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SAMUEL JOHNSON

sr ALICE MEYNELL AND

LONDON

HERBERT & DANIEL
21 3\4addox Street
/F.

CALENDAR OF PRINCIPAL EVENTS
IN JOHNSON S LIFE

1700 Born, i8th September.

1712 Taken to London to be touched by the Queen

" for the evil."

1724 Goes to Stourbridge School.
1728 Entered at Pembroke College, Oxford.

1731 Leaves Oxford.

1732 Usher at Market Bosworth.
1735 Marriage.

1737 Goes to London with Garrick.

1738 Contributes regularly to The Gentleman: Maga
zine. London: a poem published.

1 744 Life of Richard Savage.

1749

1750 The Rambler commenced.

1752 Death of his wife.

1755 Degree of M.A. conferred by the University of

Oxford. Dictionary published.
1759 R ass *I as published.

1762 Pension of 300 per annum granted.

1763 Meets Boswell.

1764 "The Club" founded.

1765 Makes the acquaintance of the Thrales.

I77C Goes to Paris. Degree of Doctor conferred by the
University of Oxford. A Journey to the Western
Jslar.as published.

1781 Lives of the English Poets.

1783 Attack of partial paralysis.

1784 Death, 1 3th December.

CONTENTS

PAGE

CALENDAR OF PRINCIPAL EVENTS . . . iv

INTRODUCTION ... . . . . vii

THE PLAN OF AN ENGLISH DICTIONARY . . i
LIVES OF EMINENT PERSONS . . . .19

THE RAMBLER . . . . . .21

THE ADVENTURER . . . . . .71

PREFACE TO SHAKSPEARE ..... 76

THOUGHTS ON AGRICULTURE . . . .97

FROM A REVIEW OF " A FREE INQUIRY INTO THE

NATURE AND ORIGIN OF EVIL" . . . 101

THE IDLER 105

RASSELAS 128

A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS . . 144

LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS :

From Cowley 150

Milton 156

Butler 164

Waller

Dryden

Smith i6S

Addison 169

Prior iji

Congreve . . .172

Savage 173

Swift 174

Pope 178

Young 1 88

Gray I

LETTERS :

To His Wife I 9 c

vi CONTENTS

LETTERS :

To Mr. James Elphinston .

To the Reverend Joseph Warton . . 193
To Miss Boothby . ! 94

To James Boswell (on his way home from

Corsica) ... ! 94

To the Rev. Dr. Dodd (on the eve of his

execution for forgery) . 1 9"

To James Boswell . 1 97

To Dr. Lawrence . *9 8

To the Lord Chancellor, who had offered

an advance of five hundred pounds
To the author of"Ossian r

Extracts from Mrs. Thrale s collection . 202
To Mrs. Thrale

FROM THE DIARY . .221

POEMS : The Vanity of Human Wishes ; in imita
tion of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal . 223
Prologue, spoken by Mr. Garrick, at the
opening of the Theatre-Royal, Drury-
Lane, 1747 . . 2 39

Prologue, spoken by Mr. Garrick, April 5,
1750, before the Masque of Comus,
acted at Drury-Lane Theatre for the
Benefit of Milton s Grand-daughter . 242
Prologue to the Comedy of the Good-

Natured Man, 1769 . . . 2 44

Prologue to the Comedy of A Word to the
Wise (by Hugh Kelly). Spoken by Mr.
Hull . . . . . 2 4 6

From Irene ...... 2 47

Friendship : An Ode .... 2 4 8

Robert Levett 2 49

A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF JOHNSON S WORKS . 25 l
TCONOGRAPHY ..... 2 59

APPRECIATIONS AND TESTIMONIA . . . .261

INTRODUCTION

SAMUEL JOHNSON, afterwards so loyal a
eulogist of London, only came up to it when
he had already experimented in life in various
parts of the country. He was born at Lich-
field in 1 709 ; his father was a bookseller,
and a worthy, if somewhat sombre type, of
that old thinking middle class of England
(now so nearly extinct) of which his celebrated
son will always be the great historic incarna
tion. He went to Oxford, to Pembroke College,
where venerable tales are told of his independ
ence and eccentricity : he became a master in a
school at Market Bosworth, and subsequently
the assistant of a bookseller in Birmingham.
In his twenty-fifth year occurred the curious
and brief episode of his marriage ; he married
a widow named Porter ; she was considerably
older than himself, and died very soon after
the union. He spoke of her very rarely in
after life but then always with marked tender
ness. Failing in a second attempt at the trade
of schoolmaster, he came to London with
David Garrick, his friend and pupil ; and be
gan reporting parliamentary debates for The

viii INTRODUCTION

Gentleman s Magazine. It was of this task that
he sardonically said that he took care that the
Whig dogs should not have the best of it.
But this remark, like numerous other remarks
of Johnson s, has been taken absurdly seri
ously; and critics have seen a trait of un
scrupulous Toryism in what was the very
natural and passing jest of a Fleet Street
journalist. His poem of London had been
published in 1738; and his next important
work was the celebrated Vanity of Human
Wishes^ published in 1 749. It is an impressive
if severe meditation in verse, treated with
Pope s poetic rationalism but the very opposite
of Pope s optimism ; some passages, such as
that on Charles of Sweden, are still sufficiently
attractive to be hackneyed. It is certainly
much greater as a poem than his Irene (pro
duced in the same year) as a tragedy. Since
about 1747 he had been occupied with the
Dictionary, which was to be published by sub
scription. Through a mixture of lethargy and
caution he delayed over it, as some thought,
unduly, and it was in reply to something like
a taunt that he hastily finished and produced
it in 1755. It was on the occasion of this
publication that the great Lord Chesterfield,
who had neglected and repulsed Johnson in his
poorer days, condescended to that public com-

INTRODUCTION ix

pliment which was publicly flung back in his
face in the famous letter about patrons and
patronage. The intervals of his career had
been filled up with such things as the Rambler
and the Idler, works on the model of Addi-
son s Spec tat or , but lacking that particular
type of lightness which had made Addison s
experiment so successful. His two last im
portant books, and perhaps, upon the whole,
his two best, were the philosophic romance Ras-
selas, Prince of Abyssinia , in 1759, and the full
collection of the Lives of the Poets, published
in 1777. Rasselas is an ironic tale of the dis-
illusionments of a youth among the pompous
dignities and philosophies of this world, some
what to the same tune as the Vanity of Human
Wishes. The Lives of the Poets, with their ex
cellent thumb-nail sketches and rule-of-thumb
criticisms, come nearer than anything else he
wrote to the almost rollicking sagacity of his
conversation. For all the rest of Johnson s
life, and that the larger part, is conversation.
All the rest is the history of those great
friendships with Boswell, with Burke, with
Reynolds, with the Thrales, which fill the
most inexhaustible of human books ; those
companionships which Boswell was justified in
calling the nights and feasts of the gods.
It is a truism, but none the less a truth for

x INTRODUCTION

all that, that Samuel Johnson is more vivid to
us in a book written by another man than in
any of the books that he wrote himself. Few
critics, however, have passed from this obvious
fact to its yet more obvious explanation. In
Johnson s books we have Johnson all alone,
and Johnson had a great dislike of being all
alone. He had this splendid and satisfying trait
of the sane man ; that he knew the one or two
points on which he was mad. He did not
wish his own soul to fill the whole sky ; he
knew that soul had its accidents and morbid
ities ; and he liked to have it corrected by a
varied companionship. Standing by itself in
the wilderness, his soul was reverent, reason
able, rather sad and extremely brave. He did
not wish this spirit to pervade all God s uni
verse ; but it was perfectly natural that it
should pervade all his own books. By itself it
amounted to something like tragedy ; the re
ligious tragedy of the ancients, not the irreligi
ous tragedy of to-day. In the Vanity of Human
Wishes^ and the disappointments of Rasselas,
we overhear Johnson in soliloquy. Boswell
found the comedy by describing his clash with
other characters.

This essential comedy of Johnson s char
acter is one which has never, oddly enough,
been put upon the stage. There was in his

INTRODUCTION xi

nature one of the unconscious and even agree
able contradictions loved by the true come
dian. It is a contradiction not at all uncom
mon in men of fertile and forcible minds. I
mean a strenuous and sincere belief in con
vention, combined with a huge natural inapti
tude for observing it. Somebody might make
a really entertaining stage-scene out of the in
consistency, while preserving a perfect unity
in the character of Johnson. He would have
innocently explained that a delicacy towards
females is what chiefly separates us from bar
barians with one foot on a lady s skirt and
another through her tambour-frame. He would
prove that mutual concessions are the charm of
city life, while his huge body blocked the traffic
of Fleet Street : and he would earnestly de
monstrate the sophistry of affecting to ignore
small things, with sweeping gestures that left
them in fragments all over the drawing-room
floor. Yet his preaching was perfectly sin
cere and very largely right. It was inconsist
ent with his practice; but it was not incon
sistent with his soul, or with the truth of
things.

In passing, it may be said that many say
ings about Johnson have been too easily
swallowed because they were mere sayings of
his contemporaries and intimates. But most

xii INTRODUCTION

of his contemporaries, as was natural, saw him
somewhat superficially ; and most of his intim
ates were wits, who would not lose the chance
of an epigram. In one instance especially I
think they managed to miss the full point of
the Johnsonian paradox, the combination of
great external carelessness with consider
able internal care. I mean in those repeated
and varied statements of Boswell and the
others that Johnson "talked for victory."
This only happened, I think, when the talk
had already become a fight; and every man
fights for victory. There is nothing else to
fight for. It is true that towards the end of
an argument Johnson would shout rude re
marks; but so have a vast number of the
men, wise and foolish, who have argued with
each other in taverns. The only difference is
that Johnson could think of rather memor
able remarks to shout. I fancy his friends
sometimes blamed him, not because he talked
for victory, but because he got it. If the idea
is that his eye was first on victory and not on
truth, I know no man in human history of
whom this would be more untrue. Nothing
is more notable in page after page of Bos well s
biography than the honest effort of Johnson
to get his enormous, perhaps elephantine,
brain to work on any problem however small

INTRODUCTION xiii

that is presented to it, and to produce a sane
and reliable reply. On the maddest stretch of
metaphysics or the most trivial trouble of
clothes or money, he always begins graciously
and even impartially. The mountain is in
travail to bring forth the mouse so long as
it is a live mouse.

The legend yet alive connects Samuel John
son chiefly with his Dictionary; and there is
a sense in which the symbol is not unfit. In
so far as a dictionary is dead and mechanical
it is specially inadequate to embody one of
the most vital and spirited of human souls.
Even in so far as a dictionary is serious it is
scarce specially appropriate ; for Johnson was
not always formally serious ; was sometimes
highly flippant and sometimes magnificently
coarse. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which
Johnson was like a dictionary. He took each
thing, big or small, as it came. He told the
truth, but on miscellaneous matters and in an
accidental order. One might even amuse
oneself with making another Johnson s Dic
tionary of his conversation, in the order of
A, B and C. "Abstain; I can, but not be
temperate. Baby; if left alone in tower with.
Catholics ; harmlessness of doctrines of," and
so on. No man, I think, ever tried to make
all his talk as accurate and not only as varied

xiv INTRODUCTION

as a dictionary. But then in his Dictionary
there was no one to contradict him. And here
we find again the true difference between the
Works and the Life.

Johnson, it may be repeated, was a splen
didly sane man who knew he was a little mad.
He was the exact opposite of the literary man
of proverbial satire ; the poet of Punch and
" the artistic temperament/ He was the very
opposite of the man who rejoices with the
skylark and quarrels with the dinner ; who is
an optimist to his publisher, and a pessimist
to his wife. Johnson was melancholy by
physical and mental trend ; and grew sad in
hours of mere, expansion and idleness. But
his unconquerable courage and commonsense
led him to defy his own temperament in every
detail of daily life; so that he was cheerful in
his conversation and sad only in his books.
Had Johnson been in the place of the minor
poet of modern satire, his wife and his cook
would have had all his happiness. The sky
lark would have had to bear all his depres
sion ; and would probably have borne it
pretty well.

It is for this reason that ever since the great
Boswellian revelation (one might almost say
apocalypse) every one must feel such works
as the Vanity of Human Wishes as insufficient or

INTRODUCTION xv

even conceivably monotonous. We are alone
with the shades of the great mind; without
allowing for the thousand lights of laughter,
encouragement and camaraderie which he per
petually permitted to play over them and dis
pel them; we are in some sense seeing the
battle without waiting for the victory. And
in this connection, as in many others, we are
prone to forget one very practical considera
tion ; that a poet, or a symbolic romancer, will
generally tend to describe not so much the
mental attitudes which he seriously thinks
right, as those which are so temperamentally
tied on to him, that he knows he can describe
them well. Merely as an artist, he is less
troubled about the truth, than about whether
he can tell it truly. And it was hard if John
son could not get something out of some of
his black hours.

There is another cause that makes his
works, as it were, a little monochrome in com
parison with the rattling kaleidoscope of his
conversations. I mean the fact, very charac
teristic of his century, and very uncharacter
istic of our own, that if he had essential in
tellectual injustices (and he had one or two),
he did not set out to have them. With the
pen positively in his hand, he felt like a judge,
as if he had the judge s wig on his head. It

xvi INTRODUCTION

required social collision and provocation to
sting him into some of those superb exaggera
tions, things that were the best he ever said,
but things that he never would have written.
It was that eighteenth-century idea of a re
sponsible and final justice in the arts. Our
own time has run away from it, as it has run
away from all the really virile and constructive
parts of Rationalism, retaining only a few
fragments of its verbalism and its historical
ignorance.

For all these reasons it is difficult to keep
Johnson s actual literary works in a proper
prominence among all the facts and fables
about him; just as it might be difficult suc
cessfully to exhibit six fine etchings or steel
engravings among all the gorgeous landscapes
or gaudy portraits of the Royal Academy.
But if people infer that the etchings and en
gravings are not good of their kind, then they
are very much mistaken. All these John
sonian etchings fulfil the best artistic test of
etching; they are very thoroughly in black
and white. All these steel engravings are
really steel engravings; they are graven by a
brain of steel. What Macaulay said about
Johnson in this respect is both neat and true:
unlike most of the things he said about John
son, which were neat and false. Macaulay

INTRODUCTION xvii

not only understood Johnsonian criticism, but
he foresaw most modern criticism, when he
said that the Doctor s comments always at
least meant something. He belonged to an
age and school that loved to be elaborately
lucid; but one must mean something to be
able to explain it six times over. Many a
modern critic, called delicate, elusive, reticent,
subtle, individual, has gained this praise by
saying something once which anyone could
see to be rubbish if he had said it twice.

It is with some such considerations that the
modern reader should sit down to enjoy the
very enjoyable Rasselas or the still more en
joyable Lives of the Poets. He must get rid
of the lazy modern legend that whenever
Johnson decides he dogmatizes, and that
whenever he dogmatizes he bullies. He must
be quit of the commonplace tradition that
when Johnson uses a long word he is using
a sort of scholastic incantation more or less
analogous to a curse. He must put himself
into an attitude adequately appreciative of the
genuine athletics of the intellect in which
these giants indulged. Never mind whethei
the antithesis seems forced; enquire how
many modern leader-writers would have been
able to force it. Never mind whether the
logic seems to lead a man to the right con-

b

xviii INTRODUCTION

elusion ; ask how many modern essayists have
enough logic to lead them anywhere. Wisdom
doubtless is a better thing than wit; but when
we read the rambling polysyllables of our
modern books and magazines, I think it is
much clearer that we have lost the wit than it
is that we have found the wisdom,

If we pass from the style to the substance
of Johnson s criticisms, we find a further re
buke to our own time. The fallacy in the
mere notion of progress or " evolution * is
simply this; that as human history really
goes one has only to be old-fashioned long
enough to be in the very newest fashion. If
there were a lady old enough and vain enough
to wear an Empire dress since the marriage of
Marie Louise, she would have had the first
and nearest adumbration of a hobble skirt. If
one ancient polytheist had survived long
enough he might have lived to hear an Ox
ford don say to me at a dinner-party that
perhaps we are not living in a Universe, but
in a Multiverse. This same law, that by lag
ging behind the times one can generally get
in front of them; has operated to the advan
tage of Johnson. Johnson happened to grow
up in an old tradition in the early eighteenth
century, before his friend Garrick and others
had made the great Shakespeare boom. He

INTRODUCTION xix

therefore wrote of Shakespeare just as if
Shakespeare had been a human being; and has
been reviled ever since for his vandalism and
lack of imagination. In our own time, how
ever, we have seen Mr. Bernard Shaw cling
ing to the pedestal of Johnson as Caesar to
that of Pompey; and protesting (with an ex
actly typical combination of impudence and
truth) that he, Bernard Shaw, is the old
classical critic, and has only been carrying on
out of the eighteenth century, the old class
ical criticism of Shakespeare. It is well to
take this thought through our excursions
into The Lives of the Poets. Every comment
is lucid; do not be in haste to call any com
ment antiquated ; you never know when it
will be new.

For Johnson is immortal in a more solemn
sense than that of the common laurel. He is
as immortal as mortality. The world will
always return to him, almost as it returns to
Aristotle; because he also judged all things
with a gigantic and detached good sense. One
of the bravest men ever born, he was nowhere
more devoid of fear than when he confessed
the fear of death. There he is the mighty
voice of all flesh ; heroic because it is timid.
In the bald catalogue of biography with which
I began, I purposely omitted the deathbed in

XX

INTRODUCTION

the old bachelor house in Bolt Court in 1784-
That was no part of the sociable and literary
Tohnson but of the solitary and immortal
one I will not say that he died alone with
God, for each of us will do that; but he did
m a doubtful and changing world what m
securer civilizations the saints have done, tie
detached himself from time as m an ecstasy o
impartiality; and saw the ages with an equal
eye He was not merely alone with God; he
Ten shared the loneliness of God, which is

love " G. K. CHESTERTON.

SAMUEL JOHNSON

The sequence of these selected extracts is, as far as possible,
chronological, except that all relating to the Dictionary has
been gathered together.

THE PLAN OF AN ENGLISH
DICTIONARY (1747)

To the Right Honourable Philip Dormer, Earl
of Chesterfield, one of His Majesty s Principal
Secretaries of State

MY LORD,

WHEN first I undertook to write an ENGLISH
DICTIONARY I had no expectation of any
higher patronage than that of the proprietors
of the copy, nor prospect of any other advan
tage than the price of my labour. I knew
that the work in which I engaged is generally
considered as drudgery for the blind, as the
proper toil of artless industry; a task that
requires neither the light of learning, nor the
activity of genius, but may be successfully
performed without any higher quality than
that of bearing burdens with dull patience,

B

2 SAMUEL JOHNSON

and beating the tract of the alphabet with
sluggish resolution.

Whether this opinion, so long transmitted,
and so widely propagated, had its beginning
from truth and nature, or from accident and
prejudice ; whether it be decreed by the
authority of reason, or the tyranny of ignor
ance, that of all the candidates for literary
praise, the unhappy lexicographer holds the
lowest place, neither vanity nor interest in
cited me to inquire. It appeared that the
province allotted me was, of all the regions
of learning, generally confessed to be the
least delightful, that it was believed to pro
duce neither fruits nor flowers; and that after
a long and laborious cultivation, not even the
barren laurel had been found upon it.

Yet on this province, my Lord, I entered,
with the pleasing hope, that, as it was low, it
likewise would be safe. I was drawn forward
with the prospect of employment, which,
though not splendid, would be useful ; and
which, though it could not make my life en
vied, would keep it innocent; which would
awaken no passion, engage me in no conten
tion, nor throw in my way any temptation to
disturb the quiet of others by censure, or my
own by flattery.

I had read indeed of times, in which princes

THE DICTIONARY 3

and statesmen thought it part of their honour
to promote the improvement of their native
tongues; and in which dictionaries were
written under the protection of greatness. To
the patrons of such undertakings I willingly
paid the homage of believing that they, who
were thus solicitous for the perpetuity of their
language, had reason to expect that their
actions would be celebrated by posterity, and
that the eloquence which they promoted would
be employed in their praise. But I consider
such acts of beneficence as prodigies, recorded
rather to raise wonder than expectation ; and,
content with the terms that I had stipulated,
had not suffered my imagination to flatter me
with any other encouragement, when I found
that my design had been thought by your
Lordship of importance sufficient to attract
your favour.

How far this unexpected distinction can
be rated among the happy incidents of life, I
am not yet able to determine. Its first effect
has been to make me anxious, lest it should
fix the attention of the public too much upon
me, and, as it once happened to an epic poet
of France, by raising the reputation of the
attempt, obstruct the reception of the work.
I imagine what the world will expect from a
scheme, prosecuted under your Lordship s

4 SAMUEL JOHNSON

influence; and I know that expectation, when
her wings are once expanded, easily reaches
heights which performance never will attain ;
and when she has mounted the summit of
perfection, derides her follower, who dies in
the pursuit.

Not therefore to raise expectation, but to
repress it, I here lay before your Lordship the
Plan of my undertaking, that more may not
be demanded than I intend ; and that, before
it is too far advanced to be thrown into a new
method, I may be advertised of its defects or
superfluities. Such informations I may justly
hope, from the emulation with which those,
who desire the praise of elegance or discern
ment, must contend in the promotion of a
design that you, my Lord, have not thought
unworthy to share your attention with treaties
and with wars.

In the first attempt to methodize my ideas
I found a difficulty, which extended itself to
the whole work. It was not easy to determine
by what rule of distinction the words of this
Dictionary were to be chosen. The chief in
tent of it is to preserve the purity, and ascer
tain the meaning, of our English idiom ; and
this seems to require nothing more than that
our language be considered, so far as it is our
own ; that the words and phrases used in the

THE DICTIONARY 5

general intercourse of life, or found in the
works of those whom we commonly style
polite writers, be selected, without including
the terms of particular professions ; since, with
the arts to which they relate, they are gener
ally derived from other nations, and are very
often the same in all the languages of this
part of the world. This is, perhaps, the exact
and pure idea of a grammatical dictionary ;
but in lexicography, as in other arts, naked
science is too delicate for the purposes of life.
The value of a work must be estimated by its
use ; it is not enough that a dictionary delights
the critic, unless, at the same time it instructs
the learner ; as it is to little purpose that an
engine amuses the philosopher by the subtilty
of its mechanism, if it requires so much know
ledge in its application as to be of no advan
tage to the common workman.

