66 learning and conservative prejudice of the eighteenth century, in their light footsteps. He maintains their most firmly rooted opinions with great vigor. His own method reads like a petrifaction of their forms of expression. In No. 32 we are told, or at least our ancestors were told, that "to oppose the devastations of Famine, who scattered the ground everywhere with carcasses, Labour came down upon earth." In No. 38, that "whosoever shall look heedfully upon those who are eminent for their riches, will not think their condition such that he should hazard his quiet, and much less his virtue to obtain it." In No. 41, that we owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures." It is not necessary to quote the harrowing tale, in No. 73, which contains this useful lesson: "Let no man from this time suffer his felicity to depend on the death of his aunt." It should be said in justice, however, that this phrase is more than half ironical. Johnson's views on literature, as expressed in the Rambler, were far more rigid than those of his great predecessors. We have seen with what contempt he spoke of those who cared for antique poetry. Addison was continually getting out of the pulpit to praise something which his taste told him was good. Johnson, on the other hand, brought all his wit and learning to crush every attempt at novelty. Science, too, fared no better at his hands than did romantic poetry. Thus in the Rambler, No. 24: "When a man employs himself upon remote and unnecessary subjects, and wastes his life upon questions which cannot be resolved, and of which the solution would conduce very little to the advancement of happiness; when he lavishes his hours in calculating the weight of the terraqueous globe, or in adjusting successive systems of worlds beyond the reach of the telescope; he may be very properly recalled from his excursions by this precept [know thyself], and reminded that there is a nearer being with which it is his duty to be more acquainted, and from which his attention has been withheld by studies, to which he has no other motive than vanity or curiosity." Thereupon he proceeds to draw the character of a scientific man whom he brands with the name of Gelidus. This worthless person displays the harm wrought by science, by being "insensible to every spectacle of distress and unmoved by the loudest call of social nature." It is, perhaps, worthy of a moment's notice that the objection nowadays to men like the unhappy Gelidus is, that they are, if anything, too unpractical, and are prone to exhibit a sentimental sympathy with the sufferings of others. Johnson also lacked sympathy with collectors, as he showed in No. 82, which contains an imaginary confession of one of them: "I now turned my thoughts to exotics and antiquities. Having been always a lover of geography, I determined to collect the maps drawn in rude and barbarous times, before any regular surveys, or just observations." "I allowed my tenants to pay their rents in butterflies, till I had exhausted the papilionaceous tribes. I then directed them to the pursuit of other animals, and obtained by this easy method, most of the grubs and insects, which land, air, or water, can supply. I have three species of earthworms not known to the naturalists, have discovered a new ephemera, and can show four wasps that were taken torpid in their native quarters." One tenant brought him only "two horse-flies and those of little more than the common size; and I was upon the brink of seizing for arrears, when his good fortune threw a white mole in his way, for which he was not only forgiven but rewarded." He collected marbles from remote regions, curiosities, a fur cap of the Czar and a boot of Charles of Sweden. For the sake of the Harleian collection "I mortgaged my land, and purchased thirty medals, which I could never find before;" and now he is ruined. The mere catalogue of his motley tastes seems to show the inaccuracy of the portrait, which may well be a caricature of Horace Walpole. And again in No. 177, Hirsutus collects books in blackletter; Ferratus, copper coins; "Cantilenus turned all his thoughts upon old ballads, for he considered them as the genuine records of the national tastes. He offered to show me a copy of the 'Children in the Wood,' which he firmly believed to be of the first edition, and by the help of which the text might be freed from corruptions, if this age of barbarity had any claim to such favours from him." Johnson's sole consolation is that these people were capable of nothing better, and were at least kept out of active mischief.* Let us remember, however, that in its day the Rambler was far from popular. Its circulation was rather less than five hundred copies; it was only after Johnson had become famous that they were much read. Ten editions that were published in his lifetime made up for the earlier neglect of the essays.† * Johnson's feeling about research was the common property of his day, and not mere personal whim. Compare the "Dissertation concerning the Era of Ossian:" "Inquiries into the antiquities of nations afford more pleasure than any real advantage to mankind. . . . It is then [in a wellordered community] historians begin to write, and public transactions to be worthy remembrance." And see Dr. Hugh Blair's remark, in his "Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian:" "History, when it treats of remote and dark ages, is seldom very instructive. The beginnings of society in every country are involved in fabulous confusion; and though they were not, they would furnish few events worth recording." See, too, Tatler, No. 216. Cumberland," Memoirs " (Am. ed.), p. 183, says: "His Ramblers are in everybody's hands, about them opinions vary." It is scarcely fair to exhume Johnson's "Irene" to show his respect for the models of his day. There is but one opinion possible about the tragedy; that was formed a century ago, and it is one of the few that have not been revised, but it is not generally known, perhaps, how very poor the play really is. For instance: "Leon. Awake, Demetrius, from this dismal dream, Call to your aid your courage, and your wisdom; Think on the mighty power of awful virtue; And, in the next scene: "Has silence pressed her seal upon his lips? Or flow dissolving in a woman's tears." Similar three and four barrelled sentences are to be found in almost every scene. The "Rasselas" is, in form, an amplification of the Oriental apologues in the Spectator, but it is as complete a "criticism of life as one will find in any English work of the time. Johnson's preface to his Shakspere, although, as we have seen, not untinged with antique notions, was of service to letters. His "Lives of the Poets" must have bad, on the other hand, a bad influence. His unsympathetic treatment of Gray and his lack of appreciation of Milton doubtless affected a vast number of readers. would be unfair to load his shoulders with all the bigotry with which the English nation long regarded much of the work of foreigners; he but gave expression to wide It spread prejudices. Yet his wit and his authority must have strengthened very much the raw English prejudice against the great French writers of the last century. "For anything I can see, all foreigners are fools,” was one of his remarks. The opinion he expressed to Boswell about Rousseau and Voltaire will occur to every one. He told Stockdale that Voltaire and D'Alembert were childish authors. In looking at Johnson's whole value, we pardon these eccentric utterances, and it is by no means a complete description of him to say of him nothing more than that he encouraged philistinism, any more than it would be to say that he was hot-tempered, but the discussion of his many better-known qualities falls outside of our present purpose. With all his faults, he is one of the best-loved men in the history of letters, and this is due, not to his writings, but to the faithful record which Boswell made of the evenings when the great man folded his legs and had his talk out. He could have little thought that posterity would yawn over his moral writings, sniff at his witty criticisms, and coolly respect but a small part of his poetry, leaving the rest unread. Once, it will be remembered, when some one regretted that he had not given his attention to law, in which case he would doubtless have risen to be Lord High Chancellor, Johnson impatiently turned the conversation, evidently filled with regret that he had frittered his life away with so little to show for it. But what is the ephemeral reputation of a Lord High Chancellor, which scarcely outlasts that of an actor and soon becomes a mere vague rumor, with that which Johnson now holds throughout the English-speaking world? We may say English-speaking, because people of other nations. repay the contempt he felt for their grandfathers, and are far from understanding why we like him. |