parts a slight contexture show,Sink hov’ring through the air, in fleecy snow;How part is spun in silken threads, and clingsEntangled in the grass in gluey strings;How others stamp to stones, with rushing soundFall from their crystal quarries to the ground;How some are laid in trains, that kindled flyIn harmless fires by night, about the sky;How some in winds blow with impetuous force,And carry ruin where they bend their course,While some conspire to form a gentle breeze,To fan the air, and play among the trees;How some, enrag’d, grow turbulent and loud,Pent in the bowels of a frowning cloud,That cracks, as if the axis of the worldWas broke, and heav’n’s bright tow’rs were downwards hurl’d.He sung how earth’s wide ball, at Jove’s command,Did in the midst on airy columns stand;And how the soul of plants, in prison held,And bound with sluggish fetters, lies conceal’d,Till with the spring’s warm beams, almost releas’dFrom the dull weight, with which it lay opprest,Its vigour spreads, and makes the teeming earthHeave up, and labour with the sprouting birth:The active spirit freedom seeks in vain,It only works and twists a stronger chain;Urging its prison’s sides to break away,It makes that wider, where ’tis forc’d to stay:Till, having form’d its living house, it rearsIts head, and in a tender plant appears.Hence springs the oak, the beauty of the grove,Whose stately trunk fierce storms can scarcely move.Hence grows the cedar, hence the swelling vineDoes round the elm its purple clusters twine.Hence painted flowers the smiling gardens bless,Both with their fragrant scent and gaudy dress.Hence the white lily in full beauty grows.Hence the blue violet, and blushing rose.He sung how sunbeams brood upon the earth,And in the glebe hatch such a num’rous birth;Which way the genial warmth in summer stormsTurns putrid vapours to a bed of worms;How rain, transform’d by this prolifick power,Falls from the clouds an animated shower.He sung the embryo’s growth within the womb,And how the parts their various shapes assume;With what rare art the wondrous structure’s wrought,From one crude mass to such perfection brought;That no part useless, none misplac’d we see,None are forgot, and more would monstrous be.

FENTON

The brevity with which I am to write the account of Elijah Fenton, is not the effect of indifference or negligence. I have sought intelligence among his relations in his native county, but have not obtained it.

He was born near Newcastle, in Staffordshire, of an ancient family22 whose state was very considerable; but he was the youngest of eleven children, and being, therefore, necessarily destined to some lucrative employment, was sent first to school, and afterwards to Cambridge23, but with many other wise and virtuous men, who, at that time of discord and debate, consulted conscience, whether well or ill informed, more than interest, he doubted the legality of the government, and, refusing to qualify himself for publick employment by the oaths required, left the university without a degree; but I never heard that, the enthusiasm of opposition impelled him to separation from the church.