The title which I prefix to my work has
long conveyed a very miscellaneous idea, and
they that take a dictionary into their hands
have been accustomed to expect from it a
solution of almost every difficulty. If foreign
words therefore were rejected, it could be little
regarded, except by critics, or those who aspire
to criticism ; and however it might enlighten
those that write, would be all darkness to
them that only read. The unlearned much

6 SAMUEL JOHNSON

oftener consult their dictionaries for the mean
ing of words, than for their structures or
formations; and the words that most want
explanation, are generally terms of art ; which,
therefore, experience has taught my predeces
sors to spread with a kind of pompous luxuri
ance over their productions.

....

When I survey the Plan which I have laid
before you, I cannot, my Lord, but confess,
that [ am frighted at its extent, and, like the
soldiers of Caesar, look on Britain as a new
world, which it is almost madness to invade.
But I hope, that though I should not com
plete the conquest, I shall at least discover the
coast, civilize part of the inhabitants, and
make it easy for some other adventurer to
proceed farther, to reduce them wholly to
subjection, and settle them under laws.

We are taught by the great Roman orator,
that every man should propose to himself the
highest degree of excellence, but that he may
stop with honour at the second or third :
though therefore my performance should fall
below the excellence of other dictionaries, I
may obtain, at least, the praise of having en
deavoured well ; nor shall I think it any re
proach to my diligence, that I have retired
without a triumph, from a contest with

THE DICTIONARY 7

united academies, and long successions of
learned compilers. I cannot hope, in the
warmest moments, to preserve so much
caution through so long a work, as not often
to sink into negligence, or to obtain so much
knowledge of all its parts as not frequently to
fail by ignorance. I expect that sometimes
the desire of accuracy will urge me to super
fluities, and sometimes the fear of prolixity
betray me to omissions : that in the extent
of such variety, I shall be often bewildered ;
and in the mazes of such intricacy, be fre
quently entangled; that in one part refine
ment will be subtilized beyond exactness, and
evidence dilated in another beyond perspicuity.
Yet I do not despair of approbation from
those who, knowing the uncertainty of con
jecture, the scantiness of knowledge, the falli
bility of memory, and the unsteadiness of
attention, can compare the causes of error
with the means of avoiding it, and the extent
of art with the capacity of man ; and whatever
be the event of my endeavours, I shall not
easily regret an attempt which has procured
me the honour of appearing thus publicly,

My Lord,

Your Lordship s most obedient
and most humble servant,

SAM. JOHNSON.

8 SAMUEL JOHNSON

To the Right Hon. the Earl of Chesterfield

( I 755)-
MY LORD,

I HAVE been lately informed, by the proprie
tors of The World} that two papers, in which
my Dictionary is recommended to the public,
were written by your Lordship. To be so
distinguished, is an honour which, being very
little accustomed to favours from the great, I
know not well how to receive, or in what
terms to acknowledge.

When, upon some slight encouragement,
I first visited your Lordship, I was over
powered, like the rest of mankind, by the en
chantment of your address, and could not
forbear to wish, that I might boast myself le
vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre; that I
might obtain that regard for which I saw the
world contending. But I found my attend
ance so little encouraged, that neither pride
nor modesty would suffer me to continue it.
When I had once addressed your Lordship in
public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing
which a retired and uncourtly scholar can
possess. I had done all that I could ; and no
man is well pleased to have his all neglected,
be it ever so little.

Seven years, my Lord, have now passed
since I waited in your outward room, or was

THE DICTIONARY 9

repulsed from your door ; during which time
I have been pushing on my work through
difficulties of which it is useless to complain,
and have brought it at last to the verge of
publication, without one act of assistance, one
word of encouragement, or one smile of
favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for
I never had a patron before.

The Shepherd in Virgil grew acquainted
with Love, and found him a native of the
rocks.

Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks
with unconcern on a man struggling for life
in the water, and, when he has reached ground,
encumbers him with help ? The notice which
you have been pleased to take of my labours,
had it been early, had been kind : but it has
been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot
enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart
it; till I am known, and do not want it. I
hope it is no very cynical asperity not to con
fess obligations where no benefit has been re
ceived; or to be unwilling that the public
should consider me as owing that to a patron,
which Providence has enabled me to do for
myself.

Having carried on my work thus far with
so little obligation to any favourer of learning,
I shall not be disappointed, though I should

io SAMUEL JOHNSON

conclude it, if less be possible, with less ; for
I have been long wakened from that dream of
hope, in which I once boasted myself with so
much exultation,

My Lord, your Lordship s most humble,
And most obedient servant,

SAMUEL JOHNSON.

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY

IT is the fate of those who toil at the lower
employments of life, to be rather driven by
the fear of evil, than attracted by the prospect
of good ; to be exposed to censure, without
hope of praise ; to be disgraced by miscarriage,
or punished for neglect, where success would
have been without applause, and diligence
without reward.

Among these unhappy mortals is the writer
of dictionaries; whom mankind have con
sidered, not as the pupil but the slave of
science, the pioneer of literature, doomed only
to remove rubbish and clear obstructions from
the paths through which Learning and Genius
press forward to conquest and glory, without
bestowing a smile on the humble drudge that
facilitates their progress. Every other author
may aspire to praise ; the lexicographer can
only hope to escape reproach, and even this

THE DICTIONARY n

negative recompense has been yet granted to
very few.

I have, notwithstanding this discourage
ment, attempted a Dictionary of the English
Language, which, while it was employed in
the cultivation of every species of literature,
has itself been hitherto neglected ; suffered to
spread under the direction of chance, into wild
exuberance ; resigned to the tyranny of time
and fashion ; and exposed to the corruptions
of ignorance and caprices of innovation.

When I took the first survey of my under
taking, I found our speech copious without
order, and energetic without rule ; wherever
I turned my view, there was perplexity to be
disentangled and confusion to be regulated ;
choice was to be made out of boundless variety,
without any established principle of selection;
adulterations were to be detected, without a
settled test of purity ; and modes of expression
to be rejected or received, without the suffrages
of any writers of classical reputation or ac
knowledged authority. . . .

When first I engaged in this work, I re
solved to leave neither words nor things
unexamined, and pleased myself with a pro
spect of the hours which I should revel away
in the feasts of literature, the obscure recesses
of northern learning which I should enter

12 SAMUEL JOHNSON

and ransack, the treasures with which I ex
pected every search into those neglected
mines to reward my labour, and the triumph
with which I should display my acquisitions
to mankind. When I had thus inquired into
the original of words, I resolved to show
likewise my attention to things ; to pierce
deep into every science, to inquire the nature
of every substance of which I inserted the
name, to limit every idea by a definition
strictly logical, and exhibit every production
of art or nature in an accurate description,
that my book might be in place of all other
dictionaries, whether appellative or technical.
But these were the dreams of a poet doomed
at last to wake a lexicographer. I soon found
that it is too late to look for instruments,
when the work calls for execution, and that
whatever abilities I had brought to my task,
with those I must finally perform it. To
deliberate whenever I doubted, to inquire
whenever I was ignorant, would have pro
tracted the undertaking without end, and,
perhaps, without much improvement; for I
did not find by my first experiments, that
what I had not of my own was easily to be
obtained ; I saw that one inquiry only gave
occasion to another, that book referred to
book, that to search was not always to find,

THE DICTIONARY 13

and to find was not always to be informed ;
and that thus to pursue perfection, was, like
the first inhabitants of Arcadia, to chase the
sun, which, when they had reached the hill
where he seemed to rest, was still beheld at the
same distance from them. . . .

Of the event of this work, for which, having
laboured it with so much application, I cannot
but have some degree of parental fondness,
it is natural to form conjectures. Those who
have been persuaded to think well of my
design, will require that it should fix our lan
guage, and put a stop to those alterations
which time and chance have hitherto been
suffered to make in it without opposition.
With this consequence I will confess that [
flattered myself for awhile; but now begin
to fear that I have indulged expectation which
neither reason nor experience can justify.
When we see men grow old and die at a
certain time one after another, from century
to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises
to prolong life to a thousand years ; and with
equal justice may the lexicographer be de
rided, who, being able to produce no example
of a nation that has preserved their words and
phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his
dictionary can embalm his language, and secure
it from corruption and decay, that it is in his

i 4 SAMUEL JOHNSON

power to change sublunary nature, and clear the
world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation.

With this hope, however, academies have
been instituted, to guard the avenues of their
languages, to retain fugitives, and repulse in
truders ; but their vigilance and activity have
hitherto been vain ; sounds are too volatile
and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain
syllables and to lash the wind, are equally the
undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure
its desires by its strength. . . .

If an academy should be established for
the cultivation of our style ; which I, who can
never wish to see dependence multiplied,
hope the spirit of English liberty will hinder
or destroy ; let them, instead of compiling
grammars and dictionaries, endeavour, with
all their influence, to stop the license of trans
lators, whose idleness and ignorance, if it be
suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble
the dialect of France.

If the changes that we fear be thus irre
sistible, what remains but to acquiesce with
silence, as in the other insurmountable dis
tresses of humanity ? It remains that we retard
what we cannot repel, that we palliate what
we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by
care, though death cannot be ultimately de
feated: tongues, like governments, have a

THE DICTIONARY 15

natural tendency to degeneration ; we have
long preserved our constitution, let us make
some struggles for our language.

In hope of giving longevity to that which
its own nature forbids to be immortal, I have
devoted this book, the labour of years, to the
honour of my country, that we may no longer
yield the palm of philology, without a contest,
to the nations of the continent. The chief
glory of every people arises from its authors :
whether I shall add any thing by my own
writings to the reputation of English litera
ture, must be left to time : much of my life
has been lost under the pressures of disease;
much has been trifled away; and much has
always been spent in provision for the day
that was passing over me; but I shall not
think my employment useless or ignoble, if
by my assistance foreign nations and distant
ages gain access to the propagators of know
ledge, and understand the teachers of truth ;
if my labours afford light to the repositories
of science, and add celebrity to Bacon, to
Hooker, to Milton, and to Boyle.

When I am animated by this wish, I look
with pleasure on my book, however defective,
and deliver it to the world with the spirit of a
man that has endeavoured well. That it will
immediately become popular, I have not pro-

1 6 SAMUEL JOHNSON

mised to myself: a few wild blunders, and
risible absurdities, from which no work of such
multiplicity was ever free, may for a time fur
nish folly with laughter, and harden ignorance
into contempt ; but useful diligence will at last
prevail, and there never can be wanting some
who distinguish desert ; who will consider that
no dictionary of a living tongue ever can be
perfect, since, while it is hastening to publica
tion, some words are budding, and some falling
away ; that a whole life cannot be spent upon
syntax and etymology, and that even a whole
life would not be sufficient; that he, whose
design includes whatever language can express,
must often speak of what he does not under
stand ; that a writer will sometimes be hurried
by eagerness to the end, and sometimes faint
with weariness under a task, which Scaliger
compares to the labours of the anvil and the
mine ; that what is obvious is not always
known, and what is known is not always
present ; that sudden fits of inadvertency will
surprise vigilance, slight avocations will seduce
attention, and casual eclipses of the mind
will darken learning ; and that the writer shall
often in vain trace his memory at the moment
of need, for that which yesterday he knew with
intuitive readiness, and which will come
uncalled into his thoughts to-morrow.

THE DICTIONARY 17

In this work, when it shall be found that
much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that
much likewise is performed ; and though no
book was ever spared out of tenderness to the
author, and the world is little solicitous to
know whence proceed the faults of that which
it condemns; yet it may gratify curiosity to
inform it, that the English Dictionary was
written with little assistance of the learned,
and without any patronage of the great; not
in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under
the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst
inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and
in sorrow. It may repress the triumph of
malignant criticism to observe, that if our
language is not here fully displayed, I have
only failed in an attempt which no human
powers have hitherto completed. If the lexi
cons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed,
and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, after
the toil of successive ages, inadequate and
delusive ; if the aggregated knowledge and
co-operating diligence of the Italian academi
cians did not secure them from the censure
of Beni ; if the embodied critics of France,
when fifty years had been spent upon their
work, were obliged to change its economy,
and give their second edition another form, I
may surely be contented without the praise of

c

1 8 SAMUEL JOHNSON

perfection, which if I could obtain, in this
gloom of solitude, what would it avail me ? I
have protracted my work till most of those
whom I wished to please have sunk into the
grave, and success and miscarriage are empty
sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid
tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from
censure or from praise.

LIVES OF EMINENT PERSONS

<c To have great excellences and great faults,
magnae virtutes, nee minora vttia, is the
poesy," says our author, cc of the best natures."
This poesy may be properly applied to the
style of Browne ; it is vigorous, but rugged ;
it is learned, but pedantic ; it is deep, but
obscure; it strikes, but does not please; it
commands, but does not allure: his tropes
are harsh, and his combinations uncouth. He
fell into an age in which our language began
to lose the stability which it hid obtained in
the time of Elizabeth ; and was considered by
every writer as a subject on which he might
try his plastic skill, by moulding it according
to his own fancy. Milton, in consequence of
this encroaching licence, began to introduce
the Latin idiom: and Browne, though he gave
less disturbance to our structures in phrase
ology, yet poured in a multitude of exotic
words ; many, indeed, useful and significant,
which, if rejected, must be supplied by cir
cumlocution, such as commensality for the
state of many living at the same table ; but
many superfluous, as a faralogical for an un
reasonable doubt ; and some so obscure, that

19

20 SAMUEL JOHNSON

they conceal his meaning rather than explain it,
as arthritical analogies^ for parts that serve
some animals in the place of joints.

His style is, indeed, a tissue of many lan
guages; a mixture of heterogeneous words,
brought together from distant regions, with
terms originally appropriated to one art, and
drawn by violence into the service of another.
He must, however, be confessed to have aug
mented our philosophical diction : and in de
fence of his uncommon words and expressions,
we must consider, that he had uncommon
sentiments, and was not content to express in
many words that idea for which any language
could supply a single term.

But his innovations are sometimes pleasing,
and his temerities happy : he has many verba
ardentia^ forcible expressions, which he would
never have found but by venturing to the ut
most verge of propriety; and flights which
would never have been reached, but by one
who had very little fear of the shame of falling.

If to have all that riches can purchase is to
be rich ; if to do all that can be done in a long
time is to live long ; he is equally a benefactor
to mankind, who teaches them to protract the
duration, or shorten the business, of life.

THE RAMBLER

THE OUTSET

PERHAPS few authors have presented them
selves before the public, without wishing that
such ceremonial modes of entrance had been
anciently established, as might have freed
them from those dangers which the desire of
pleasing is certain to produce, and precluded
the vain expedients of softening censure by
apologies, or rousing attention by abruptness.

The epic writers have found the proemial
part of the poem such an addition to their
undertaking, that they have almost unanim
ously adopted the first lines of Homer, and
the reader needs only be informed of the
subject, to know in what manner the poem
will begin.

But this solemn repetition is hitherto the
peculiar distinction of heroic poetry; it has
never been legally extended to the lower
orders of literature, but it seems to be con
sidered as an hereditary privilege, to be enjoyed
only by those who claim it from their alliance
to the genius of Homer.

21

22 SAMUEL JOHNSON

The rules which the injudicious use of this
prerogative suggested to Horace, may indeed
be applied to the direction of candidates for
inferior fame ; it may be proper for all to re
member, that they ought not to raise expecta
tion which it is not in their power to satisfy,
and that it is more pleasing to see smoke
brightening into flame, than flame sinking
into smoke.

This precept has been long received, both
from the regard to the authority of Horace,
and its conformity to the general opinion of
the world ; yet there have been always some,
that thought it no deviation from modesty to
recommend their own labours, and imagined
themselves entitled by indisputable merit to
an exception from general restraints, and to
elevations not allowed in common life. They,
perhaps, believed, that when, like Thucydides,
they bequeathed to mankind xrrijota E? aV, an
estate for ever, it was an additional favour to
inform them of its value.

It may, indeed, be no less dangerous to
claim, on certain occasions, too little than too
much. There is something captivating in
spirit and intrepidity, to which we often yield,
as to a resistless power ; nor can he reasonably
expect the confidence of others, who too
apparently distrusts himself.

THE RAMBLER 23

Plutarch, in his enumeration of the various
occasions on which a man may without just
offence proclaim his own excellences, has omit
ted the case of an author entering the world ;
unless it may be comprehended, under his
general position, that a man may lawfully
praise himself for those qualities which cannot
be known but from his own mouth ; as when
he is among strangers, and can have no oppor
tunity of an actual exertion of his powers.
That the case of an author is parallel will
scarcely be granted, because he necessarily
discovers the degree of his merit to his judges,
when he appears at his trial. But it should be
remembered, that unless his judges are in
clined to favour him, they will hardly be per
suaded to hear the cause.

In love, the state which fills the heart with
a degree of solicitude next that of an author,
it has been held a maxim, that success is most
easily obtained by indirect and unperceived
approaches ; he who too soon professes him
self a lover, raises obstacles to his own wishes,
and those whom disappointments have taught
experience, endeavour to conceal their passion
till they believe their mistress wishes for the
discovery. The same method, if it were
practicable to writers, would save many com
plaints of the severity of the age, and the

24 SAMUEL JOHNSON

caprices of criticism. If a man could glide
imperceptibly into the favour of the public,
and only proclaim his pretensions to literary
honours when he is sure of not being re
jected, he might commence author with better
hopes, as his failings might escape contempt,
though he shall never attain much regard.

But since the world supposes every man
that writes, ambitious of applause, as some
ladies have taught themselves to believe that
every man intends love, who expresses civility,
the miscarriage of any endeavour in learning
raises an unbounded contempt, indulged by
most minds without scruple, as an honest
triumph over unjust claims, and exorbitant
expectations. The artifices of those who put
themselves in this hazardous state have there
fore been multiplied in proportion to their
fear as well as their ambition ; and are to be
looked upon with more indulgence, as they
are incited at once by the two great movers of
the human mind, the desire of good and the
fear of evil. For who can wonder that, allured
on one side, and frightened on the other, some
should endeavour to gain favour by bribing
the judge with an appearance of respect which
they do not feel, to excite compassion by con
fessing weakness of which they are not con
vinced ; and others to attract regard by a show

THE RAMBLER 25

of openness and magnanimity, by a daring
profession of their own deserts, and a public
challenge of honours and rewards ?

The ostentatious and haughty display of
themselves has been the usual refuge of diur
nal writers ; in vindication of whose practice
it may be said, that what it wants in prudence
is supplied by sincerity, and who at least may
plead, that if their boasts deceive any into the
perusal of their performances, they defraud
them of but little time.

Quid enim? Concurritur horae
Momenta ci.ta mors venitj aut victoria laeta.

The battle join, and in a moment s flight,
Death, or a joyful conquest, ends the fight.

FRANCIS.

The question concerning the merit of the day
is soon decided, and we are not condemned to
toil through half a folio, to be convinced that
the writer has broke his promise.

It is one among many reasons for which I
purpose to endeavour the entertainment of my
countrymen by a short essay on Tuesday and
Saturday, that I hope not much to tire those
whom 1 shall not happen to please ; and if I
am not commended for the beauty of my
works, to be at least pardoned for their brevity.
But whether my expectations are most fixed
on pardon or praise, I think it not necessary

26 SAMUEL JOHNSON

to discover; for having accurately weighed
the reasons for arrogance and submission, I
find them so nearly equiponderant, that my
impatience to try the event of my first per
formance will not suffer me to attend any
longer the trepidations of the balance.

There are, indeed, many conveniences al
most peculiar to this method of publication,
which may naturally flatter the author, whether
he be confident or timorous. The man to
whom the extent of his knowledge, or the
sprightliness of his imagination, has, in his
own opinion, already secured the praises of
the world, willingly takes that way of display
ing his abilities which will soonest give him
an opportunity of hearing the voice of fame;
it heightens his alacrity to think in how many
places he shall hear what he is now writing,
read with ecstasies to-morrow. He will often
please himself with reflecting, that the author
of a large treatise must proceed with anxiety,
lest, before the completion of his work, the
attention of the public may have changed its
object ; but that he who is confined to no
single topic may follow the national taste
through all its variations, and catch the aura
popular is , the gale of favour, from what point
soever it shall blow.

Nor is the prospect less likely to ease the

THE RAMBLER 27

doubts of the cautious, and the terrors of the
fearful, for to such the shortness of every
single paper is a powerful encouragement.
He that questions his abilities to arrange the
dissimilar parts of an extensive plan, or fears
to be lost in a complicated system, may yet
hope to adjust a few pages without perplexity ;
and if, when he turns over the repositories of
his memory, he finds his collection too small
for a volume, he may yet have enough to
furnish out an essay. He that would fear to
lay out too much time upon an experiment of
which he knows not the event, persuades him
self that a few days will show him what he is
to expect from his learning and his genius. If
he thinks his own judgment not sufficiently
enlightened, he may, by attending to the re
marks which every paper will produce, rectify
his opinions. If he should with too little pre
meditation encumber himself by an unwieldy
subject, he can quit it without confessing his
ignorance, and pass to other topics less dan
gerous, or more tractable. And if he finds,
with all his industry, and all his artifices, that
he cannot deserve regard, or cannot attain it,
he may let the design fall at once, and, with
out injury to others or himself, retire to
amusements of greater pleasure, or to studies
of better prospect.

28 SAMUEL JOHNSON

THAT the mind of man is never satisfied
with the objects immediately before it, but is
always breaking away from the present mo
ment, and losing itself in schemes of future
felicity ; and that we forget the proper use of
the time now in our power, to provide for
the enjoyment of that which, perhaps, may
never be granted us, has been frequently re
marked ; and as this practice is a commodious
subject of raillery to the gay, and of declama
tion to the serious, it has been ridiculed with
all the pleasantry of wit, and exaggerated with
all the amplifications of rhetoric. Every in
stance, by which its absurdity might appear
most flagrant, has been studiously collected ;
it has been marked with every epithet of con
tempt, and all the tropes and figures have
been called forth against it.

