this other great French "libertine" and encyclopedist in breaking down traditional standards and preparing the way for the free thinking of the eighteenth century does not seem to have been sufficiently remarked by Johnson either in conversation or in his written work. It is hardly possible that he could have been blind to the influence of the Dictionary at this period in undermining the props of authority; and yet, if he realized what must have seemed to him the immense harm the work was accomplishing, would he not have protested against it with all his power? Was his delight in the large amount of literary biography and literary gossip in which the work abounded sufficient to turn him from the contemplation of any moral harm which it might seem to exert? His references to Bayle suggest that he was not averse to a critical examination of current questions. When some one had referred to a confutation of Bayle by Leibnitz, he cried angrily: "A confutation of Bayle, Sir! What part of Bayle do you mean? The greatest part of his writings is not confutable; it is historical and critical. . . . Leibnitz was as paltry a fellow as I know." On another occasion he said, "Bayle's Dictionary is a very useful work for those to consult who love the biographical part of literature, which is what I love most." 2 His proposed Annals of Literature, it will be remembered, was intended to imitate Bayle, and others among the French journals of literature.3 It was this interest in biography, no doubt, which led him to find entertainment in the Frenchman. It may be well here to pause a moment to consider how Johnson's love of biography is distinguished from the interest which some later critics have found in it, that we may once more make clear the immense gulf lying between his humanism and the modern way of looking at the individual as a sort of physical mechanism played upon by outward circumstance. He went to Bayle for reasons 1. Bos. V, 287. 2. Ibid. I, 425. 3. Ibid. 285. different from those which led great modern critics like SainteBeuve or Taine to the same source. His were absolute standards, acquired, he believed, through the experience of many men and many ages, by which he might judge the work of an author, and he did not attempt to seek in a man's life and in that of his family material which might determine the merit of his literary achievement. The incipient naturalism of Bishop Hurd had disgusted him. "Hurd, Sir," he declared, "is one of a set of men who account for every thing systematically; for instance, it has been a fashion to wear scarlet breeches; these men would tell you, that according to causes and effects, no other wear could at that time have been chosen." 1 His interest in biography was that of a professed humanist, whose philosophy rested upon a lively interest in men as men, not in men through books, nor in men in relation to nature; and, because he felt so deeply that a careful training of the will and character must be at the base of any sound moral philosophy, he sought to aid the cause of common morality by his own biographical contributions. "Biography,” he says in Idler 34, "is of the various kinds of narrative writing, that which is most eagerly applied to the purposes of life." With this aim, he has made the literary history of his century something of real importance to us of another generation. 1. Bos. IV, 189. this other great French "libertine" and encyclopedist in breaking down traditional standards and preparing the way for the free thinking of the eighteenth century does not seem to have been sufficiently remarked by Johnson either in conversation or in his written work. It is hardly possible that he could have been blind to the influence of the Dictionary at this period in undermining the props of authority; and yet, if he realized what must have seemed to him the immense harm the work was accomplishing, would he not have protested against it with all his power? Was his delight in the large amount of literary biography and literary gossip in which the work abounded sufficient to turn him from the contemplation of any moral harm which it might seem to exert? His references to Bayle suggest that he was not averse to a critical examination of current questions. When some one had referred to a confutation of Bayle by Leibnitz, he cried angrily: "A confutation of Bayle, Sir! What part of Bayle do you mean? The greatest part of his writings is not confutable; it is historical and critical. . . . Leibnitz was as paltry a fellow as I know." On another occasion he said, "Bayle's Dictionary is a very useful work for those to consult who love the biographical part of literature, which is what I love most." 2 His proposed Annals of Literature, it will be remembered, was intended to imitate Bayle, and others among the French journals of literature.3 It was this interest in biography, no doubt, which led him to find entertainment in the Frenchman. It may be well here to pause a moment to consider how Johnson's love of biography is distinguished from the interest which some later critics have found in it, that we may once more make clear the immense gulf lying between his humanism and the modern way of looking at the individual as a sort of physical mechanism played upon by outward circumstance. He went to Bayle for reasons 1. Bos. V, 287. 2. Ibid. I, 425. 3. Ibid. 285. different from those which led great modern critics like SainteBeuve or Taine to the same source. His were absolute standards, acquired, he believed, through the experience of many men and many ages, by which he might judge the work of an author, and he did not attempt to seek in a man's life and in that of his family material which might determine the merit of his literary achievement. The incipient naturalism of Bishop Hurd had disgusted him. "Hurd, Sir," he declared, “is one of a set of men who account for every thing systematically; for instance, it has been a fashion to wear scarlet breeches; these men would tell you, that according to causes and effects, no other wear could at that time have been chosen."1 His interest in biography was that of a professed humanist, whose philosophy rested upon a lively interest in men as men, not in men through books, nor in men in relation to nature; and, because he felt so deeply that a careful training of the will and character must be at the base of any sound moral philosophy, he sought to aid the cause of common morality by his own biographical contributions. "Biography," he says in Idler 34, "is of the various kinds of narrative writing, that which is most eagerly applied to the purposes of life." With this aim, he has made the literary history of his century something of real importance to us of another generation. 1. Bos. IV, 189. CHAPTER IV Johnson and Boileau W ITH Boileau, the chief exponent of French classicism, Johnson had many and striking affinities. It is but natural that the last important representative of the classical spirit in eighteenth-century England should have turned to Boileau as the great master of modern criticism. We find Mrs. Piozzi saying that Johnson was a great reader of French literature and delighted exceedingly in Boileau's works; Murphy asserts that he was an outspoken admirer of Boileau; and Thomas Tyers after Johnson's death informs us that he had lately read over his Boileau.1 Perhaps as he grew older and confirmed his critical dogmas he returned more and more to the former masters of classical criticism. He himself declares that "Boileau will seldom be found mistaken," and that "he surely is no mean writer to whom Boileau shall be found inferior." The doctrines and characters of these two men, who represented the culmination of neo-classical criticism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, resembled each other in many ways. Both possessed strong reasoning faculties and minds rather logical than imaginative, though Boileau revealed during a long period of critical activity a surer taste and a sensitiveness to aesthetic values, gaining for himself the distinction of being the literary mentor of the chief writers of the Golden Age of French literature; both preached virtue and morality, though in this respect Johnson outstripped his predecessor in 1. Tyers, it is true, says that he (Johnson) took neither Aristotle, Bossu, nor Boileau "from the shelf." Misc. II, 372. |