Censure is willingly indulged, because it
always implies some superiority ; men please
themselves with imagining that they have
made a deeper search, or wider survey, than
others, and detected faults and follies, which
escape vulgar observation. And the pleasure
of wantoning in common topics is so tempt
ing to a writer, that he cannot easily resign
it; a train of sentiments generally received
enables him to shine without labour, and to
conquer without a contest. It is so easy to

THE RAMBLER 29

laugh at the folly of him who lives only in
idea, refuses immediate ease for distant pleas
ures, and, instead of enjoying the blessings

r vr i vr v J &

or lire, lets lire glide away in preparations to
enjoy them ; it affords such opportunities of
triumphant exultation, to exemplify the un
certainty of the human state, to rouse mortals
from their dream, and inform them of the
silent celerity of time, that we may believe
authors willing rather to transmit than ex
amine so advantageous a principle, and more
inclined to pursue a track so smooth and so
flowery, than attentively to consider whether
it leads to truth.

This quality of looking forward into futur
ity seems the unavoidable condition of a
being, whose motions are gradual, and whose
life is progressive : as his powers are limited,
he must use means for the attainment of his
ends, and intend first what he performs last ;
as, by continual advances from his first stage
of existence, he is perpetually varying the
horizon of his prospects, he must always dis
cover new motives of action, new excitements
of fear, and allurements of desire.

The end therefore which at present calls
forth our efforts will be found, when it is
once gained, to be only one of the means to
some remoter end. The natural flights of the

30 SAMUEL JOHNSON

human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure,
but from hope to hope.

He that directs his steps to a certain point,
must frequently turn his eyes to that place
which he strives to reach ; he that undergoes
the fatigue of labour, must solace his weari
ness with the contemplation of its reward. In
agriculture, one of the most simple and neces
sary employments, no man turns up the
ground but because he thinks of the harvest,
that harvest which blights may intercept,
which inundations may sweep away, or which
death or calamity may hinder him from
reaping.

Yet as few maxims are widely received or
long retained but for some conformity with
truth and nature, it must be confessed, that
this caution against keeping our view too in
tent upon remote advantages is not without
its propriety or usefulness, though it may
have been recited with too much levity, or
enforced with too little distinction ; for, not
to speak of that vehemence of desire which
presses through right and wrong to its grati
fication, or that anxious inquietude which is
justly chargeable with distrust of Heaven,
subjects too solemn for my present purpose;
it frequently happens that by indulging early
the raptures of success, we forget the measures

THE RAMBLER 31

necessary to secure it, and suffer the imagina
tion to riot in the fruition of some possible
good, till the time of obtaining it has slipped
away.

There would, however, be few enterprises
of great labour or hazard undertaken, if we
had not the power of magnifying the advant
ages which we persuade ourselves to expect
from them. When the knight of La Mancha
gravely recounts to his companion the ad
ventures by which he is to signalize himself
in such a manner, that he shall be summoned
to the support of empires, solicited to accept
the heiress of the crown which he has pre
served, have honours and riches to scatter
about him, and an island to bestow on his
worthy squire, very few readers, amidst their
mirth or pity, can deny that they have ad
mitted visions of the same kind ; though they
have not, perhaps, expected events equally
strange, or by means equally inadequate.
When we pity him, we reflect on our own
disappointments ; and when we laugh, our
hearts inform us that he is not more ridi
culous than ourselves, except that he tells
what we have only thought.

The understanding of a man naturally san
guine may, indeed, be easily vitiated by the
luxurious indulgence of hope, however neces-

32 SAMUEL JOHNSON

sary to the production of every thing great or
excellent, as some plants are destroyed by too
open exposure to that sun which gives life
and beauty to the vegetable world.

Perhaps no class of the human species re
quire more to be cautioned against this anti
cipation of happiness, than those that aspire
to the name of authors. A man of lively
fancy no sooner finds a hint moving in his
mind, than he makes momentaneous excur
sions to the press, and to the world, and,
with a little encouragement from flattery,
pushes forward into future ages, and prog
nosticates the honours to be paid him, when
envy is extinct, and faction forgotten, and
those, whom partiality now suffers to obscure
him, shall have given way to the triflers of
as short duration as themselves.

Those who have proceeded so far as to
appeal to the tribunal of succeeding times,
are not likely to be cured of their infatua
tion; but all endeavours ought to be used
for the prevention of a disease, for which,
when it has attained its height, perhaps no
remedy will be found in the gardens of philo
sophy, however she may boast her physic of
the mind, her cathartics of vice, or lenitives
of passion.

I shall, therefore, while I am yet but lightly

THE RAMBLER 33

touched with the symptoms of the writer s
malady, endeavour to fortify myself against
the infection, not without some weak hope
that my preservatives may extend their virtue
to others, whose employment exposes them
to the same danger.

Laudis amore tumes? Sunt cert a piacula, quae te
Ter pure lecto poterunt recreare libello.

Is fame your passion? Wisdom s powerful charm,
If thrice read over, shall its force disarm.

FRANCIS.

It is the sage advice of Epictetus, that a
man should accustom himself often to think
of what is most shocking and terrible, that by
such reflections he may be preserved from too
ardent wishes for seeming good, and from too
much dejection in real evil.

There is nothing more dreadful to an author
than neglect ; compared with which, reproach,
hatred, and opposition, are names of happi
ness ; yet this worst, this meanest fate, every
one who dares to write has reason to fear.

/ nunc, et versus tecum meditare canoros.

Go now, and meditate thy tuneful lays.

ELPHINSTON.

It may not be unfit for him who makes a
new entrance into the lettered world, so far

D

34 SAMUEL JOHNSON

to suspect his own powers, as to believe that
he possibly may deserve neglect ; that nature
may not have qualified him much to enlarge
or embellish knowledge, nor sent him forth
entitled by indisputable superiority to regulate
the conduct of the rest of mankind: that,
though the world must be granted to be yet
in ignorance, he is not destined to dispel the
cloud, nor to shine out as one of the lumin
aries of life. For this suspicion, every cata
logue of a library will furnish sufficient reason;
as he will find it crowded with names of men,
who, though now forgotten, were once no
less enterprising or confident than himself,
equally pleased with their own productions,
equally caressed by their patrons, and flattered
by their friends.

But, though it should happen that an author
is capable of excelling, yet his merit may pass
without notice, huddled in the variety of
things, and thrown into the general miscellany
of life. He that endeavours after fame by
writing, solicits the regard of a multitude
fluctuating in pleasures, or immersed in busi
ness, without time for intellectual amuse
ments ; he appeals to judges, prepossessed by
passions, or corrupted by prejudices, which
preclude their approbation of any new per
formance. Some are too indolent to read any

THE RAMBLER 35

thing, till its reputation is established ; others
too envious to promote that fame which gives
them pain by its increase. What is new is
opposed, because most are unwilling to be
taught; and what is known is rejected, be
cause it is not sufficiently considered, that
men more frequently require to be reminded
than informed. The learned are afraid to de
clare their opinion early, lest they should
put their reputation in hazard; the ignorant
always imagine themselves giving some proof
of delicacy, when they refuse to be pleased :
and he that finds his way to reputation through
all these obstructions, must acknowledge that
he is indebted to other causes besides his
industry, his learning, or his wit.

CRITICISM . . . was the eldest daughter of
Labour and of Truth : she was, at her birth,
committed to the care of Justice, and brought
up by her in the palace of Wisdom. Being
soon distinguished by the celestials, for her
uncommon qualities, she was appointed the
governess of Fancy, and empowered to beat
time to the chorus of the Muses, when they
sung before the throne of Jupiter.

When the Muses condescended to visit this
lower world, they came accompanied by Critic-

36 SAMUEL JOHNSON

ism, to whom, upon her descent from her
native regions, Justice gave a sceptre, to be
carried aloft in her right hand, one end of
which was tinctured with ambrosia, and in-
wreathed with a golden foliage of amaranths
and bays; the other end was encircled with
cypress and poppies, and dipped in the waters
of oblivion. In her left hand she bore an un-
extinguishable torch, manufactured by Labour,
and lighted by Truth, of which it was the
particular quality immediately to show every
thing in its true form, however it might be
disguised to common eyes. Whatever Art
could complicate, or Folly could confound,
was, upon the first gleam of the torch of Truth,
exhibited in its distinct parts and original
simplicity; it darted through the labyrinths
of sophistry, and showed at once all the ab
surdities to which they served for refuge ; it
pierced through the robes which rhetoric often
sold to falsehood, and detected the dispropor
tion of parts which artificial veils had been
contrived to cover.

Thus furnished for the execution of her
office, Criticism came down to survey the per
formances of those who professed themselves
the votaries of the Muses. Whatever was
brought before her, she beheld by the steady
light of the torch of Truth, and when her

THE RAMBLER 37

examination had convinced her that the laws
of just writing had been observed, she touched
it with the amaranthine end of the sceptre,
and consigned it over to immortality.

But it more frequently happened, that in
the works which required her inspection, there
was some imposture attempted; that false
colours were laboriously laid ; that some secret
inequality was found between the words and
sentiments, or some dissimilitude of the ideas
and the original objects; that incongruities
were linked together, or that some parts were
of no use but to enlarge the appearance of the
whole, without contributing to its beauty,
solidity, or usefulness.

Wherever such discoveries were made, and
they were made whenever these faults were
committed, Criticism refused the touch which
conferred the sanction of immortality, and,
when the errors were frequent and gross, re
versed the sceptre, and let drops of Lethe dis
til from the poppies and cypress, a fatal mildew,
which immediately began to waste the work
away, till it was at last totally destroyed.

There were some compositions brought to
the test, in which, when the strongest light
was thrown upon them, their beauties and
faults appeared so equally mingled, that Critic
ism stood with her sceptre poised in her hand,

38 SAMUEL JOHNSON

in doubt whether to shed Lethe, or ambrosia,
upon them. These at last increased to so
great a number, that she was weary of attend
ing such doubtful claims, and, for fear of using
improperly the sceptre of Justice, referred the
cause to be considered by Time.

The proceedings of Time, though very
dilatory, were, some few caprices excepted,
conformable to justice ; and many who thought
themselves secure by a short forbearance, have
sunk under his scythe, as they were posting
down with their volumes in triumph to futurity.
It was observable that some were destroyed by
little and little, and others crushed for ever by
a single blow.

Criticism, having long kept her eye fixed
steadily upon Time, was at last so well satisfied
with his conduct, that she withdrew from the
earth with her patroness Astrea, and left Pre
judice and False Taste to ravage at large as
the associates of Fraud and Mischief; con
tenting herself thenceforth to shed her in
fluence from afar upon some select minds,
fitted for its reception by learning and by
virtue.

Before her departure she broke her sceptre,
of which the shivers, that formed the ambrosial
end, were caught up by Flattery, and those
that had been infected with the waters of Lethe

THE RAMBLER 39

were, with equal haste, seized by Malevolence.
The followers of Flattery, to whom she dis
tributed her part of the sceptre, neither had
nor desired light, but touched indiscriminately
whatever Power or Interest happened to ex
hibit. The companions of Malevolence were
supplied by the Furies with a torch, which
had this quality peculiar to infernal lustre, that
its light fell only upon faults.

No light, but rather darkness visible,
Served only to discover sights of wo.

With these fragments of authority, the
slaves of Flattery and Malevolence marched
out, at the command of their mistresses, to
confer immortality, or condemn to oblivion.
But this sceptre had now lost its power ; and
Time passes his sentence at leisure, without
any regard to their determinations.

FROM the perpetual necessity of consulting
the animal faculties, in our provision for the
present life, arises the difficulty of withstand
ing their impulses, even in cases where they
ought to be of no weight ; for the motions of
sense are instantaneous, its objects strike un
sought, we are accustomed to follow its direc
tions, and therefore often submit to the sen-

40 SAMUEL JOHNSON

-tence without examining the authority of the
judge.

Thus it appears, upon a philosophical estim
ate, that, supposing the mind, at any certain
time, in an equipoise between the pleasures
of this life, and the hopes of futurity, present
objects, falling more frequently into the scale,
would in time preponderate, and that our
regard for an invisible state would grow every
moment weaker, till at last it would lose all
its activity, and become absolutely without
effect.

To prevent this dreadful event, the balance
is put into our own hands, and we have power
to transfer the weight to either side. The
motives to a life of holiness are infinite, not
less than the favour or anger of Omnipotence,
not less than eternity of happiness or misery.
But these can only influence our conduct as
they gain our attention, which the business
or diversions of the world are always calling
off by contrary attractions.

The great art therefore of piety, and the
end for which all the rites of religion seem to
be instituted, is the perpetual renovation of
the motives to virtue, by a voluntary employ
ment of our mind in the contemplation of its
excellence, its importance, and its necessity,
which, in proportion as they are more fre-

THE RAMBLER 41

quently and more willingly revolved, gain a
more forcible and permanent influence, till in
time they become the reigning ideas, the stand
ing principles of action, and the test by which
every thing proposed to the judgment is re
jected or approved.

To facilitate this change of our affections,
it is necessary that we weaken the temptations
of the world, by retiring at certain seasons
from it; for its influence, arising only from
its presence, is much lessened when it becomes
the object of solitary meditation. A constant
residence amidst noise and pleasure inevitably
obliterates the impressions of piety, and a fre
quent abstraction of ourselves into a state,
where this life, like the next, operates only
upon the reason, will reinstate religion in its
just authority, even without those irradiations
from above, the hope of which I have no in
tention to withdraw from the sincere and the
diligent.

This is that conquest of the world and of
ourselves, which has been always considered
as the perfection of human nature ; and this
is only to be obtained by fervent prayer,
steady resolutions, and frequent retirement
from folly and vanity, from the cares of
avarice, and the joys of intemperance, from
the lulling sounds of deceitful flattery, and

42 SAMUEL JOHNSON

the tempting sight of prosperous wicked
ness.

IN futurity events and chances are yet float
ing at large, without apparent connexion with
their causes, and we therefore easily indulge
the liberty of gratifying ourselves with a pleas
ing choice. To pick and cull among possible
advantages is, as the civil law terms it, in
vacuum venire, to take what belongs to nobody;
but it has this hazard in it, that we shall be
unwilling to quit what we have seized, though
an owner should be found. It is easy to think
on that which may be gained, till at last we
resolve to gain it, and to image the happiness
of particular conditions, till we can be easy in
no other. We ought, at least, to let our desires
fix upon nothing in another s power, for the
sake of our quiet, or in another s possession,
for the sake of our innocence. When a man
finds himself led, though by a train of honest
sentiments, to wish for that to which he has
no right, he should start back as from a pitfall
covered with flowers. He that fancies he
should benefit the public more in a great
station than the man that fills it, will in time
imagine it an act of virtue to supplant him ;
and as opposition readily kindles into hatred,
his eagerness to do that good, to which he is

THE RAMBLER 43

not called, will betray him to crimes, which in
his original scheme were never proposed.

He, therefore, that would govern his actions
by the laws of virtue, must regulate his
thoughts by those of reason; he must keep
guilt from the recesses of his heart, and re
member that the pleasures of fancy, and the
emotions of desire, are more dangerous as
they are more hidden, since they escape the
awe of observation, and operate equally in
every situation, without the concurrence of
external opportunities.

IT is justly remarked by Horace, that how
soever every man may complain occasionally
of the hardships of his condition, he is seldom
willing to change it for any other on the same
level : for whether it be that he, who follows
an employment, made choice of it at first on
account of its suitableness to his inclination ;
or that when accident, or the determination of
others, has placed him in a particular station,
he, by endeavouring to reconcile himself to
it, gets the custom of viewing it only on the
fairest side ; or whether every man thinks
that class to which he belongs the most illus
trious, merely because he has honoured it
with his name ; it is certain that, whatever be

44 SAMUEL JOHNSON

the reason, most men have a very strong and
active prejudice in favour of their own voca
tion, always working upon their minds, and
influencing their behaviour.

This partiality is sufficiently visible in every
rank of the human species : but it exerts it
self more frequently and with greater force
among those who have never learned to con
ceal their sentiments for reasons of policy, or
to model their expressions by the laws of
politeness ; and therefore the chief contests of
wit among artificers and handicraftsmen arise
from a mutual endeavour to exalt one trade
by depreciating another.

From the same principle are derived many
consolations to alleviate the inconveniences to
which every calling is peculiarly exposed. A
blacksmith was lately pleasing himself at his
anvil, with observing, that though his trade
was hot and sooty, laborious and unhealthy,
yet he had the honour of living by his ham
mer, he got his bread like a man, and if his
son should rise in the world, and keep his
coach, nobody could reproach him that his
father was a tailor.

A man, truly zealous for his fraternity, is
never so irresistibly flattered, as when some
rival calling is mentioned with contempt.
Upon this principle, a linen-draper boasted

THE RAMBLER 45

that he had got a new customer, whom he
could safely trust, for he could have no doubt
of his honesty, since it was known, from un
questionable authority, that he was now filing
a bill in chancery to delay payment for the
clothes which he had worn the last seven
years ; and he himself had heard him declare,
in a public coffee-house, that he looked upon
the whole generation of woollen-drapers to be
such despicable wretches, that no gentleman
ought to pay them.

It has been observed that physicians and
lawyers are no friends to religion ; and many
conjectures have been formed to discover the
reason of such a combination between men
who agree in nothing else, and who seem less
to be affected, in their own provinces, by re
ligious opinions, than any other part of the
community. The truth is, very few of them
have thought about religion ; but they have
all seen a parson : seen him in a habit differ
ent from their own, and therefore declared war
against him. A young student from the inns
of court, who has often attacked the curate of
his father s parish with such arguments as
his acquaintances could furnish, and returned
to town without success, is now gone down
with a resolution to destroy him ; for he has
learned at last how to manage a prig, and if

46 SAMUEL JOHNSON

he pretends to hold him again to syllogism,
he has a catch in reserve, which neither logic
nor metaphysics can resist.

I laugh to think how your unshaken Cato
Will look aghast, when unforeseen destruction
Pours in upon him thus.

The malignity of soldiers and sailors against
each other has been often experienced at the
cost of their country ; and, perhaps, no orders
of men have an enmity of more acrimony,
or longer continuance. When, upon our late
successes at sea, some new regulations were
concerted for establishing the rank of the naval
commanders, a captain of foot very acutely re
marked, that nothing was more absurd than
to give any honorary rewards to seamen;
" for honour," says he, " ought only to be
worn by bravery, and all the world knows that
in a sea-fight there is no danger, and therefore
no evidence of courage."

But although this general desire of ag
grandizing themselves, by raising their pro
fession, betrays men to a thousand ridiculous
and mischievous acts of supplantation and de
traction, yet as almost all passions have their
good as well as bad effects, it likewise excites
ingenuity, and sometimes raises an honest
and useful emulation of diligence. It may be

THE RAMBLER 47

observed in general, that no trade had ever
reached the excellence to which it is now im
proved, had its professors looked upon it with
the eyes of indifferent spectators ; the advances,
from the first rude essays, must have been
made by men who valued themselves for per
formances, for which scarce any other would
be persuaded to esteem them.

It is pleasing to contemplate a manufacture
rising gradually from its first mean state by
the successive labours of innumerable minds;
to consider the first hollow trunk of an oak,
in which, perhaps, the shepherd could scarce
venture to cross a brook swelled with a shower,
enlarged at last into a ship of war, attacking
fortresses, terrifying nations, setting storms
and billows at defiance, and visiting the re
motest parts of the globe. And it might con
tribute to dispose us to a kinder regard for
the labours of one another, if we were to con
sider from what unpromising beginnings the
most useful productions of art have probably
arisen. Who, when he saw the first sand or
ashes, by a casual intenseness of heat, melted
into a metalline form, rugged with excres
cences, and clouded with impurities, would
have imagined, that in this shapeless lump
lay concealed so many conveniences of life, as
would in time constitute a great part of the

48 SAMUEL JOHNSON

happiness of the world ? Yet by some such
fortuitous liquefaction was mankind taught to
procure a body at once in a high degree solid
and transparent, which might admit the light
of the sun, and exclude the violence of the
wind : which might extend the sight of the
philosopher to new ranges of existence, and
charm him at one time with the unbounded
extent of the material creation, and at another
with the endless subordination of animal life;
and, what is yet of more importance, might
supply the decays of nature, and succour old
age with subsidiary sight. Thus was the first
artificer in glass employed, though without
his own knowledge or expectation. He was
facilitating and prolonging the enjoyment of
light, enlarging the avenues of science, and
conferring the highest and most lasting pleas
ures; he was enabling the student to con
template nature, and the beauty to behold her
self.

This passion for the honour of a profession,
like that for the grandeur of our own country,
is to be regulated, not extinguished. Every
man, from the highest to the lowest station,
ought to warm his heart and animate his en
deavours with the hopes of being useful to
the world, by advancing the art which it is
his lot to exercise, and for that end he must

THE RAMBLER 49

necessarily consider the whole extent of its
application, and the whole weight of its im
portance. But let him not too readily imagine
that another is ill employed, because, for want
of fuller knowledge of his business, he is not
able to comprehend its dignity. Every man
ought to endeavour at eminence, not by pull
ing others down, but by raising himself, and
enjoy the pleasure of his own superiority,
whether imaginary or real, without interrupt
ing others in the same felicity. The philoso
pher may very justly be delighted with the
extent of his views, and the artificer with the
readiness of his hands ; but let the one remem
ber, that, without mechanical performances, re
fined speculation is an empty dream ; and the
other, that, without theoretical reasoning, dex
terity is little more than a brute instinct.

AMONG the many inconsistencies which folly
produces, or infirmity suffers, in the human
mind, there has often been observed a mani
fest and striking contrariety between the life
of an author and his writings ; and Milton, in
a letter to a learned stranger, by whom he had
been visited, with great reason congratulates
himself upon the consciousness of being found
equal to his own character, and having pre-

E

5 o SAMUEL JOHNSON

served, in a private and familiar interview, that
reputation which his works had procured him.

Those whom the appearance of virtue, or
the evidence of genius, has tempted to a
nearer knowledge of the writer in whose per
formances these may be found, have indeed
had frequent reason to repent their curiosity:
the bubble that sparkled before them has be
come common water at the touch ; the phan
tom of perfection has vanished when they
wished to press it to their bosom. They have
lost the pleasure of imagining how far humanity
may be exalted, and, perhaps, felt themselves
less inclined to toil up the steeps of virtue,
when they observe those who seem best able
to point the way, loitering below, as either
afraid of the labour, or doubtful of the reward.

It has long been the custom of the oriental
monarchs to hide themselves in gardens and
palaces, to avoid the conversation of mankind,
and to be known to their subjects only by
their edicts. The same policy is no less neces
sary to him that writes, than to him that
governs ; for men would not more patiently
submit to be taught than commanded, by one
known to have the same follies and weaknesses
with themselves. A sudden intruder into the
closet of an author would perhaps feel equal
indignation with the officer, who having long

THE RAMBLER 51

solicited admission into the presence of Sar-
danapalus, saw him not consulting upon laws,
inquiring into grievances, or modelling armies,
but employed in feminine amusements, and
directing the ladies in their work.

It is not difficult to conceive, however, that
for many reasons a man writes much better
than he lives. For without entering into
refined speculations, it may be shown much
easier to design than to perform. A man pro
poses his schemes of life in a state of abstrac
tion and disengagement, exempt from the en
ticements of hope, the solicitations of affection,
the importunities of appetite, or the depressions
of fear, and is in the same state with him that
teaches upon land the art of navigation, to
whom the sea is always smooth, and the wind
always prosperous.

The mathematicians are well acquainted
with the difference between pure science, which
has to do only with ideas, and the application
of its laws to the use of life, in which they are
constrained to submit to the imperfection of
matter and the influence of accidents. Thus,
in moral discussions, it is to be remembered,
that many impediments obstruct our practice,
which very easily give way to theory. The
speculatist is only in danger of erroneous
reasoning ; but the man involved in life has

52 SAMUEL JOHNSON

his own passions and those of others to en
counter, and is embarrassed with a thousand in
conveniences which confound him with variety
of impulse, and either perplex or obstruct his
way. He is forced to act without deliberation,
and obliged to choose before he can examine;
he is surprised by sudden alterations of the
state of things, and changes his measures ac
cording to superficial appearances ; he is led
by others, either because he is indolent, or
because he is timorous ; he is sometimes afraid
to know what is right, and sometimes finds
friends or enemies diligent to deceive him.

We are, therefore, not to wonder that most
fail, amidst tumult, and snares, and danger, in
the observance of those precepts, which they
lay down in solitude, safety, and tranquillity,
with a mind unbiased, and with liberty un
obstructed. It is the condition of our present
state to see more than we can attain; the
exactest vigilance and caution can never main
tain a single day of unmingled innocence, much
less can the utmost efforts of incorporated
mind reach the summits of speculative virtue.

It is, however, necessary for the idea of
perfection to be proposed, that we may have
some object to which our endeavours are to
be directed; and he that is the most deficient
in the duties of life, makes some atonement

THE RAMBLER 53

for his faults, if he warns others against his
own failings, and hinders, by the salubrity of
his admonitions, the contagion of his example.

AMONG the numerous stratagems, by which
pride endeavours to recommend folly to re
gard, there is scarcely one that meets with
less success than affectation, or a perpetual
disguise of the real character, by fictitious
appearances; whether it be, that every man
hates falsehood, from the natural congruity
of truths to his faculties of reason, or that
every man is jealous of the honour of his
understanding, and thinks his discernment
consequently called in question, whenever any
thing is exhibited under a borrowed form.

This aversion to all kinds of disguise,
whatever be its cause, is universally diffused,
and incessantly in action ; nor is it necessary,
that to exasperate detestation or excite con
tempt, any interest should be invaded, or any
competition attempted ; it is sufficient, that
there is an intention to deceive, an intention
which every heart swells to oppose, and every
tongue is busy to detect.

This reflection was awakened in my mind
by a very common practice among my cor
respondents, of writing under characters which

54 SAMUEL JOHNSON

they cannot support, which are of no use to
the explanation or enforcement of that which
they describe or recommend; and which, there
fore, since they assume them only for the sake
of displaying their abilities, I will advise them
for the future to forbear, as laborious without
advantage.

It is almost a general ambition of those
who favour me with their advice for the re
gulation of my conduct, or their contribution
for the assistance of my understanding, to
affect the style and the names of ladies. And
I cannot always withhold some expression of
anger, like Sir Hugh in the comedy, when I
happen to find that a woman has a beard. I
must therefore warn the gentle Phyllis, that
she send me no more letters from the Horse
Guards ; and require of Belinda, that she be
content to resign her pretensions to female
elegance, till she has lived three weeks with
out hearing the politics of Batson s coffee
house. I must indulge myself in the liberty
of observation, that there were some allusions
in Chloris s production, sufficient to show that
Bracton and Plowden are her favourite authors ;
and that Euphelia has not been long enough
at home, to wear out all the traces of the
phraseology which she learned in the expedi
tion to Carthagena.

THE RAMBLER 55

Among all my female friends, there was
none who gave me more trouble to decipher
her true character than Penthesilea, whose
letter lay upon my desk three days before I
could fix upon the real writer. There was a
confusion of images, and medley of barbarity,
which held me long in suspense : till by per
severance I disentangled the perplexity, and
found that Penthesilea is the son of a wealthy
stock-jobber, who spends his morning under
his father s eye in Change-alley, dines at a
tavern in Covent-garden, passes his evening
in the playhouse, and part of the night at a
gaming-table, and having learned the dialects
of these various regions, has mingled them
all in a studied composition.

When Lee was once told by a critic, that
it was very easy to write like a madman ; he
answered, that it was difficult to write like a
madman, but easy enough to write like a
fool ; and I hope to be excused by my kind
contributors, if in imitation of this great
author, I presume to remind them, that it is
much easier not to write like a man, than to
write like a woman. . . .

The hatred which dissimulation always
draws upon itself is so great, that if I did
not know how much cunning differs from
wisdom, I should wonder that any men have

56 SAMUEL JOHNSON

so little knowledge of their own interest, as
to aspire to wear a mask for life ; to try to
impose upon the world a character, to which
they feel themselves void of any just claim;
and to hazard their quiet, their fame, and
even their profit, by exposing themselves to
the danger of that reproach, malevolence,
and neglect, which such a discovery as they
have always to fear will certainly bring upon
them.

It might be imagined that the pleasure of
reputation should consist in the satisfaction
of having our opinion of our own merit con
firmed by the suffrage of the public ; and
that, to be extolled for a quality, which a man
knows himself to want, should give him no
other happiness than to be mistaken for the
owner of an estate, over which he chances to
be travelling. But he who subsists upon
affectation, knows nothing of this delicacy;
like a desperate adventurer in commerce, he
takes up reputation upon trust, mortgages
possessions which he never had, and enjoys,
to the fatal hour of bankruptcy, though with
a thousand terrors and anxieties, the unneces
sary splendour of borrowed riches.

Affectation is always to be distinguished
from hypocrisy, as being the art of counter
feiting those qualities which we might, with

THE RAMBLER 57

innocence and safety, be known to want.
Thus the man who, to carry on any fraud, or
to conceal any crime, pretends to rigours of
devotion, and exactness of life, is guilty of
hypocrisy; and his guilt is greater, as the
end, for which he puts on the false appear
ance, is more pernicious. But he that, with
an awkward address, and unpleasing counten
ance, boasts of the conquests made by him
among the ladies, and counts over the thous
ands which he might have possessed if he
would have submitted to the yoke of matri
mony, is chargeable only with affectation.
Hypocrisy is the necessary burthen of villany,
affectation part of the chosen trappings of
folly; the one completes a villain, the other
only finishes a fop. Contempt is the proper
punishment of affectation, and detestation the
just consequence of hypocrisy.

With the hypocrite it is not at present my
intention to expostulate, though even he might
be taught the excellency of virtue, by the ne
cessity of seeming to be virtuous; but the
man of affectation may, perhaps, be reclaimed,
by finding how little he is likely to gain by
perpetual constraint and incessant vigilance,
and how much more securely he might make
his way to esteem, by cultivating real than
displaying counterfeit qualities.

58 SAMUEL JOHNSON

Every thing future is to be estimated, by
a wise man, in proportion to the probability
of attaining it, and its value, when attained ;
and neither of these considerations will much
contribute to the encouragement of affecta
tion. For, if the pinnacles of fame be, at best,
slippery, how unsteady must his footing be
who stands upon pinnacles without founda
tion ! If praise be made, by the inconstancy
and maliciousness of those who must confer
it, a blessing which no man can promise him
self from the most conspicuous merit and
vigorous industry, how faint must be the
hope of gaining it, when the uncertainty is
multiplied by the weakness of the preten
sions ! He that pursues fame with just claims,
trusts his happiness to the winds : but he that
endeavours after it by false merit, has to fear,
not only the violence of the storm, but the
leaks of his vessel. Though he should happen
to keep above water for a time, by the help
of a soft breeze, and a calm sea, at the first
gust he must inevitably founder, with this
melancholy reflection, that, if he would have
been content with his natural station, he might
have escaped his calamity. Affectation may
possibly succeed for a time, and a man may,
by great attention, persuade others, that he
really has the qualities of which he presumes

THE RAMBLER 59

to boast; but the hour will come when he
should exert them, and then, whatever he en
joyed in praise, he must suffer in reproach.

Applause and admiration are by no means
to be counted among the necessaries of life,
and therefore any indirect arts to obtain them
have very little claim to pardon or compas
sion. There is scarcely any man without some
valuable or improveable qualities, by which
he might always secure himself from con
tempt. And perhaps exemption from ignominy
is the most eligible reputation, as freedom
from pain is, among some philosophers, the
definition of happiness.

If we therefore compare the value of the
praise obtained by fictitious excellence, even
while the cheat is yet undiscovered, with that
kindness which every man may suit by his
virtue, and that esteem to which most men
may rise by common understanding steadily
and honestly applied, we shall find that when
from the adscititious happiness all the deduc
tions are made by fear and casualty, there
will remain nothing equiponderant to the se
curity of truth. The state of the possessor
of humble virtues, to the affecter of great ex
cellences, is that of a small cottage of stone,
to the palace raised with ice by the Empress
of Russia; it was for a time splendid and

60 SAMUEL JOHNSON

luminous, but the first sunshine melted it to
nothing.

THERE are perhaps very few conditions more
to be pitied than that of an active and elevated
mind, labouring under the weight of a distem
pered body. The time of such a man is always
spent in forming schemes, which a change of
wind hinders him from executing, his powers
fume away in projects and in hope, and the
day of action never arrives. He lies down de
lighted with the thoughts of to-morrow,
pleases his ambition with the fame he shall
acquire, or his benevolence with the good he
shall confer. But in the night the skies are
overcast, the temper of the air is changed, he
wakes in languor, impatience and distraction,
and has no longer any wish but for ease, nor
any attention but to misery. It may be said
that disease generally begins that equality
which death completes ; the distinctions which
set one man so much above another are very
little perceived in the gloom of a sick chamber,
where it will be vain to expect entertain
ment from the gay, or instruction from the
wise ; where all human glory is obliterated,
the wit is clouded, the reasoner perplexed, and
the hero subdued; where the highest and
brightest of mortal beings finds nothing left
him but the consciousness of innocence.

THE RAMBLER 61

LADY BUSTLE has, indeed, by her incessant
application to fruits and flowers, contracted
her cares into a narrow space, and set herself
free from many perplexities with which other
minds are disturbed. She has no curiosity
after the events of a war, or the fate of heroes
in distress ; she can hear, without the least
emotion, the ravage of a fire, or devastations
of a storm ; her neighbours grow rich or poor,
come into the world or go out of it, without
regard, while she is pressing the jelly-bag, or
airing the store-room ; but I cannot perceive
that she is more free from disquiets than those
whose understandings take a wider range.
Her marigolds, when they are almost cured,
are often scattered by the wind, and the rain
sometimes falls upon fruit when it ought to be
gathered dry. While her artificial wines are
fermenting, her whole life is restlessness and
anxiety. Her sweetmeats are not always
bright, and the maid sometimes forgets the
just proportions of salt and pepper, when
venison is to be baked. Her conserves mould,
her wines sour, and pickles mother; and,
like all the rest of mankind, she is every day
mortified with the defeat of her schemes, and
the disappointment of her hopes.

I HAVE now known Suspirius fifty- eight

62 SAMUEL JOHNSON

years and four months, and have never yet
passed an hour with him in which he has not
made some attack upon my quiet. When we
were first acquainted, his great topic was the
misery of youth without riches ; and when
ever we walked out together he solaced me
with a long enumeration of pleasures, which,
as they were beyond the reach of my fortune,
were without the verge of my desires, and
which I should never have considered as the
objects of a wish, had not his unseasonable
representations placed them in my sight.

Another of his topics is the neglect of merit,
with which he never fails to amuse every man
whom he sees not eminently fortunate. If he
meets with a young officer, he always informs
him of gentlemen whose personal courage is
unquestioned, and whose military skill qualifies
them to command armies, that have, notwith
standing all their merit, grown old with subal
tern commissions. For a genius in the church,
he is always provided with a curacy for life.
The lawyer he informs of many men of great
parts and deep study, who have never had
an opportunity to speak in the courts : and
meeting Serenus the physician, " Ah, doctor,"
says he, "what, a-foot still, when so many
blockheads are rattling in their chariots? I
told you seven years ago that you would never

THE RAMBLER 63

meet with encouragement, and I hope you will
now take more notice, when I tell you that
your Greek, and your diligence, and your
honesty, will never enable you to live like
yonder apothecary, who prescribes to his own
shop, and laughs at the physician."

Suspirius has, in his time, intercepted fifteen
authors in their way to the stage, persuaded
nine and thirty merchants to retire from a
prosperous trade for fear of bankruptcy, broke
offa hundred and thirteen matches by prognos
tications of unhappiness, and enabled the
small-pox to kill nineteen ladies, by perpetual
alarms of the loss of beauty.

EVERY season has its particular power of strik
ing the mind. The nakedness and asperity
of the wintry world always fill the beholder
with pensive and profound astonishment; as
the variety of the scene is lessened, its grandeur
is increased; and the mind is swelled at once
by the mingled ideas of the present and the
past, of the beauties which have vanished
from the eyes, and the waste and desolation
that are now before them.

It is observed by Milton, that he who
neglects to visit the country in spring, and
rejects the pleasures that are then in their first

64 SAMUEL JOHNSON

bloom and fragrance, is guilty of sullenness
against nature. If we allot different duties to
different seasons, he may be charged with
equal disobedience to the voice of nature,
who looks on the bleak hills and leafless woods,
without seriousness and awe. Spring is the
season of gayety, and winter of terror; in
spring the heart of tranquillity dances to the
melody of the groves, and the eye of benevo
lence sparkles at the sight of happiness and
plenty. In the winter, compassion melts at
universal calamity, and the tear of softness
starts at the wailings of hunger, and the cries
of the creation in distress.

NONE of the desires dictated by vanity is
more general, or less blameable, than that of
being distinguished for the arts of conversa
tion. Other accomplishments may be possessed
without opportunity of exerting them, or
wanted without danger that the defect can
often be remarked; but as no man can live,
otherwise than in a hermitage, without hourly
pleasure or vexation, from the fondness or
neglect of those about him, the faculty of giving
pleasure is of continual use. Few are more
frequently envied than those who have the
power of forcing attention wherever they

THE RAMBLER 65

come, whose entrance is considered as a
promise of felicity, and whose departure is
lamented like the recess of the sun from
northern climates, as a privation of all that
enlivens fancy, or inspirits gayety.

It is apparent, that to excellence in this
valuable art, some peculiar qualifications are
necessary; for every one s experience will
inform him, that the pleasure which men are
able to give in conversation holds no stated
proportion to their knowledge or their virtue.
Many find their way to the tables and the
parties of those who never consider them as
of the least importance in any other place ; we
have all, at one time or other, been content
to love those whom we could not esteem, and
been persuaded to try the dangerous experi
ment of admitting him for a companion,
whom we knew to be too ignorant for a coun
sellor, and too treacherous for a friend.

1 question whether some abatement of char
acter is not necessary to general acceptance.
Few spend their time with much satisfaction
under the eye of incontestable superiority ;
and, therefore, among those whose presence
is courted at assemblies of jollity, there are
seldom found men eminently distinguished
for powers or acquisitions. The wit, whose
vivacity condemns slower tongues to silence ;

F

66 SAMUEL JOHNSON

the scholar, whose knowledge allows no man
to fancy that he instructs him ; the critic, who
suffers no fallacy to pass undetected ; and the
reasoner, who condemns the idle to thought
and the negligent to attention, are generally
praised and feared, reverenced and avoided.

He that would please must rarely aim at
such excellence as depresses his hearers in their
own opinion, or debars them from the hope
of contributing reciprocally to the entertain
ment of the company. Merriment, extorted
by sallies of imagination, sprightliness of
remark, or quickness of reply, is too often
what the Latins call the Sardinian laughter,
a distortion of the face without gladness of
heart.

For this reason, no style of conversation is
more extensively acceptable than the narrative.
He who has stored his memory with slight
anecdotes, private incidents, and personal
peculiarities, seldom fails to find his audience
favourable. Almost every man listens with
eagerness to contemporary history ; for almost
every man has some real or imaginary con
nexion with a celebrated character; some
desire to advance or oppose a rising name.
Vanity often co-operates with curiosity. He
that is a hearer in one place, qualifies himself
to become a speaker in another ; for though

THE RAMBLER 67

he cannot comprehend a series of argument,
or transport the volatile spirit of wit without
evaporation, he yet thinks himself able to
treasure up the various incidents of a story,
and pleases his hopes with the information
which he shall give to some inferior society.

WHETHER to be remembered in remote times
be worthy of a wise man s wish, has not yet
been satisfactorily decided; and indeed, to be
long remembered can happen to so small a
number, that the bulk of mankind has very
little interest in the question. There is never
room in the world for more than a certain
quantity or measure of renown. The neces
sary business of life, the immediate pleasures
or pains of every condition, leave us not
leisure beyond a fixed portion for contempla
tions which do not forcibly influence our
present welfare. When this vacuity is filled,
no characters can be admitted into the circula
tion of fame, but by occupying the place of
some that must be thrust into oblivion. The
eye of the mind, like that of the body, can
only extend its view to new objects, by losing
sight of those which are now before it.

Reputation is therefore a meteor, which
blazes a while and disappears for ever; and.

68 SAMUEL JOHNSON

if we except a few transcendent and invincible
names, which no revolution of opinion or
length of time is able to suppress, all those
that engage our thoughts, or diversify our
conversation, are every moment hasting to
obscurity, as new favourites are adopted by
fashion.

TIME, which puts an end to all human pleas
ures and sorrows, has likewise concluded
the labours of the Rambler. Having sup
ported, for two years, the anxious employ
ment of a periodical writer, and multiplied
my essays to upwards of two hundred, I have
now determined to desist.

The reasons of this resolution it is of little
importance to declare, since justification is
unnecessary when no objection is made. I am
far from supposing that the cessation of my
performances will raise any inquiry, for I have
never been much a favourite of the public,
nor can boast that, in the progress of my
undertaking, I have been animated by the
rewards of the liberal, the caresses of the
great, or the praises of the eminent.

But I have no design to gratify pride by
submission, or malice by lamentation; nor
think it reasonable to complain of neglect
from those whose regard I never solicited. If

THE RAMBLER 69

I have not been distinguished by the dis
tributors of literary honours, I have seldom
descended to the arts by which favour is
obtained. I have seen the meteors of fashion
rise and fall, without any attempt to add a
moment to their duration. I have never com
plied with temporary curiosity, nor enabled
my readers to discuss the topic of the day ; I
have rarely exemplified my assertions by living
characters : in my papers, no man could look
for censures of his enemies, or praises of him
self; and they only were expected to peruse
them, whose passions left them leisure for ab
stracted truth, and whom virtue could please
by its naked dignity. . . .

I am willing to flatter myself with hopes,
that, by collecting these papers, I am not pre
paring, for my future life, either shame or
repentance. That all are happily imagined, or
accurately polished, that the same sentiments
have not sometimes recurred, or the same
expressions been too frequently repeated, I
have not confidence in my abilities sufficient
to warrant. He that condemns himself to
compose on a stated day, will often bring to
his task an attention dissipated, a memory
embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a
mind distracted with anxieties, a body languish
ing with disease : he will labour on a barren

7 o SAMUEL JOHNSON

topic, till it is too late to change it ; or, in the
ardour of invention, diffuse his thoughts into
wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of
publication cannot suffer judgment to examine
or reduce.

Whatever shall be the final sentence of
mankind, I have at least endeavoured to de
serve their kindness. I have laboured to refine
our language to grammatical purity, and to
clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious
idioms, and irregular combinations. Some
thing, perhaps, 1 have added to the elegance
of its construction, and something to the
harmony of its cadence. When common words
were less pleasing to the ear, or less distinct
in their signification, I have familiarised the
terms of philosophy, by applying them to
popular ideas, but have rarely admitted any
word not authorised by former writers ; for I
believe that whoever knows the English tongue
in its present extent, will be able to express
his thoughts without further help from other
nations.

THE ADVENTURER

MAN has been long known among philo
sophers by the appellation of the microcosm,
or epitome of the world : the resemblance be
tween the great and little world might, by a
rational observer, be detailed to many par
ticulars; and to many more by a fanciful
speculatist. I know not in which of these
two classes I shall be ranged for observing,

that as the total quantity of light and darkness

11 j i c 1

allotted in the course or the year to every

region of the earth is the same, though dis
tributed at various times and in different
portions ; so, perhaps, to each individual of
the human species, nature has ordained the
same quantity of wakefulness and sleep ;
though divided by some into a total quies
cence and vigorous exertion of their faculties,
and blended by others in a kind of twilight of
existence, in a state between dreaming and
reasoning, in which they either think without
action, or act without thought.

The poets are generally well affected to
sleep : as men who think with vigour, they
require respite from thought ; and gladly resign

72 SAMUEL JOHNSON

themselves to that gentle power, who not only
bestows rest, but frequently leads them to
happier regions, where patrons are always
kind, and audiences are always candid, where
they are feasted in the bowers of imagina
tion, and crowned with flowers divested of
their prickles, and laurels of unfading ver
dure.

The more refined and penetrating part of
mankind, who take wide surveys of the wilds
of life, who see the innumerable terrors and
distresses that are perpetually preying on the
heart of man, and discern, with unhappy per
spicuity, calamities yet latent in their causes,
are glad to close their eyes upon the gloomy
prospect, and lose in a short insensibility the
remembrance of others miseries and their
own. The hero has no higher hope, than
that, after having routed legions after legions,
and added kingdom to kingdom, he shall
retire to milder happiness, and close his days
in social festivity. The wit or the sage can
expect no greater happiness, than that, after
having harassed his reason in deep researches,
and fatigued his fancy in boundless excursions,
he shall sink at night in the tranquillity of
sleep.

The poets, among all those that enjoy the
blessings of sleep, have been least ashamed

THE ADVENTURER 73

to acknowledge their benefactor. How much
Statius considered the evils of life as assuaged
and softened by the balm of slumber, we may
discover by that pathetic invocation, which he
poured out in his waking nights : and that
Cowley among the other felicities of his darling
solitude, did not forget to number the privi
lege of sleeping without disturbance, we may
learn from the rank that he assigns among the
gifts of nature to the poppy, " which is scat
tered," says he, "over the fields of corn, that
all the needs of man may be easily satisfied,
and that bread and sleep may be found to
gether." . . .

Sleep, therefore, as the chief of all earthly
blessings, is justly appropriated to industry
and temperance; the refreshing rest, and the
peaceful night, are the portion only of him
who lies down weary with honest labour, and
free from the fumes of indigested luxury ; it
is the just doom of laziness and gluttony, to
be inactive without ease, and drowsy without
tranquillity.

Sleep has been often mentioned as the
image of death ; " so like it," says Sir Thomas
Browne, " that I dare not trust it without my
prayers;" their resemblance is, indeed, appar
ent and striking ; they both, when they seize
the body, leave the soul at liberty; and wise

74 SAMUEL JOHNSON

is he that remembers of both, that they can be
safe and happy only by virtue.

DIFFIDENCE is never more reasonable than in
the perusal of the authors of antiquity; of
those whose works have been the delight of
ages, and transmitted as the great inheritance
of mankind from one generation to another :
surely, no man can, without the utmost
arrogance, imagine that he brings any super
iority of understanding to the perusal of those
books which have been preserved in the de
vastation of cities, and snatched up from the
wreck of nations ; which those who fled before
barbarians have been careful to carry off in
the hurry of migration, and of which bar
barians have repented the destruction. If in
books thus made venerable by the uniform
attestation of successive ages, any passages
shall appear unworthy of that praise which
they have formerly received, let us not im
mediately determine that they owed their
reputation to dulness or bigotry; but suspect
at least that our ancestors had some reasons
for their opinions, and that our ignorance of
those reasons makes us differ from them.

WHEN I look round upon those who are
. . . variously exerting their qualifications, I

THE ADVENTURER 75

cannot but admire the secret concatenation of
society that links together the great and the
mean, the illustrious and the obscure; and
consider with benevolent satisfaction, that no
man, unless his body or mind be totally dis
abled, has need to suffer the mortification of
seeing himself useless or burdensome to the
community : he that will diligently labour, in
whatever occupation, will deserve the susten
ance which he obtains, and the protection
which he enjoys : and may lie down every
night with the pleasing consciousness of having
contributed something to the happiness of
life.

Contempt and admiration are equally in
cident to narrow minds: he whose compre
hension can take in the whole subordination
of mankind, and whose perspicacity can pierce
to the real state of things through the thin
veils of fortune or of fashion, will discover
meanness in the highest stations, and dignity
in the meanest ; and find that no man can
become venerable but by virtue, or contempt
ible but by wickedness.

PREFACE TO SHAKSPEARE

THAT praises are without reason lavished on
the dead, and that the honours due only to
excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint
likely to be always continued by those, who,
being able to add nothing to truth, hope for
eminence from the heresies of paradox; or
those, who, being forced by disappointment
upon consolatory expedients, are willing to
hope from posterity what the present age re
fuses, and flatter themselves that the regard,
which is yet denied by envy, will be at last
bestowed by time.

Antiquity, like every other quality that at
tracts the notice of mankind, has undoubtedly
votaries that reverence it, not from reason, but
from prejudice. Some seem to admire indis
criminately whatever has been long preserved,
without considering that time has sometimes
co-operated with chance ; all perhaps are more
willing to honour past than present excel
lence ; and the mind contemplates genius
through the shades of age, as the eye surveys
the sun through artificial opacity. The great
contention of criticism is to find the faults of

76

PREFACE TO SHAKSPEARE 77

the moderns, and the beauties of the ancients.
While an author is yet living we estimate his
powers by his worst performance, and when
he is dead, we rate them by his best.

To works, however, of which the excellence
is not absolute and definite, but gradual and
comparative ; to works not raised upon prin
ciples demonstrative and scientific, but appeal
ing wholly to observation and experience, no
other test can be applied than length of dura
tion and continuance of esteem. What man
kind have long possessed, they have often
examined and compared ; and if they persist
to value the possession, it is because frequent
comparisons have confirmed opinion in its
favour. As among the works of nature no
man can properly call a river deep, or a moun
tain high, without the knowledge of many
mountains, and many rivers; so, in the pro
ductions of genius, nothing can be styled ex
cellent till it has been compared with other
works of the same kind. Demonstration im
mediately displays its power, and has nothing
to hope or fear from the flux of years ; but
works tentative and experimental must be
estimated by their proportion to the general
and collective ability of man, as it is discovered
in a long succession of endeavours. Of the
first building that was raised, it might be with

78 SAMUEL JOHNSON

certainty determined that it was round or
square ; but whether it was spacious or lofty
must have been referred to time. The Pytha
gorean scale of numbers was at once discovered
to be perfect ; but the poems of Homer we
yet know not to transcend the common limits
of human intelligence, but by remarking that
nation after nation, and century after century,
has been able to do little more than transpose
his incidents, new-name his characters, and
paraphrase his sentiments.

The reverence due to writings that have
long subsisted arises therefore not from any
credulous confidence in the superior wisdom
of past ages, or gloomy persuasion of the de
generacy of mankind, but is the consequence
of acknowledged and indubitable positions,
that what has been longest known has been
most considered, and what is most considered
is best understood.

The poet, of whose works I have under
taken the revision, may now begin to assume
the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privi
lege of establishing fame and prescriptive
veneration. He has long outlived his century,
the term commonly fixed as the test of liter
ary merit. Whatever advantages he might
once derive from personal allusions, local cus
toms, or temporary opinions, have for many

PREFACE TO SHAKSPEARE 79

years been lost; and every topic of merri
ment, or motive of sorrow, which the modes
of artificial life afforded him, now only obscure
the scenes which they once illuminated. The
effects of favour and competition are at an
end ; the tradition of his friendships and his
enmities has perished; his works support no
opinion with arguments, nor supply any fac
tion with invectives ; they can neither indulge
vanity, nor gratify malignity; but are read
without any other reason than the desire of
pleasure, and are therefore praised only as
pleasure is obtained ; yet, thus unassisted by
interest or passion, they have passed through
variations of taste, and changes of manners,
and, as they devolved from one generation to
another, have received new honours at every
transmission.

But because human judgment, though it be
gradually gaining upon certainty, never be
comes infallible; and approbation, though
long continued, may yet be only the approba
tion of prejudice or fashion ; it is proper to
inquire, by what peculiarities of excellence
Shakspeare has gained and kept the favour of
his countrymen.

Nothing can please many, and please long,
but just representations of general nature.
Particular manners can be known to few, and

8o SAMUEL JOHNSON

therefore few only can judge how nearly they
are copied. The irregular combinations of
fanciful invention may delight awhile, by that
novelty of which the common satiety of life
sends us all in quest; but the pleasures of
sudden wonder are soon exhausted, and the
mind can only repose on the stability of truth.

Shakspeare is, above all writers, at least
above all modern writers, the poet of nature ;
the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful
mirror of manners and of life. His characters
are not modified by the customs of particular
places, unpractised by the rest of the world ;
by the peculiarities of studies or professions,
which can operate but upon small numbers ;
or by the accidents of transient fashions or
temporary opinions: they are the genuine
progeny of common humanity, such as the
world will always supply, and observation will
always find. His persons act and speak by the
influence of those general passions and prin
ciples by which all minds are agitated, and the
whole system of life is continued in motion.
In the writings of other poets a character is
too often an individual: in those of Shakspeare
it is commonly a species.

It is from this wide extension of design
that so much instruction is derived. It is this
which fills the plays of Shakspeare with practi-

PREFACE TO SHAKSPEARE 81

cal axioms and domestic wisdom. It was said
of Euripides, that every verse was a precept ;
and it may be said of Shakspeare, that from his
works may be collected a system of civil and
economical prudence. Yet his real power is
not shown in the splendour of particular
passages, but by the progress of his fable, and
the tenor of his dialogue ; and he that tries to
recommend him by select quotations, will suc
ceed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when
he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in
his pocket as a specimen. . . .

As his personages act upon principles aris
ing from genuine passion, very little modified
by particular forms, their pleasures and vexa
tions are communicable to all times and to
all places ; they are natural, and therefore
durable : the adventitious peculiarities of per
sonal habits are only superficial dyes, bright
and pleasing for a little while, yet soon fading
to a dim tinct, without any remains of former
lustre ; but the discriminations of true pas
sion are the colours of nature : they pervade
the whole mass, and can only perish with the
body that exhibits them. The accidental com
positions of heterogeneous modes are dissolved
by the chance which combined them ; but the
uniform simplicity of primitive qualities neither
admits increase, nor suffers decay. The sand

G

82 SAMUEL JOHNSON

heaped by one flood is scattered by another,
but the rock always continues in its place. The
stream of time, which is continually washing
the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes
without injury by the adamant of Shakspeare.

If there be, what I believe there is, in every
nation, a style which never becomes obsolete,
a certain mode of phraseology so consonant
and congenial to the analogy and principles of
its respective language, as to remain settled
and unaltered; this style is probably to be
sought in the common intercourse of life,
among those who speak only to be understood,
without ambition of elegance. The polite are
always catching modish innovations, and the
learned depart from established forms of
speech, in hope of finding or making better;
those who wish for distinction forsake the
vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is
a conversation above grossness, and below re
finement, where propriety resides, and where
this poet seems to have gathered his comic
dialogue. He is therefore more agreeable to
the ears of the present age than any other
author equally remote, and among his other
excellences deserves to be studied as one of
the original masters of our language. . . .

The English nation, in the time of Shak
speare, was yet struggling to emerge from

PREFACE TO SHAKSPEARE 83

barbarity. The philology of Italy had been
transplanted hither in the reign of Henry the
Eighth ; and the learned languages had been
successfully cultivated by Lilly, Linacre, and
More ; by Pole, Cheke, and Gardiner ; and
afterwards by Smith, Clerk, Haddon, and
Ascham. Greek was now taught to boys in
the principal schools ; and those who united
elegance with learning read, with great dili
gence, the Italian and Spanish poets. But liter
ature was yet confined to professed scholars,
or to men and women of high rank. The
public was gross and dark ; and to be able to
read and write, was an accomplishment still
valued for its rarity.

Nations, like individuals, have their infancy.
. . . Whatever is remote from common ap
pearances, is always welcome to vulgar, as to
childish, credulity ; and of a country unen
lightened by learning, the whole people is the
vulgar. The study of those who then aspired
to plebeian learning was laid out upon adven
tures, giants, dragons, and enchantments. The
Death of Arthur was the favourite volume.

The mind which has feasted on the luxuri
ous wonders of fiction has no taste of the in
sipidity of truth. A play which -imitated only
the common occurrences of the world would
upon the admirers of Palmerin and Guy

84 SAMUEL JOHNSON

of Warwick have made little impression ; he
that wrote for such an audience was under
the necessity of looking round for strange
events and fabulous transactions ; and that
incredibility, by which maturer knowledge is
offended, was the chief recommendation of
writings, to unskilful curiosity.

Our author s plots are generally borrowed
from novels ; and it is reasonable to suppose
that he chose the most popular, such as were
read by many, and related by more ; for his
audience could not have followed him through
the intricacies of the drama, had they not held
the thread of the story in their hands.

The stories which we now find only in re
moter authors were in his time accessible and
familiar. The fable of As you like it, which is
supposed to be copied from Chaucer s Gamelyn^
was a little pamphlet of those times ; and old
Mr. Gibber remembered the tale of Hamlet
in plain English prose, which the critics have
now to seek in Saxo Grammaticus.

His English histories he took from English
chronicles and English ballads; and as the
ancient writers were made known to his
countrymen by versions, they supplied him
with new subjects; he dilated some of Plu
tarch s lives into plays, when they had been
translated by North.

PREFACE TO SHAKSPEARE 85

His plots, whether historical or fabulous,
are always crowded with incidents, by which
the attention of a rude people was more easily
caught than by sentiment or argumentation ;
and such is the power of the marvellous, even
over those who despise it, that every man
finds his mind more strongly seized by the
tragedies of Shakspeare than of any other
writer : others please us by particular speeches;
but he always makes us anxious for the event,
and has perhaps excelled all but Homer in
securing the first purpose of a writer, by
exciting restless and unquenchable curiosity,
and compelling him that reads his work to
read it through.

The shows and bustle with which his plays
abound have the same original. As knowledge
advances, pleasure passes from the eye to the
ear, but returns, as it declines, from the ear to
the eye. Those to whom our author s labours
were exhibited had more skill in pomps or
processions than in poetical language, and
perhaps wanted some visible and discriminated
events, as comments on the dialogue. He
knew how he should most please ; and whether
his practice is more agreeable to nature, or
whether his example has prejudiced the nation,
we still find that on our stage something must
be done as well as said, and inactive declama-

86 SAMUEL JOHNSON

tion is very coldly heard, however musical or
elegant, passionate or sublime.

Voltaire expressed his wonder, that our au
thor s extravagances are endured by a nation
which has seen the tragedy of Cato. Let him
be answered, that Addison speaks the lan
guage of poets ; and Shakspeare of men. We
find in Cato innumerable beauties which enam
our us of its author, but we see nothing that
acquaints us with human sentiments or human
actions ; we place it with the fairest and the
noblest progeny which judgment propagates
by conjunction with learning; but Othello is
the vigorous and vivacious offspring of ob
servation impregnated by genius. Cato affords
a splendid exhibition of artificial and fictitious
manners, and delivers just and noble senti
ments, in diction easy, elevated, and harmoni
ous, but its hopes and fears communicate no
vibration to the heart ; the composition refers
us only to the writer; we pronounce the
name of Cato, but we think on Addison.

The work of a correct and regular writer
is a garden accurately formed and diligently
planted, varied with shades, and scented with
flowers; the composition of Shakspeare is a
forest, in which oaks extend their branches,
and pines tower in the air, interspersed some
times with weeds and brambles, and some-

PREFACE TO SHAKSPEARE 87

times giving shelter to myrtles and to roses ;
rilling the eye with awful pomp, and gratify
ing the mind with endless diversity. Other
poets display cabinets of precious rarities,
minutely finished, wrought into shape, and
polished into brightness. Shakspeare opens a
mine which contains gold and diamonds in
inexhaustible plenty, though clouded by in
crustations, debased byimpurities,and mingled
with a mass of meaner minerals. . . .

There is a vigilance of observation and
accuracy of distinction which books and pre
cepts cannot confer; from this almost all
original and native excellence proceeds. Shak
speare must have looked upon mankind with
perspicacity, in the highest degree curious and
attentive. Other writers borrow their char
acters from preceding writers, and diversify
them only by the accidental appendages of
present manners ; the dress is a little varied,
but the body is the same. Our author has
both matter and form to provide ; for, except
the characters of Chaucer, to whom I think
he is not much indebted, there were no writers
in English, and perhaps not many in other
modern languages, which showed life in its
native colours.

The contest about the original benevolence
or malignity of man had not yet commenced.

88 SAMUEL JOHNSON

Speculation had not yet attempted to analyze
the mind, to trace the passions to their sources,
to unfold the seminal principles of vice and
virtue, or sound the depths of the heart for
the motives of action. All those inquiries,
which, from that time that human nature be
came the fashionable study, have been made
sometimes with nice discernment, but often
with idle subtilty, were yet unattempted. The
tales, with which the infancy of learning was
satisfied, exhibited only the superficial appear
ances of action, related the events, but omitted
the causes, and were formed for such as de
lighted in wonders rather than in truth. Man
kind was not then to be studied in the closet ;
he that would know the world was under the
necessity of gleaning his own remarks, by
mingling as he could in its business and
amusements.

Boyle congratulated himself upon his high
birth, because it favoured his curiosity, by
facilitating his access. Shakspeare had no such
advantage ; he came to London a needy ad
venturer, and lived for a time by very mean
employments. Many works of genius and
learning have been performed in states of life
that appear very little favourable to thought
or to inquiry; so many, that he who con
siders them is inclined to think that he sees

PREFACE TO SHAKSPEARE 89

enterprize and perseverance predominating
over all external agency, and bidding help
and hindrance vanish before them. The genius
of Shakspeare was not to be depressed by the
weight of poverty, nor limited by the narrow
conversation to which men in want are in
evitably condemned ; the incumbrances of his
fortune were shaken from his mind, as dew
drops from a lions mane.

Though he had so many difficulties to en
counter, and so little assistance to surmount
them, he has been able to obtain an exact
knowledge of many modes of life, and many
casts of native dispositions ; to vary them with
great multiplicity; to mark them by nice dis
tinctions; and to show them in full view by
proper combinations. In this part of his per
formances he had none to imitate, but has
been himself imitated by all succeeding writers;
and it may be doubted, whether from all his
successors more maxims of theoretical know
ledge, or more rules of practical prudence,
can be collected, than he alone has given to
his country. . . .

To him we must ascribe the praise, unless
Spenser may divide it with him, of having
first discovered to how much smoothness and
harmony the English language could be soft
ened. He has speeches, perhaps sometimes

9 o SAMUEL JOHNSON

scenes, which have all the delicacy of Rowe,
without his effeminacy. He endeavours in
deed commonly to strike by the force and
vigour of his dialogue, but he never executes
his purpose better, than when he tries to
soothe by softness.

Yet it must be at last confessed, that as we
owe every thing to him, he owes something
to us ; that, if much of his praise is paid by
perception and judgment, much is likewise
given by custom and veneration. We fix our
eyes upon his graces, and turn them from his
deformities, and endure in him what we should
in another loathe or despise. If we endured
without praising, respect for the father of our
drama might excuse us ; but I have seen, in
the book of some modern critic, a collection
of anomalies, which show that he has cor
rupted language by every mode of deprava
tion, but which his admirer has accumulated
as a monument of honour.

He has scenes of undoubted and perpetual
excellence ; but perhaps not one play, which,
if it were now exhibited as the work of a
contemporary writer, would be heard to the
conclusion. I am indeed far from thinking,
that his works were wrought to his own ideas
of perfection ; when they were such as would
satisfy the audience, they satisfied the writer.

PREFACE TO SHAKSPEARE 91

It is seldom that authors, though more studious
of fame than Shakspeare, rise much above the
standard of their own age ; to add a little to
what is best, will always be sufficient for pre
sent praise, and those who find themselves
exalted into fame are willing to credit their
encomiasts, and to spare the labour of con
tending with themselves.

It does not appear that Shakspeare thought
his works worthy of posterity, that he levied
any ideal tribute upon future times, or had
any further prospect, than of present popu
larity and profit. When his plays had been
acted, his hope was at an end ; he solicited
no addition of honour from the reader. . . .

It is no pleasure to me, in revising my
volumes, to observe how much paper is wasted
in confutation. Whoever considers the revo
lutions of learning, and the various questions
of greater or less importance, upon which wit
and reason have exercised their powers, must
lament the unsuccessfulness of inquiry, and
the slow advances of truth, when he reflects
that great part of the labour of every writer
is only the destruction of those that went
before him. The first care of the builder of
a new system is to demolish the fabrics which
are standing. The chief desire of him that
comments an author is to show how much

92 SAMUEL JOHNSON

other commentators have corrupted and ob
scured him. The opinions prevalent in one
age, as truths above the reach of controversy,
are confuted and rejected in another, and rise
again to reception in remoter times. Thus
the human mind is kept in motion without
progress. Thus sometimes truth and error,
and sometimes contrarieties of error, take
each other s place by reciprocal invasion. The
tide of seeming knowledge, which is poured
over one generation, retires and leaves another
naked and barren ; the sudden meteors of in
telligence, which for a while appear to shoot
their beams into the regions of obscurity, on
a sudden withdraw their lustre, and leave
mortals again to grope their way.

These elevations and depressions of re
nown, and the contradictions to which all
improvers of knowledge must for ever be
exposed, since they are not escaped by the
highest and brightest of mankind, may surely
be endured with patience by critics and anno-
tators, who can rank themselves but as the
satellites of their authors. How canst thou
beg for life, says Homer s hero to his captive,
when thou knowest that thou art now to
suffer only what must another day be suffered
by Achilles? . . .

I can say with great sincerity of all my

PREFACE TO SHAKSPEARE 93

predecessors, what I hope will hereafter be
said of me, that not one has left Shakspeare
without improvement; nor is there one to
whom I have not been indebted for assistance
and information. Whatever I have taken from
them, it was my intention to refer to its
original author, and it is certain, that what I
have not given to another, I believed when
I wrote it to be my own. In some perhaps I
have been anticipated ; but if I am ever found
to encroach upon the remarks of any other
commentator, I am willing that the honour,
be it more or less, should be transferred to
the first claimant, for his right, and his alone,
stands above dispute; the second can prove
his pretensions only to himself, nor can him
self always distinguish invention, with suffi
cient certainty, from recollection.

They have all been treated by me with
candour, which they have not been careful of
observing to one another. It is not easy to
discover from what cause the acrimony of a
scholiast can naturally proceed. The subjects
to be discussed by him are of very small im
portance; they involve neither property nor
liberty; nor favour the interest of sect or
party. The various readings of copies, and
different interpretations of a passage, seem to
be questions that might exercise the wit, with-

94 SAMUEL JOHNSON

out engaging the passions. But whether it
be that small things make mean men proud,
and vanity catches small occasions; or that
all contrariety of opinion, even in those that
can defend it no longer, makes proud men
angry; there is often found in commentators
a spontaneous strain of invective and con
tempt, more eager and venomous than is
vented by the most furious controvertist in
politics against those whom he is hired to de
fame.

Perhaps the lightness of the matter may
conduce to the vehemence of the agency;
when the truth to be investigated is so near
to inexistence, as to escape attention, its bulk
is to be enlarged by rage and exclamation :
that, to which all would be indifferent in its
original state, may attract notice when the
fate of a name is appended to it. A com
mentator has indeed great temptations to
supply by turbulence what he wants of dignity,
to beat his little gold to a spacious surface, to
work that to foam which no art or diligence
can exalt to spirit. . . .

After the labours of all the editors, I found
many passages which appeared to me likely to

obstruct the greater number of readers, and

f
thought it my duty to facilitate their passage.

It is impossible for an expositor not to write

PREFACE TO SHAKSPEARE 95

too little for some, and too much for others.
He can only judge what is necessary by his
own experience ; and how long soever he may
deliberate, will at last explain many lines which
the learned will think impossible to be mis
taken, and omit many for which the ignorant
will want his help. These are censures merely
relative, and must be quietly endured. I have
endeavoured to be neither superfluously copi
ous, nor scrupulously reserved, and hope that
I have made my author s meaning accessible
to many, who before were frightened from
perusing him, and contributed something to
the public, by diffusing innocent and rational
pleasure. . . .

It is to be lamented, that such a writer
should want a commentary ; that his language
should become obsolete, or his sentiments
obscure. But it is vain to carry wishes be
yond the condition of human things; that
which must happen to all, has happened to
Shakspeare, by accident and time ; and more
than has been suffered by any other writer
since the use of types, has been suffered by
him, through his own negligence of fame, or
perhaps by that superiority of mind, which
despised its own performances, when it com
pared them with its powers, and judged those
works unworthy to be preserved, which the

96 SAMUEL JOHNSON

critics of following ages were to contend for
the fame of restoring and explaining.

Among these candidates of inferior fame, I
am now to stand the judgment of the public;
and wish that I could confidently produce my
commentary as equal to the encouragement
which I have had the honour of receiving.
Every work of this kind is by its nature defi
cient, and I should feel little solicitude about
the sentence, were it to be pronounced only
by the skilful and the learned.

THOUGHTS ON AGRICULTURE

IT is apparent, that every trading nation flour
ishes, while it can be said to flourish, by the
courtesy of others. We cannot compel any
people to buy from us, or to sell to us. A
thousand accidents may prejudice them in
favour of our rivals ; the workmen of another
nation may labour for less price ; or some acci
dental improvement, or natural advantage,
may procure a just preference for their com
modities ; as experience has shown that there
is no work of the hands, which, at different
times, is not best performed in different
places.

Traffic, even while it continues in its state
of prosperity, must owe its success to agricul
ture ; the materials of manufacture are the pro
duce of the earth. The wool which we weave
into cloth, the wood which is formed into
cabinets, the metals which are forged into
weapons, are supplied by nature with the help
of art. Manufactures, indeed, and profitable
manufactures, are sometimes raised from im
ported materials, but then we are subjected a
second time to the caprice of our neighbours.

H

98 SAMUEL JOHNSON

The natives or Lombardy might easily resolve
to retain their silk at home, and employ work
men of their own to weave it. And this will
certainly be done when they grow wise and
industrious, when they have sagacity to discern
their true interest, and vigour to pursue it.

Mines are generally considered as the great
sources of wealth, and superficial observers
have thought the possession of great quantities
of precious metals the first national happiness.
But Europe has long seen, with wonder and
contempt, the poverty of Spain, who thought
herself exempted from the labour of tilling the
ground, by the conquest of Peru, with its veins
of silver. Time, however, has taught even this
obstinate and haughty nation, that without
agriculture they may indeed be the transmit
ters of money, but can never be the possessors.
They may dig it out of the earth, but must
immediately send it away to purchase cloth or
bread, and it must at last remain with some
people wise enough to sell much and to buy
little ; to live upon their own lands, without a
wish for those things which nature has denied
them.

Mines are themselves of no use, without
some kind of agriculture. We have, in our
own country, inexhaustible stores of iron,
which lie useless in the ore for want of wood.

THOUGHTS ON AGRICULTURE 99

It was never the design of Providence to feed
man without his own concurrence ; we have
from nature only what we cannot provide for
ourselves ; she gives us wild fruits, which art
must meliorate, and drossy metals, which
labour must refine.

Particular metals are valuable, because they
are scarce; and they are scarce, because the
mines that yield them are emptied in time.
But the surface of the earth is more liberal
than its caverns. The field, which is this
autumn laid naked by the sickle, will be
covered, in the succeeding summer, by a new
harvest; the grass, which the cattle are de
vouring, shoots up again when they have
passed over it.

Agriculture, therefore, and agriculture alone,
can support us without the help of others, in
certain plenty and genuine dignity. Whatever
we buy from without, the sellers may refuse ;
whatever we sell, manufactured by art, the
purchasers may reject ; but, while our ground
is covered with corn and cattle, we can want
nothing ; and if imagination should grow sick
of native plenty, and call for delicacies or
embellishments from other countries, there is
nothing which corn and cattle will not purchase.

Our country is, perhaps, beyond all others,
productive of things necessary to life. The

ioo SAMUEL JOHNSON

pine-apple thrives better between the tropics,
and better furs are found in the northern
regions. But let us not envy these unneces
sary privileges. Mankind cannot subsist upon
the indulgences of nature, but must be sup
ported by her more common gifts. They must
feed upon bread, and be clothed with wool ;
and the nation that can furnish these universal
commodities may have her ships welcomed at
a thousand ports, or sit at home and receive
the tribute of foreign countries, enjoy their
arts, or treasure up their gold.

FROM A REVIEW OF "A FREE

INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE

AND ORIGIN OF EVIL" 1

CONCERNING the portion of ignorance neces
sary to make the condition of the lower classes
of mankind safe to the public and tolerable to
themselves, both morals and policy exact a
nicer inquiry than will be very soon or very
easily made. There is undoubtedly a degree
of knowledge which will direct a man to refer
all to Providence, and to acquiesce in the con
dition which omniscient Goodness has deter
mined to allot him ; to consider this world as
a phantom that must soon glide from before
his eyes, and the distresses and vexations that
encompass him, as dust scattered in his path,
as a blast that chills him for a moment, and
passes off for ever.

Such wisdom, arising from the comparison
of a part with the whole of our existence, those
that want it most cannot possibly obtain from
philosophy ; nor unless the method of educa
tion, and the general tenour of life, are changed,

By Soame Jenyns.
101

102 SAMUEL JOHNSON

will very easily receive it from religion. The
bulk of mankind is not likely to be very wise
or very good : and I know not whether there
are not many states of life, in which all know
ledge, less than the highest wisdom, will pro
duce discontent and danger. I believe it may
be sometimes found, that a little learning is to
a poor man a dangerous thing. But such is the
condition of humanity, that we easily see, or
quickly feel, the wrong, but cannot always
distinguish the right. Whatever knowledge
is superfluous, in irremediable poverty, is
hurtful; but the difficulty is to determine
when poverty is irremediable, and at what
point superfluity begins. Gross ignorance
every man has found equally dangerous with
perverted knowledge. Men left wholly to
their appetites and their instincts, with little
sense of moral or religious obligation, and
with very faint distinctions of right and
wrong, can never be safely employed, or con
fidently trusted: they can be honest only
by obstinacy, and diligent only by compul
sion or caprice. Some instruction, there
fore, is necessary, and much perhaps may be
dangerous.

Though it should be granted that those who
are born to poverty and drudgery should not be
deprived by an improper education of the opiate

A REVIEW 103

of ignorance ; even this concession will not be
of much use to direct our practice, unless it
be determined who are those that are born to
poverty. To entail irreversible poverty upon
generation after generation, only because the
ancestor happened to be poor, is in itself cruel,
if not unjust, and is wholly contrary to the
maxims of a commercial nation, which always
suppose and promote a rotation of property,
and offer every individual a chance of mending
his condition by his diligence. Those who
communicate literature to the son of a poor
man, consider him as one not born to poverty,
but to the necessity of deriving a better fortune
from himself. In this attempt, as in others,
many fail, and many succeed. Those that fail
will feel their misery more acutely; but since
poverty is now confessed to be such a calamity
as cannot be borne without the opiate of in
sensibility, I hope the happiness of those,
whom education enables to escape from it,
may turn the balance against that exacerbation
which the others suffer.

I am always afraid of determining on the
side of envy or cruelty. The privileges of
education may sometimes be improperly be
stowed, but I shall always fear to withhold
them, lest I should be yielding to the sugges
tions of pride, while I persuade myself that I

io 4 SAMUEL JOHNSON

am following the maxims of policy ; and under
the appearance of salutary restraints, should
be indulging the lust of dominion, and that
malevolence which delights in seeing others
depressed.

THE IDLER

WHEN man sees one of the inferior creatures
perched upon a tree, or basking in the sun
shine, without any apparent endeavour or
pursuit, he often asks himself, or his com
panion, On what that animal can be supposed
to be thinking?

Of this question, since neither bird nor
beast can answer it, we must be content to
live without the resolution. We know not
how much the brutes recollect of the past, or
anticipate of the future ; what power they have
of comparing and preferring ; or whether their
faculties may not rest in motionless indiffer
ence, till they are moved by the presence of
their proper object, or stimulated to act by
corporal sensations.

I am the less inclined to these superfluous
inquiries, because I have always been able to
find sufficient matter for curiosity in my own
species. It is useless to go far in quest of that
which may be found at home ; a very narrow
circle of observation will supply a sufficient
number of men and women, who might be

io6 SAMUEL JOHNSON

asked, with equal propriety, On what they can
be thinking? . . .

To every act a subject is required. He that
thinks, must think upon something. But tell
me, ye that pierce deepest into nature, ye that
take the widest surveys of life, inform me, kind
shades of Malebranche and of Locke, what that
something can be, which excites and continues
thought in maiden aunts with small fortunes ;
in younger brothers that live upon annuities ;
in traders retired from business ; in soldiers
absent from their regiments ; or in widows
that have no children ?

Life is commonly considered as either active
or contemplative ; but surely this division, how
long soever it has been received, is inadequate
and fallacious. There are mortals whose life is
certainly not active, for they do neither good
nor evil; and whose life cannot be properly
called contemplative, for they never attend
either to the conduct of men, or the works of
nature, but rise in the morning, look round
them till night in careless stupidity, go to bed
and sleep, and rise again in the morning.jj

It has been lately a celebrated question in
the schools of philosophy, Whether the soul
always thinks? Some have defined the soul to
be the power of thinking; concluded that its
essence consists in act ; that, if it should cease

THE IDLER 107

to act, it would cease to be ; and that cessation
of thought is but another name for extinction
of mind. This argument is subtile, but not
conclusive ; because it supposes what cannot
be proved, that the nature of mind is properly
defined. Others affect to disdain subtilty,
when subtilty will not serve their purpose,
and appeal to daily experience. We spend
many hours, they say, in sleep, without the
least remembrance of any thoughts which
then passed in our minds ; and since we can
only by our own consciousness be sure that
we think, why should we imagine that we
have had thought of which no consciousness
remains ?

This argument, which appeals to experience,
may from experience be confuted. We every
day do something which we forget when it is
done, and know to have been done only by
consequence. The waking hours are not
denied to have been passed in thought; yet
he that shall endeavour to recollect on one
day the ideas of the former, will only turn
the eye of reflection upon vacancy; he will
find, that the greater part is irrevocably
vanished, and wonder how the moments
could come and go, and leave so little behind
them.

io8 SAMUEL JOHNSON

THE Idlers that sport only with inanimate
nature may claim some indulgence; if they
are useless, they are still innocent ; but there
are others, whom I know not how to mention
without more emotion than my love of quiet
willingly admits. Among the inferior pro
fessors of medical knowledge, is a race of
wretches, whose lives are only varied by
varieties of cruelty; whose favourite amuse
ment is, to nail dogs to tables and open them
alive ; to try how long life may be continued
in various degrees of mutilation, or with the
excision or laceration of the vital parts ; to
examine whether burning irons are felt more
acutely by the bone or tendon ; and whether
the more lasting agonies are produced by
poison forced into the mouth, or injected into
the veins.

It is not without reluctance that I offend
the sensibility of the tender mind with images
like these. If such cruelties were not prac
tised, it were to be desired that they should
not be conceived ; but, since they are published
every day with ostentation, let me be allowed
once to mention them, since I mention them
with abhorrence.

PLEASURE is very seldom found where it is
sought. Our bright blazes of gladness are

THE IDLER 109

commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
The flowers which scatter their odours from
time to time in the paths of life, grow up
without culture from seeds scattered by
chance.

Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of
merriment. Wits and humourists are brought
together from distant quarters by precon
certed invitations; they come attended by
their admirers, prepared to laugh and to ap
plaud ; they gaze a while on each other,
ashamed to be silent, and afraid to speak ;
every man is discontented with himself, grows
angry with those that give him pain, and re
solves that he will contribute nothing to the
merriment of such worthless company. Wine
inflames the general malignity, and changes
sullenness to petulance, till at last none can
bear any longer the presence of the rest. They
retire to vent their indignation in safer places,
where they are heard with attention; their
importance is restored, they recover their good
humour, and gladden the night with wit and
jocularity.

Merriment is always the effect of a sudden
impression. The jest which is expected is al
ready destroyed. The most active imagination
will be sometimes torpid under the frigid in
fluence of melancholy, and sometimes occa-

no SAMUEL JOHNSON

sions will be wanting to tempt the mind,
however volatile, to sallies and excursions.
Nothing was ever said with uncommon felicity,
but by the co-operation of chance, and, there
fore, wit as well as valour must be content to
share its honours with fortune.

All other pleasures are equally uncertain ;
the general remedy of uneasiness is a change
of place ; almost every one has some journey
of pleasure in his mind, with which he flatters
his expectation. He that travels in theory has
no inconvenience ; he has shade and sunshine
at his disposal, and wherever he alights finds
tables of plenty and looks of gayety. These
ideas are indulged till the day of departure
arrives, the chaise is called, and the progress
of happiness begins.

A few miles teach him the fallacies of imagi
nation. The road is dusty, the air is sultry,
the horses are sluggish, and the postillion
brutal. He longs for the time of dinner, that
he may eat and rest. The inn is crowded, his
orders are neglected, and nothing remains but
that he devour in haste what the cook has
spoiled, and drive on in quest of better enter
tainment. He finds at night a more com
modious house, but the best is always worse
than he expected.

He at last enters his native province, and

THE IDLER in

resolves to feast his mind with the conversa
tion of his old friends and the recollection of
juvenile frolics. He stops at the house of his
friend, whom he designs to overpower with
pleasure by the unexpected interview. He is
not known till he tells his name, and revives
the memory of himself by a gradual explana
tion. He is then coldly received and cere
moniously feasted. He hastes away to another,
whom his affairs have called to a distant place,
and having seen the empty house, goes away,
disgusted by a disappointment which could
not be intended because it could not be fore
seen. At the next house he finds every face
clouded with misfortune, and is regarded with
malevolence as an unseasonable intruder, who
comes not to visit but to insult them.

It is seldom that we find either men or
places such as we expect them. He that has
pictured a prospect upon his fancy, will receive
little pleasure from his eyes ; he that has
anticipated the conversation of a wit, will
wonder to what prejudice he owes his repu
tation. Yet it is necessary to hope, though
hope should always be deluded; for hope
itself is happiness, and its frustrations, how
ever frequent, are yet less dreadful than its
extinction.

ii2 SAMUEL JOHNSON

No complaint is more frequently repeated
among the learned, than that of the waste
made by time among the labours of antiquity.
Of those who once filled the civilized world
with their renown, nothing is now left but
their names, which are left only to raise de
sires that never can be satisfied, and sorrow
which never can be comforted.

Had all the writings of the ancients been
faithfully delivered down from age to age, had
the Alexandrian library been spared, and the
Palatine repositories remained unimpaired,
how much might we have known of which
we are now doomed to be ignorant ! how many
laborious inquiries, and dark conjectures ; how
many collations of broken hints and muti
lated passages might have been spared ! We
should have known the successions of princes,
the revolutions of empire, the actions of the
great, and opinions of the wise, the laws and
constitutions of every state, and the arts by
which public grandeur and happiness are ac
quired and preserved ; we should have traced
the progress of life, seen colonies from distant
regions take possession of European deserts,
and troops of savages settled into communities
by the desire of keeping what they had ac
quired ; we should have traced the gradations
of civility, and travelled upward to the original

THE IDLER 113

of things by the light of history, till in re
moter times it had glimmered in fable, and at
last sunk into darkness.

If the works of imagination had been less
diminished, it is likely that all future times
might have been supplied with inexhaustible
amusement by the fictions of antiquity. The
tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides would
have shown all the stronger passions in all
their diversities : and the comedies of Menan-
der would have furnished all the maxims of
domestic life. Nothing would have been
necessary to mortal wisdom but to have
studied these great masters, whose knowledge
would have guided doubt, and whose authority
would have silenced cavils.

Such are the thoughts that rise in every
student, when his curiosity is eluded, and his
searches are frustrated ; yet it may perhaps
be doubted, whether our complaints are not
sometimes inconsiderate, and whether we do
not imagine more evil than we feel. Of the
ancients, enough remains to excite our emula
tion and direct our endeavours. Many of the
works which time has left us we know to
have been those that were most esteemed, and
which antiquity itself considered as models ;
so that, having the originals, we may without
much regret lose the imitations. The obscurity

i

u 4 SAMUEL JOHNSON

which the want of contemporary writers often
produces, only darkens single passages, and
those commonly of slight importance. The
general tendency of every piece may be
known : and though that diligence deserves
praise which leaves nothing unexamined, yet
its miscarriages are not much to be lamented ;
for the most useful truths are always uni
versal, and unconnected with accidents and
customs.

Such is the general conspiracy of human
nature against contemporary merit, that, if we
had inherited from antiquity enough to afford
employment for the laborious, and amusement
for the idle, I know not what room would
have been left for modern genius or modern
industry; almost every subject would have
been pre-occupied, and every style would have
been fixed by a precedent from which few
would have ventured to depart. Every writer
would have had a rival, whose superiority was
already acknowledged, and to whose fame his
work would, even before it was seen, be
marked out for a sacrifice.

FEW faults of style, whether real or imagin
ary, excite the malignity of a more numerous
class of readers than the use of hard words.

THE IDLER 115

If an author be supposed to involve his
thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to ob
struct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind
eager in pursuit of truth ; if he writes not to
make others learned, but to boast the learning
which he possesses himself, and wishes to be
admired rather than understood, he counter
acts the first end of writing, and justly suffers
the utmost severity of censure, or the more
afflictive severity of neglect.

But words are only hard to those who do
not understand them; and the critic ought
always to inquire, whether he is incommoded
by the fault of the writer, or by his own.

Every author does not write for every
reader; many questions are such as the il
literate part of mankind can have neither in
terest nor pleasure in discussing, and which
therefore it would be a useless endeavour to
level with common minds, by tiresome cir
cumlocutions or laborious explanations ; and
many subjects of general use may be treated
in a different manner, as the book is intended
for the learned or the ignorant. Diffusion and
explication are necessary to the instruction of
those who, being neither able nor accustomed
to think for themselves, can learn only what
is expressly taught ; but they who can form
parallels, discover consequences, and multiply

n6 SAMUEL JOHNSON

conclusions, are best pleased with involution
of argument and compression of thought ;
they desire only to receive the seeds of know
ledge which they may branch out by their
own power, to have the way to truth pointed
out, which they can then follow without a
guide.

The Guardian directs one of his pupils " to
think with the wise, but speak with the
vulgar." This is a precept specious enough,
but not always practicable. Difference of
thoughts will produce difference of language.
He that thinks with more extent than another
will want words of larger meaning ; he that
thinks with more subtilty will seek for terms
of more nice discrimination ; and where is the
wonder, since words are but the images of
things, that he who never knew the original
should not know the copies ?

Yet vanity inclines us to find faults any
where rather than in ourselves. He that reads
and grows no wiser, seldom suspects his own
deficiency ; but complains of hard words and
obscure sentences, and asks why books are
written which cannot be understood ?

Among the hard words which are no longer
to be used, it has been long the custom to
number terms of art. " Every man," says
Swift, " is more able to explain the subject of

THE IDLER 117

an art than its professors ; a farmer will tell
you, in two words, that he has broken his leg;
but a surgeon, after a long discourse, shall
leave you as ignorant as you were before."
This could only have been said, by such an
exact observer of life, in gratification of malign
ity, or in ostentation of acuteness. Every
hour produces instances of the necessity of
terms of art. Mankind could never conspire
in uniform affectation ; it is not but by neces
sity that every science and every trade has its
peculiar language. They that content them
selves with general ideas may rest in general
terms ; but those, whose studies or employ
ments force them upon closer inspection,
must have names for particular parts, and
words by which they may express various
modes of combination, such as none but them
selves have occasion to consider.

Artists are indeed sometimes ready to sup
pose that none can be strangers to words to
which themselves are familiar, talk to an inci
dental inquirer as they talk to one another,
and make their knowledge ridiculous by in
judicious obtrusion. An art cannot be taught
but by its proper terms, but it is not always
necessary to teach the art.

That the vulgar express their thoughts
clearly is far from true ; and what perspicuity

n8 SAMUEL JOHNSON

can be found among them proceeds not from
the easiness of their language, but the shal-
lowness of their thoughts. He that sees a
building as a common spectator, contents him
self with relating that it is great or little,
mean or splendid, lofty or low; all these
words are intelligible and common, but they
convey no distinct or limited ideas ; if he at
tempts, without the terms of architecture, to
delineate the parts, or enumerate the orna
ments, his narration at once becomes unin
telligible. The terms, indeed, generally dis
please, because they are understood by few ;
but they are little understood only because
few that look upon an edifice, examine its
parts or analyze its columns into their
members.

The state of every other art is the same ;
as it is cursorily surveyed or accurately ex
amined, different forms of expression become
proper. In morality it is one thing to discuss
the niceties of the casuist, and another to
direct the practice of common life. In agri
culture, he that instructs the farmer to plough
and sow, may convey his notions without the
words which he would find necessary in ex
plaining to philosophers the process of vegeta
tion ; and if he, who has nothing to do but
to be honest by the shortest way, will perplex

THE IDLER 119

his mind with subtile speculations ; or if he,
whose task is to reap and thresh, will not be
contented without examining the evolution of
the seed, and circulation of the sap, the writers
whom either shall consult are very little to be
blamed, though it should sometimes happen
that they are read in vain.

MEN complain of nothing more frequently
than of deficient memory; and, indeed, every
one finds that many of the ideas which he
desired to retain have slipped irretrievably
away ; that the acquisitions of the mind are
sometimes equally fugitive with the gifts of
fortune; and that a short intermission of at
tention more certainly lessens knowledge than
impairs an estate.

To assist this weakness of our nature, many
methods have been proposed, all of which
may be justly suspected of being ineffectual;
for no art of memory, however its effects have
been boasted or admired, has been ever
adopted into general use, nor have those who
possessed it appeared to excel others in readi
ness of recollection or multiplicity of attain
ments.

There is another art of which all have felt
the want, though Themistocles only confessed

120 SAMUEL JOHNSON I

it. We suffer equal pain from the pertinacious
adhesion of unwelcome images, as from the
evanescence of those which are pleasing and
useful ; and it may be doubted whether we
should be more benefited by the art of memory
or the art of forgetfulness.

Forgetfulness is necessary to remembrance.
Ideas are retained by renovation of that im
pression which time is always wearing away,
and which new images are striving to ob
literate. If useless thoughts could be expelled
from the mind, all the valuable parts of our
knowledge would more frequently recur, and
every recurrence would reinstate them in their
former place.

It is impossible to consider, without some
regret, how much might have been learned,
or how much might have been invented by a
rational and vigorous application of time, use
lessly or painfully passed in the revocation of
events which have left neither good nor evil
behind them, in grief for misfortunes either
repaired or irreparable, in resentment of in
juries known only to ourselves, of which
death has put the authors beyond our power.

Philosophy has accumulated precept upon
precept, to warn us against the anticipation of
future calamities. All useless misery is cer- I
tainly folly, and he that feels evils before they I

THE IDLER 121

come may be deservedly censured ; yet surely
to dread the future is more reasonable than
to lament the past. The business of life is to
go forwards : he who sees evil in prospect
meets it in his way ; but he who catches it by
retrospection turns back to find it. That which
is feared may sometimes be avoided, but that
which is regretted to-day may be regretted
again to-morrow.

Regret is indeed useful and virtuous, and
not only allowable but necessary, when it
tends to the amendment of life, or to ad
monition of error which we may be again in
danger of committing. But a very small part
of the moments spent in meditation on the
past produce any reasonable caution or salu
tary sorrow. Most of the mortifications that
we have suffered arose from the concurrence
of local and temporary circumstances, which
can never meet again ; and most of our dis
appointments have succeeded those expecta
tions, which life allows not to be formed a
second time.

It would add much to human happiness, if
an art could be taught of forgetting all of
which the remembrance is at once useless and
afflictive, if that pain which never can end in
pleasure could be driven totally away, that the
mind might perform its functions without in-

122 SAMUEL JOHNSON

cumbrance, and the past might no longer
encroach upon the present.

Little can be done well to which the whole
mind is not applied; the business of every
day calls for the day to which it is assigned ;
and he will have no leisure to regret yester
day s vexations who resolves not to have a
new subject of regret to-morrow.

But to forget or to remember at pleasure,
is equally beyond the power of man. Yet as
memory may be assisted by method, and the
decays of knowledge repaired by stated times
of recollection, so the power or forgetting is
capable of improvement. Reason will, by a
resolute contest, prevail over imagination, and
the power may be obtained of transferring the
attention as judgment shall direct.

The incursions of troublesome thoughts are
often violent and importunate ; and it is not
easy to a mind accustomed to their inroads to
expel them immediately by putting better
images into motion ; but this enemy of quiet
is above all others weakened by every defeat ;
the reflection which has been once overpowered
and ejected, seldom returns with any formid
able vehemence.

Employment is the great instrument of in
tellectual dominion. The mind cannot retire
from its enemy into total vacancy, or turn

THE IDLER 123

aside from one object but by passing to an
other. The gloomy and the resentful are always
found among those who have nothing to do,
or who do nothing. We must be busy about
good or evil, and he to whom the present
offers nothing will often be looking backward
on the past.

THE true art of memory is the art of atten
tion. No man will read with much advantage
who is not able, at pleasure, to evacuate his
mind, or who brings not to his author, an
intellect defecated and pure, neither turbid
with care, nor agitated by pleasure. If the
repositories of thought are already full, what
can they receive? If the mind is employed on
the past or future, the book will be held be
fore the eyes in vain. What is read with
delight is commonly retained, because pleasure
always secures attention ; but the books which
are consulted by occasional necessity, and
perused with impatience, seldom leave any
traces on the mind.

Respicere ad longae jussit spatia ultima vitae. Juv.

MUCH of the pain and pleasure of mankind
arises from the conjectures which every one

i2 4 SAMUEL JOHNSON

makes of the thoughts of others ; we all enjoy
praise which we do not hear, and resent con
tempt which we do not see. The Idler may
therefore be forgiven, if he suffers his imagina
tion to represent to him what his readers will
say or think when they are informed that they
have now his last paper in their hands.

Value is more frequently raised by scarcity
than by use. That which lay neglected when
it was common, rises in estimation as its
quantity becomes less. We seldom learn the
true want of what we have, till it is discovered
that we can have no more.

This essay will, perhaps, be read with care
even by those who have not yet attended to
any other ; and he that finds this late atten
tion recompensed, will not forbear to wish
that he had bestowed it sooner.

Though the Idler and his readers have con
tracted no close friendship, they are perhaps
both unwilling to part. There are few things,
not purely evil, of which we can say, without
some emotion of uneasiness, "this is the
last." Those who never could agree together,
shed tears when mutual discontent has deter
mined them to final separation; of a place
which has been frequently visited, though
without pleasure, the last look is taken with
heaviness of heart ; and the Idler, with all his

THE IDLER 125

chillness of tranquillity, is not wholly un
affected by the thought that his last essay is
now before him.

This secret horror of the last is inseparable
from a thinking being, whose life is limited,
and to whom death is dreadful. We always
make a secret comparison between a part and
the whole ; the termination of any period of
life reminds us that life itself has likewise its
termination ; when we have done any thing
for the last time, we involuntarily reflect that
a part of the days allotted us is past, and that
as more are past there are less remaining.

It is very happily and kindly provided, that
in every life there are certain pauses and in
terruptions, which force consideration upon
the careless, and seriousness upon the light ;
points of time where one course of action
ends, and another begins ; and by vicissitudes
of fortune, or alteration of employment, by
change of place or loss of friendship, we are
forced to say of something, " this is the last."

An even and unvaried tenour of life always
hides from our apprehension the approach of
its end. Succession is not perceived but by
variation; he that lives to day as he lived
yesterday, and expects that as the present day
is, such will be the morrow, easily conceives
time as running in a circle and returning to

126 SAMUEL JOHNSON

itself. The uncertainty of our duration is im
pressed commonly by dissimilitude of con
dition ; it is only by finding life changeable
that we are reminded of its shortness.

This conviction, however forcible at every
new impression, is every moment fading from
the mind ; and partly by the inevitable incur
sion of new images, and partly by voluntary
exclusion of unwelcome thoughts, we are again
exposed to the universal fallacy ; and we must
do another thing for the last time, before we
consider that the time is nigh when we shall
do no more.

As the last Idler is published in that solemn
week which the Christian world has always
set apart for the examination of the conscience,
the review of life, the extinction of earthly
desires, and the renovation of holy purposes ;
I hope that my readers are already disposed
to view every incident with seriousness, and
improve it by meditation ; and that when
they see this series of trifles brought to a con
clusion, they will consider that, by outliving
the Idler, they have passed weeks, months,
and years, which are now no longer in their
power ; that an end must in time be put to
every thing great, as to every thing little;
that to life must come its last hour, and to
this system of being its last day, the hour at

THE IDLER 127

which probation ceases and repentance will be
vain ; the day in which every work of the
hand, and imagination of the heart, shall be
brought to judgment, and an everlasting
futurity shall be determined by the past.

RASSELAS

YE who listen with credulity to the whispers
of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phan
toms of hope ; who expect that age will per
form 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 Abissinia.

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 de
scended from age to age among the monarch s
of the torrid zone, Rasselas was confined in a
private palace, with the other sons and
daughters of Abissinian 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 Abissinian princes, was a spacious valley
in the kingdom of Amhara, surrounded on
every side by mountains, of which the sum-

128

RASSELAS 129

mits 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 massy,
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 ver
dure 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 exten-

K

1 3 o SAMUEL JOHNSON

sive 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 the necessaries of life ; and
all delights and superfluities were added at the
annual visit which the emperor paid his child
ren, 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 per
formance was thought able to add novelty to

RASSELAS 13 [

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.

" 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

1 32 SAMUEL JOHNSON

observed before. I have already enjoyed too
much : give me something to desire."

HE began to believe that the world over
flowed with universal plenty, and that nothing
was withheld either from want or merit ; that
every hand showered liberality, and every heart
melted with benevolence: "and who then,"
says he, " will be suffered to be wretched ?

Imlac permitted the pleasing delusion, and
was unwilling to crush the hope of inex
perience : till one day, having sat a while
silent, " I know not," said the prince, " what
can be the reason that I am more unhappy
than any of our friends. I see them per
petually and unalterably cheerful, but feel my
own mind restless and uneasy. I am unsatis
fied with those pleasures which I seem most
to court. I live in the crowds of jollity, not
so much to enjoy company as to shun myself,
and am only loud and merry to conceal my
sadness."

" Every man," said Imlac, " may, by exam
ining his own mind, guess what passes in the
minds of others : when you feel that your own
gayety is counterfeit, it may justly lead you
to suspect that of your companions not to be
sincere. Envy is commonly reciprocal. We

RASSELAS 133

are long before we are convinced that happi
ness is never to be found, and each believes
it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope
of obtaining it for himself. In the assembly,
where you passed the last night, there ap
peared such sprightliness of air, and volatility
of fancy, as might have suited beings of a
higher order, formed to inhabit serener regions,
inaccessible to care or sorrow : yet, believe
me, prince, there was not one who did not
dread the moment when solitude should de
liver him to the tyranny of reflection."

" This," said the prince, " may be true of
others, since it is true of me ; yet, whatever
be the general infelicity of man, one condition
is more happy than another, and wisdom
surely directs us to take the least evil in the
choice of life."

" The causes of good and evil," answered
Imlac, " are so various and uncertain, so often
entangled with each other, so diversified by
various relations, and so much subject to acci
dents which cannot be foreseen, that he who
would fix his condition upon incontestible
reasons of preference must live and die inquir
ing and deliberating."

" But surely," said Rasselas, " the wise
men, to whom we listen with reverence and
wonder, chose that mode of life for them-

i 34 SAMUEL JOHNSON

selves which they thought most likely to
make them happy."

" Very few," said the poet, " live by
choice."

As [Rasselas] was one day walking in the street,
he saw a spacious building, which all were, by
the open doors, invited to enter ; he followed
the stream of people, and found it a hall or
school of declamation, in which professors
read lectures to their auditory. He fixed his
eye upon a sage raised above the rest, who
discoursed with great energy on the govern
ment of the passions. His look was venerable,
his action graceful, his pronunciation clear,
and his diction elegant. He showed, with
great strength of sentiment, and variety of
illustration, that human nature is degraded
and debased, when the lower faculties pre
dominate over the higher; that when fancy,
the parent of passion, usurps the dominion of
the mind, nothing ensues but the natural
effect of unlawful government, perturbation,
and confusion; that she betrays the fortresses
of the intellect to rebels, and excites her
children to sedition against their lawful sove
reign. He compared reason to the sun, of
which the light is constant, uniform, and last
ing; and fancy to a meteor, of bright but

RASSELAS 135

transitory lustre, irregular in its motion and
delusive in its direction.

He then communicated the various pre
cepts given from time to time for the con
quest of passion, and displayed the happiness
of those who had obtained the important
victory, after which man is no longer the slave
of fear, nor the fool of hope; is no more
emaciated by envy, inflamed by anger, emas
culated by tenderness, or depressed by grief;
but walks on calmly through the tumults or
privacies of life, as the sun pursues alike his
course through the calm or the stormy sky.

He enumerated many examples of heroes
immovable by pain or pleasure, who looked
with indifference on those modes or accidents
to which the vulgar give the names of good
and evil. He exhorted his hearers to lay aside
their prejudices, and arm themselves against
the shafts of malice or misfortune, by in
vulnerable patience : concluding, that this state
only was happiness, and that this happiness
was in every one s power.

MARRIAGE has many pains, but celibacy has
no pleasures.

" To indulge the power of fiction, and send
imagination out upon the wing, is often the

136 SAMUEL JOHNSON

sport of those who delight too much in silent
speculation. When we are alone we are not
always busy; the labour of excogitation is too
violent to last long; the ardour of enquiry
will sometimes give way to idleness or satiety.
He who has nothing external that can divert
him must find pleasure in his own thoughts,
and must conceive himself what he is not; for
who is pleased with what he is ? He then ex
patiates in boundless futurity, and culls from
all imaginable conditions that which for the
present moment he should most desire,
amuses his desires with impossible enjoy
ments, and confers upon his pride unattain
able dominion. The mind dances from scene
to scene, unites all pleasures in all combina
tions, and riots in delights which nature and
fortune, with all their bounty, cannot be
stow.

" In time, some particular train of ideas
fixes the attention : all other intellectual grati
fications are rejected; the mind, in weariness
or leisure, recurs constantly to the favourite
conception, and feasts on the luscious false
hood whenever she is offended with the
bitterness of truth. By degrees, the reign of
fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious,
and in time despotic. Then fictions begin to
operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon

RASSELAS 137

the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture
or of anguish."

u PRAISE," said the sage, with a sigh, " is to
an old man an empty sound. I have neither
mother to be delighted with the reputation of
her son, nor wife to partake the honours of
her husband. 1 have outlived my friends and
my rivals. Nothing is now of much import
ance; for I cannot extend my interest beyond
myself. Youth is delighted with applause, be
cause it is considered as the earnest of some
future good, and because the prospect of life
is far extended: but to me, who am now de
clining to decrepitude, there is little to be
feared from the malevolence of men, and yet
less to be hoped from their affection or es
teem. Something they may yet take away,
but they can give me nothing. Riches would
now be useless, and high employment would
be pain. My retrospect of life recalls to my
view many opportunities of good neglected,
much time squandered upon trifles, and more
lost in idleness and vacancy. I leave many
great designs unattempted, and many great
attempts unfinished. My mind is burdened
with no heavy crime, and therefore I compose
myself to tranquillity; endeavour to abstract

138 SAMUEL JOHNSON

my thoughts from hopes and cares, which,
though reason knows them to be vain, still
try to keep their old possession of the heart;
expect, with serene humility, that hour which
nature cannot long delay, and hope to possess,
in a better state, that happiness which here I
could not find, and that virtue which here I
have not attained. 1

" WHAT reason," said the prince, " can be
given, why the Egyptians should thus expen
sively preserve those carcasses which some
nations consume with fire, others lay to mingle
with the earth, and all agree to remove from
their sight as soon as decent rites can be per
formed ?

" The original of ancient customs," said
Imlac, " is commonly unknown; for the prac
tice often continues when the cause has
ceased: and concerning superstitious cere
monies, it is vain to conjecture; for what
reason did not dictate, reason cannot explain.
I have long believed that the practice of em
balming arose only from tenderness to the
remains of relations or friends; and to this
opinion I am more inclined, because it seems
impossible that this care should have been
general; had all the dead been embalmed,

RASSELAS 139

their repositories must in time have been
more spacious than the dwellings of the living.
I suppose only the rich or honourable were
secured from corruption, and the rest left to
the course of nature.

" But it is commonly supposed that the
Egyptians believed the soul to live as long as
the body continued undissolved, and there
fore tried this method of eluding death."

" Could the wise Egyptians," said Nekayah,
" think so grossly of the soul ? If the soul
could once survive its separation, what could
it afterwards receive or suffer from the body ?

"The Egyptians would doubtless think
erroneously," said the astronomer, " in the
darkness of heathenism, and the first dawn of
philosophy. The nature of the soul is still
disputed, amidst all our opportunities of
clearer knowledge: some yet say, that it may
be material, who, nevertheless, believe it to
be immortal. "

" Some," answered Imlac, " have indeed
said that the soul is material, but I can
scarcely believe that any man has thought it
who knew how to think; for all the con
clusions of reason enforce the immateriality
of mind, and all the notices of sense and in
vestigations of science concur to prove the
unconsciousness of matter.

1 40 SAMUEL JOHNSON

"It was never supposed that cogitation is
inherent in matter, or that every particle is a
thinking being. Yet if any part of matter be
devoid of thought, what part can we suppose
to think ? Matter can differ from matter only
in form, density, bulk, motion, and direction
of motion. To which of these, however
varied or combined, can consciousness be an
nexed ? To be round or square, to be solid or
fluid, to be great or little, to be moved slowly
or swiftly, one way or another, are modes of
material existence, all equally alien from the
nature of cogitation. If matter be once with
out thought, it can only be made to think by
some new modification; but all the modifica
tions which it can admit are equally uncon
nected with cogitative powers."

" But the materialists," said the astronomer,
" urge that matter may have qualities with
which we are unacquainted."

" He who will determine," returned Imlac,
" against that which he knows, because there
may be something which he knows not ; he
that can set hypothetical possibility against
acknowledged certainty, is not to be admitted
among reasonable beings. All that we know
of matter is, that matter is inert, senseless,
and lifeless; and if this conviction cannot be
opposed but by referring us to something

RASSELAS 141

that we know not, we have all the evidence
that human intellect can admit. If that which
is known may be overruled by that which is
unknown, no being, not omniscient, can arrive
at certainty."

" Yet let us not," said the astronomer,
" too arrogantly limit the Creator s power."

" It is no limitation of Omnipotence," re
plied the poet, " to suppose that one thing is
not consistent with another, that the same
proposition cannot be at once true and false,
that the same number cannot be even and odd,
that cogitation cannot be conferred on that
which is created incapable of cogitation."

" I know not," said Nekayah, " any great
use of this question. Does that immateriality,
which, in my opinion, you have sufficiently
proved, necessarily include eternal duration ?

" Of immateriality," said Imlac, " our ideas
are negative, and therefore obscure. Imma
teriality seems to imply a natural power of
perpetual duration as a consequence of ex
emption from all causes of decay: whatever
perishes is destroyed by the solution of its
contexture, and separation of its parts; nor
can we conceive how that which has no parts,
and therefore admits no solution, can be
naturally corrupted or impaired."

" I know not," said Rasselas, " how to con-

1 42 SAMUEL JOHNSON

ceive any thing without extension: what is
extended must have parts, and you allow that
whatever has parts may be destroyed."

" Consider your own conceptions," replied
Imlac, " and the difficulty will be less. You
will find substance without extension. An
ideal form is no less real than material bulk;
yet an ideal form has no extension. It is no
less certain, when you think on a pyramid,
that your mind possesses the idea of a pyra
mid, than that the pyramid itself is standing.
What space does the idea of a pyramid occupy
more than the idea of a grain of corn ? or how
can either idea suffer laceration? As is the
effect, such is the cause; as thought, such is
the power that thinks, a power impassive and
indiscerptible."

" But the Being," said Nekayah, " whom I
fear to name, the Being which made the soul,
can destroy it."

" He surely can destroy it," answered Im
lac, " since, however unperishable, it receives
from a superior nature its power of duration.
That it will not perish by any inherent cause
of decay, or principle of corruption, may be
shown by philosophy; but philosophy can tell
no more. That it will not be annihilated by
Him that made it, we must humbly learn
from higher authority."

RASSELAS 143

The whole assembly stood a while silent,
and collected. " Let us return, * said Rasse-
las, " from this scene of mortality. How
gloomy would be these mansions of the dead
to him who did not know that he should
never die; that what now acts shall continue
its agency, and what now thinks shall think
on for ever. Those that lie here stretched be
fore us, the wise and the powerful of ancient
times, warn us to remember the shortness of
our present state: they were, perhaps, snatched
away while they were busy, like us, in the
choice of life."

" To me," said the princess, " the choice of
life is become less important; I hope hereafter
to think only on the choice of eternity."

A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN

ISLANDS

IT is not only in Raasay that the chapel is un
roofed and useless; through the few islands
which we visited we neither saw nor heard of
any house of prayer, except in Sky, that was
not in ruins. The malignant influence of Cal
vinism has blasted ceremony and decency to
gether; and if the remembrance of papal
superstition is obliterated, the monuments of
papal piety are likewise effaced.

It has been, for many years, popular to talk
of the lazy devotion of the Romish Clergy;
over the sleepy laziness of men that erected
churches, we may indulge our superiority
with a new triumph, by comparing it with the
fervid activity of those who suffer them to fall.

Of the destruction of churches, the decay of
religion must in time be the consequence; for
while the public acts of the ministry are now
performed in houses, a very small number can
be present; and as the greater part of the
islanders make no use of books, all must
necessarily live in total ignorance who want
the opportunity of vocal instruction.

144

THE WESTERN ISLANDS 145

From these remains of ancient sanctity,
which are every where to be found, it has
been conjectured that, for the last two cen
turies, the inhabitants of the islands have de
creased in number. This argument, which
supposes that the churches have been suffered
to fall, only because they were no longer ne
cessary, would have some force, if the houses
of worship still remaining were sufficient for
the people. But since they have now no
churches at all, these venerable fragments do
not prove the people of former times to have
been more numerous, but to have been more
devout. If the inhabitants were doubled, with
their present principles, it appears not that
any provision for public worship would be
made. Where the religion of a country en
forces consecrated buildings, the number of
those buildings may be supposed to afford
some indication, however uncertain, of the
populousness of the place; but where by a
change of manners a nation is contented to
live without them, their decay implies no
diminution of inhabitants.

IT affords a generous and manly pleasure to
conceive a little nation gathering its fruits and
tending its herds with fearless confidence,

L

146 SAMUEL JOHNSON

though it lies open on every side to invasion,
where, in contempt of walls and trenches,
every man sleeps securely with his sword be
side him: where all, on the first approach of
hostility, came together at the call to battle,
as at a summons to a festal show; and, com
mitting their cattle to the care of those whom
age or nature has disabled, engaged the enemy
with that competition for hazard and for
glory, which operate in men that fight under
the eye of those whose dislike or kindness
they have always considered as the greatest
evil or the greatest good.

This was, in the beginning of the present
century, the state of the Highlands. Every
man was a soldier, who partook of national
confidence, and interested himself in national
honour. To lose this spirit, is to lose what no
small advantage will compensate.

It may likewise deserve to be inquired,
whether a great nation ought to be totally
commercial? whether amidst the uncertainty
of human affairs, too much attention to one
mode of happiness may not endanger others ?
whether the pride of riches must not some
times have recourse to the protection of cour
age ? and whether, if it be necessary to pre
serve in some part of the empire the military
spirit, it can subsist more commodiously in

THE WESTERN ISLANDS 147

any place, than in remote and unprofitable
provinces, where it can commonly do little
harm, and whence it may be called forth at
any sudden exigence?

It must however be confessed, that a man
who places honour only in successful violence,
is a very troublesome and pernicious animal
in time of peace; and that the martial charac
ter cannot prevail in a whole people, but by
the diminution of all other virtues. He that
is accustomed to resolve all right into con
quest, will have very little tenderness or
equity. All the friendship in such a life can
be only a confederacy of invasion, or alliance
of defence. The strong must flourish by
force, and the weak subsist by stratagem.

Till the Highlanders lost their ferocity
with their arms, they suffered from each other
all that malignity could dictate, or precipit
ance could act. Every provocation was re
venged with blood, and no man that ventured
into a numerous company, by whatever occa
sion brought together, was sure of returning
without a wound. If they are now exposed
to foreign hostilities, they may talk of the
danger, but can seldom feel it. If they are no
longer martial, they are no longer quarrel
some. Misery is caused, for the most part,
not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the

148 SAMUEL JOHNSON

corrosion of less visible evils, which canker
enjoyment, and undermine security. The visit
of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestic
animosities allow no cessation.

WE were now treading that illustrious island,
which was once the luminary of the Cale
donian regions, whence savage clans and
roving barbarians derived the benefits of
knowledge, and the blessings of religion. To
abstract the mind from all local emotion
would be impossible, if it were endeavoured,
and would be foolish, if it were possible.
Whatever withdraws us from the power of
our senses; whatever makes the past, the dis
tant, or the future predominate over the pre
sent, advances us in the dignity of thinking
beings. Far from me and from my friends be
such frigid philosophy, as may conduct us in
different and unmoved over any ground which
has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or
virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose
patriotism would not gain force upon the
plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not
grow warmer among the ruins of lona.

THE cemetery of the nunnery was, till very
lately, regarded with such reverence, that

THE WESTERN ISLANDS 149

only women were buried in it. These reliques
of veneration always produce some mournful
pleasure. I could have forgiven a great injury
more easily than the violation of this ima
ginary sanctity.

LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS

FROM " COWLEY

IN the year 1 647, [Cowley s] Mistress was pub
lished; for he imagined, as he declared in his
preface to a subsequent edition, that " poets
are scarcely thought freemen of their com
pany without paying some duties, or obliging
themselves to be true to Love."

This obligation to amorous ditties owes, I
believe, its original to the fame of Petrarch,
who, in an age rude and uncultivated, by his
tuneful homage to his Laura, refined the
manners of the lettered world, and filled
Europe with love and poetry. But the basis
of all excellence is truth: he that professes
love ought to feel its power. Petrarch was a
real lover, and Laura doubtless deserved his
tenderness. Of Cowley, we are told by Barnes,
who had means enough of information, that,
whatever he may talk of his own inflamma
bility, and the variety of characters by which
his heart was divided, he in reality was in
love but once, and then never had resolution
to tell his passion.

LIVES OF THE POETS 151

This consideration cannot but abate, in
some measure, the reader s esteem for the
work and the author. To love excellence, is
natural; it is natural likewise for the lover to
solicit reciprocal regard by an elaborate dis
play of his own qualifications. The desire of
pleasing has in different men produced actions
of heroism, and effusions of wit; but it seems
as reasonable to appear the champion as the
poet of an "airy nothing," and to quarrel as
to write for what Cowley might have learned
from his master Pindar to call " the dream of
a shadow.

THE metaphysical poets were men of learn
ing, and to show their learning was their
whole endeavour : but, unluckily resolving to
show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry
they only wrote verses, and very often such
verses as stood the trial of the ringer better
than of the ear; for the modulation was so
imperfect that they were only found to be
verses by counting the syllables.

If the father of criticism has rightly de
nominated poetry ri^v-n pi/Mifixq, an imitative
art y these writers will, without great wrong,
lose their right to the name of poets ; for they
cannot be said to have imitated any thing:

1 52 SAMUEL JOHNSON

they neither copied nature nor life; neither
painted the forms of matter, nor represented
the operations of intellect.

Those, however, who deny them to be poets,
allow them to be wits. Dryden confesses of
himself and his contemporaries, that they fall
below Donne in wit; but maintains, that they
surpass him in poetry.

If wit be well described by Pope, as being
" that which has been often thought, but was
never before so well expressed/ they certainly
never attained, nor ever sought it ; for they
endeavoured to be singular in their thoughts,
and were careless of their diction. But Pope s
account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous : he
depresses it below its natural dignity, and re
duces it from strength of thought to happiness
of language.

If by a more noble and more adequate con
ception that be considered as wit which is at
once natural and new, that which, though not
obvious, is, upon its first production, acknow
ledged to be just ; if it be that which he that
never found it wonders how he missed; to
wit of this kind the metaphysical poets have
seldom risen. Their thoughts are often new,
but seldom natural ; they are not obvious, but
neither are they just ; and the reader, far from
wondering that he missed them, wonders more

LIVES OF THE POETS 153

frequently by what perverseness of industry
they were ever found.

But wit, abstracted from its effects upon
the hearer, may be more rigorously and philo
sophically considered as a kind of discordia
concors; a combination of dissimilar images,
or discovery of occult resemblances in things
apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they
have more than enough. The most hetero
geneous ideas are yoked by violence together ;
nature and art are ransacked for illustrations,
comparisons, and allusions; their learning in
structs, and their subtlety surprises; but the
reader commonly thinks his improvement
dearly bought, and, though he sometimes
admires, is seldom pleased.

From this account of their compositions it
will be readily inferred, that they were not
successful in representing or moving the
affections. As they were wholly employed on
something unexpected and surprising, they
had no regard to that uniformity of sentiment
which enables us to conceive and to excite the
pains and the pleasure of other minds : they
never inquired what, on any occasion, they
should have said or done ; but wrote rather as
beholders than partakers of human nature ; as
beings looking upon good and evil, impassive
and at leisure; as Epicurean deities, making

154 SAMUEL JOHNSON

remarks on the actions of men, and the vicis
situdes of life, without interest and without
emotion. Their courtship was void of fond
ness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their
wish was only to say what they hoped had
never been said before.

Nor was the sublime more within their
reach than the pathetic, for they never at
tempted that comprehension and expanse of
thought which at once fills the whole mind,
and of which the first effect is sudden aston
ishment, and the second rational admiration.
Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and
littleness by dispersion. Great thoughts are
always general, and consist in positions not
limited by exceptions, and in descriptions not
descending to minuteness. It is with great
propriety that subtilty, which in its original
import means exility of particles, is taken in
its metaphorical meaning for nicety of distinc
tion. Those writers who lay on the watch for
novelty could have little hope of greatness ;
for great things cannot have escaped former
observation. Their attempts were always ana
lytic ; they broke every image into fragments ;
and could no more represent, by their slender
conceits and laboured particularities, the pro
spects of nature, or the scenes of life, than he,
who dissects a sun-beam with a prism, can

LIVES OF THE POETS 155

exhibit the wide effulgence of a summer noon.
What they wanted, however, of the sublime,
they endeavoured to supply by hyperbole;
their amplification had no limits ; they left
not only reason but fancy behind them ; and
produced combinations, of confused magni
ficence, that not only could not be credited,
but could not be imagined.

Yet great labour, directed by great abilities,
is never wholly lost ; if they frequently threw
away their wit upon false conceits, they like
wise sometimes struck out unexpected truth :
if their conceits were far-fetched, they were
often worth the carriage. To write on their
plan it was at least necessary to read and
think. No man could be born a metaphysical
poet, nor assume the dignity of a writer, by
descriptions copied from descriptions, by imi
tations borrowed from imitations, by tradi
tional imagery, and hereditary similes, by
readiness of rhyme, and volubility of syll
ables.

In perusing the works of this race of
authors, the mind is exercised either by recol
lection or inquiry ; either something already
learned is to be retrieved, or something new
is to be examined. If their greatness seldom
elevates, their acuteness often surprises; if the
imagination is not always gratified, at least the

156 SAMUEL JOHNSON

powers of reflection and comparison are em
ployed; and, in the mass of materials which
ingenious absurdity has thrown together,
genuine wit and useful knowledge may be
sometimes found buried perhaps in grossness
of expression, but useful to those who know
their value ; and such as, when they are ex
panded to perspicuity, and polished to ele
gance, may give lustre to works which have
more propriety, though less copiousness of
sentiment.

FROM " MILTON

The knowledge of external nature, and the
sciences which that knowledge requires or
includes, are not the great or the frequent
business of the human mind. Whether we
provide for action or conversation, whether we
wish to be useful or pleasing, the first requisite
is the religious and moral knowledge or right
and wrong ; the next is an acquaintance with
the history of mankind, and with those ex
amples which may be said to embody truth,
and prove by events the reasonableness of
opinions. Prudence and justice are virtues
and excellences of all times and of all places ;
we are perpetually moralists, but we are
geometricians only by chance. Our inter-

LIVES OF THE POETS 157

course with intellectual nature is necessary ;
our speculations upon matter are voluntary,
and at leisure. Physiological learning is of
such rare emergence, that one may know
another half his -life, without being able to
estimate his skill in hydrostatics or astronomy ;
but his moral and prudential character imme
diately appears.

Those authors, therefore, are to be read at
schools that supply most axioms of prudence,
most principles of moral truth, and most
materials for conversation; and these pur
poses are best served by poets, orators, and
historians.

Let me not be censured for this digression
as pedantic or paradoxical ; for, if I have
Milton against me, I have Socrates on my
side. It was his labour to turn philosophy
from the study of nature to speculations
upon life ; but the innovators whom I oppose
are turning off attention from life to nature.
They seem to think that we are placed here
to watch the growth of plants, or the motions
of the stars : Socrates was rather of opinion,
that what we had to learn was, how to do
good, and avoid evil.

MILTON S republicanism was, I am afraid,
founded in an envious hatred of greatness,

158 SAMUEL JOHNSON

and a sullen desire of independence ; in petu
lance impatient of control, and pride disdainful
of superiority. He hated monarchs in the
state, and prelates in the church ; for he
hated all whom he was required to obey. It
is to be suspected, that his predominant desire
was to destroy rather than establish, and that
he felt not so much the love of liberty as
repugnance to authority.

It has been observed, that they who most
loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally
grant it. What we know of Milton s character,
in domestic relations, is, that he was severe
and arbitrary. His family consisted of women ;
and there appears in his books something like
a Turkish contempt of females, as subordinate
and inferior beings. That his own daughters
might not break the ranks, he suffered them
to be depressed by a mean and penurious
education. He thought women made only
for obedience, and man only for rebellion.

ONE of the poems on which much praise has
been bestowed, is Lycidas ; of which the
diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and
the numbers unpleasing. What beauty there
is we must therefore seek in the sentiments
and images. It is not to be considered as the
effusion of real passion ; for passion runs not

LIVES OF THE POETS 159

after remote allusions and obscure opinions.
Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and
ivy, nor calls upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor
tells of rough satyrs and " fauns with cloven
heel." Where there is leisure for fiction there
is little grief.

In this poem there is no nature, for there
is no truth ; there is no art, for there is nothing
new. Its form is that of a pastoral ; easy, vul
gar, and therefore disgusting ; whatever images
it can supply are long ago exhausted ; and its
inherent improbability always forces dissatis
faction on the mind. When Cowley tells of
Hervey, that they studied together, it is easy
to suppose how much he must miss the com
panion of his labours, and the partner of his
discoveries ; but what image of tenderness
can be excited by these lines ?

We drove afield, and both together heard
What time the grey fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night.

We know that they never drove afield,
and that they had no flocks to batten ; and
though it be allowed that the representation
may be allegorical, the true meaning is so
uncertain and remote, that it is never sought,
because it cannot be known when it is found.

Among the flocks, and copses, and flowers,
appear the heathen deities ; Jove and Phcebus,

160 SAMUEL JOHNSON

Neptune and ^Eolus, with a long train of
mythological imagery, such as a college easily
supplies. Nothing can less display knowledge,
or less exercise invention, than to tell how a
shepherd has lost his companion, and must
now feed his flocks alone, without any judge
of his skill in piping; and how one god asks
another god what has become of Lycidas, and
how neither god can tell. He who thus grieves
will excite no sympathy ; he who thus praises
will confer no honour.

This poem has yet a grosser fault. With
these trifling fictions are mingled the most
awful and sacred truths, such as ought never
to be polluted with such irreverent combina
tions. The shepherd likewise is now a feeder
of sheep, and afterwards an ecclesiastical pastor,
a superintendent of a Christian flock. Such
equivocations are always unskilful ; but here
they are indecent, and at least approach to
impiety, of which, however, 1 believe the
writer not to have been conscious.

Such is the power of reputation justly ac
quired, that its blaze drives away the eye from
nice examination. Surely no man could have
fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure,
had he not known the Author.

BY the general consent of critics, the first

LIVES OF THE POETS 161

praise of genius is due to the writer of an
epic poem, as it requires an assemblage of all
the powers which are singly sufficient for
other compositions. Poetry is the art of unit
ing pleasure with truth, by calling imagination
to the help of reason. Epic poetry undertakes
to teach the most important truths by the
most pleasing precepts, and therefore relates
some great event in the most affecting manner.
History must supply the writer with the rudi
ments of narration, which he must improve
and exalt by a nobler art, must animate by
dramatic energy, and diversify by retrospec
tion and anticipation; morality must teach
him the exact bounds, and different shades of
vice and virtue ; from policy, and the practice
of life, he has to learn the discriminations of
character, and the tendency of the passions,
either single or combined ; and physiology
must supply him with illustrations and images.
To put these materials to poetical use, is re
quired an imagination capable of painting
nature, and realizing fiction. Nor is he yet a
poet till he has attained the whole extension
of his language, distinguished all the delicacies
of phrase, and all the colours of words, and
learned to adjust their different sounds to all
the varieties of metrical modulation.

M

1 62 SAMUEL JOHNSON

THE heat of Milton s mind may be said to
sublimate his learning, to throw off into his
work the spirit of science, unmingled with its
grosser parts.

He had considered creation in its whole
extent, and his descriptions are therefore
learned. He hadaccustomed his imagination to
unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions
therefore were extensive. The characteristic
quality of his poem is sublimity. He some
times descends to the elegant, but his element
is the great. He can occasionally invest him
self with grace ; but his natural port is gigantic
loftiness. He can please when pleasure is
required ; but it is his peculiar power to
astonish.

He seems to have been well acquainted
with his own genius, and to know what it
was that Nature had bestowed upon him more
bountifully than upon others ; the power of
displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid,
enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy,
and aggravating the dreadful ; he therefore
chose a subject on which too much could not
be said, on which he might tire his fancy
without the censure of extravagance.

The appearances of nature, and the occur
rences of life, did not satiate his appetite of
greatness. To paint things as they are, requires

LIVES OF THE POETS 163

a minute attention, and employs the memory
rather than the fancy. Milton s delight was to
sport in the wide regions of possibility ; reality
was a scene too narrow for his mind. He sent
his faculties out upon discovery, into worlds
where only imagination can travel, and de
lighted to form new modes of existence, and
furnish sentiment and action to superior beings,
to trace the counsels of hell, or accompany the
choirs of heaven.

THE highest praise of genius is original in
vention. Milton cannot be said to have con
trived the structure of an epic poem, and
therefore owes reverence to that vigour and
amplitude of mind to which all generations
must be indebted for the art of poetical narra
tion, for the texture of the fable, the variation
of incidents, the interposition of dialogue, and
all the stratagems that surprise and enchain
attention. But, of all the borrowers from
Homer, Milton is perhaps the least indebted.
He was naturally a thinker for himself, con
fident of his own abilities, and disdainful of
help or hinderance : he did not refuse admis
sion to the thoughts or images of his prede
cessors, but he did not seek them. From his
contemporaries he neither courted nor received
support ; there is in his writings nothing by

164

SAMUEL JOHNSON

which the pride of other authors might be
gratified, or favour gained, no exchange of
praise, nor solicitation of support. His great
works were performed under discountenance,
and in blindness ; but difficulties vanished at
his touch ; he was born for whatever is ardu
ous ; and his work is not the greatest of heroic
poems, only because it is not the first.

FROM " BUTLER

MUCH of that humour which transported the
last century with merriment is lost to us, who
do not know the sour solemnity, the sullen
superstition, the gloomy moroseness, and the
stubborn scruples of the ancient puritans ; or,
if we know them, derive our information only
from books, or from tradition, have never had
them before our eyes, and cannot but by re
collection and study understand the lines in
which they are satirized. Our grandfathers
knew the picture from the life; we judge of
the life by contemplating the picture.

FROM " WALLER

> >

LET no pious ear be offended if 1 advance,
in opposition to many authorities, that poetical

LIVES OF THE POETS 165

devotion cannot often please. The doctrines
of religion may, indeed, be defended in a
didactic poem; and he, who has the happy
power of arguing in verse, will not lose it
because his subject is sacred. A poet may
describe the beauty and the grandeur of
Nature, the flowers of the Spring, and the
harvests of Autumn, the vicissitudes of the
tide, and the revolutions of the sky, and
praise the Maker for his works, in lines
which no reader shall lay aside. The subject
of the disputation is not piety, but the
motives to piety; that of the description is
not God, but the works of God.

Contemplative piety, or the intercourse be
tween God and the human soul, cannot be
poetical. Man, admitted to implore the mercy
of his Creator, and plead the merits of his
Redeemer, is already in a higher state than
poetry can confer.

The essence of poetry is invention ; such
invention as, by producing something unex
pected, surprises and delights. The topics of
devotion are few, and being few are universally
known ; but few as they are, they can be made
no more ; they can receive no grace from
novelty of sentiment, and very little from
novelty of expression.

Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more

1 66 SAMUEL JOHNSON

grateful to the mind than things themselves
afford. This effect proceeds from the display
of those parts of nature which attract, and the
concealment of those which repel, the imagina
tion : but religion must be shown as it is ;
suppression and addition equally corrupt it ;
and such as it is, it is known already.

From poetry the reader justly expects, and
from good poetry always obtains, the enlarge
ment of his comprehension and elevation of
his fancy ; but this is rarely to be hoped by
Christians from metrical devotion. Whatever
is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised
in the name of the Supreme Being. Omni
potence cannot be exalted ; Infinity cannot be
amplified ; Perfection cannot be improved.

The employments of pious meditation are
faith, thanksgiving, repentance, and supplica
tion. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be
invested by fancy with decorations. Thanks
giving, the most joyful of all holy effusions,
yet addressed to a Being without passions, is
confined to a few modes, and is to be felt
rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling
in the presence of the Judge, is not at leisure
for cadences and epithets. Supplication of

man to man may diffuse itself through many
r - T & ^ i

topics or persuasion ; but supplication to God
can only cry for mercy.

LIVES OF THE POETS 167

Of sentiments purely religious, it will be
found that the most simple expression is the
most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its
power, because it is applied to the decoration
of something more iexcellent than itself. All
that pious verse can do is to help the memory,
and delight the ear, and for these purposes it
may be very useful ; but it supplies nothing
to the mind. The ideas of Christian theology
are too simple for eloquence, too sacred for
fiction, and too majestic for ornament : to
recommend them by tropes and figures, is to
magnify by a concave mirror the sidereal
hemisphere.

FROM " DRYDEN

A WRITER who has obtained his full purpose
loses himself in his own lustre. Of an opinion
which is no longer doubted, the evidence
ceases to be examined. Of an art universally
practised, the first teacher is forgotten. Learn
ing once made popular is no longer learning ;
it has the appearance of something which we
have bestowed upon ourselves, as the dew
appears to rise from the field which it re
freshes.

1 68 SAMUEL JOHNSON

FROM " SMITH

OF Gilbert Walmsley, thus presented to my
mind, let me indulge myself in the remem
brance. I knew him very early ; he was one
of the first friends that literature procured me,
and I hope that at least my gratitude made
me worthy of his notice.

He was of an advanced age, and I was only
not a boy ; yet he never received my notions
with contempt. He was a whig, with all the
virulence and malevolence of his party ; yet
difference of opinion did not keep us apart. I
honoured him, and he endured me.

He had mingled with the gay world, with
out exemption from its vices or its follies, but
had never neglected the cultivation of his
mind ; his belief of revelation was unshaken ;
his learning preserved his principles ; he grew
first regular, and then pious.

His studies had been so various, that I am
not able to name a man of equal knowledge.
His acquaintance with books was great ; and
what he did not immediately know, he could
at least tell where to find. Such was his ampli
tude of learning, and such his copiousness of
communication, that it may be doubted, whe
ther a day now passes in which I have not
some advantage from his friendship.

LIVES OF THE POETS 169

At this man s table I enjoyed many cheerful
and instructive hours, with companions such
as are not often found; with one who has
lengthened and one who has gladdened life ;
with Dr. James, whose skill in physic will be
long remembered, and with David Garrick,
whom I hoped to have gratified with this
character of our common friend : but what
are the hopes of man! I am disappointed by
that stroke of death which has eclipsed the
gayety of nations, and impoverished the public
stock of harmless pleasure.

FROM " ADDISON

HE descended now and then to lower dis
quisitions ; and by a serious display of the
beauties of Chevy-Chase exposed himself to
the ridicule of Wagstaffe, who bestowed a
like pompous character on Tom Thumb ; and
to the contempt of Dennis, who, consider
ing the fundamental position of his criticism,
that Chevy-Chase pleases, and ought to
please, because it is natural, observes, that
" there is a way of deviating from nature, by
bombast or tumour, which soars above nature,
and enlarges images beyond their real bulk ;
by affectation, which forsakes nature in quest
of something unsuitable; and by imbecility,

1 7 o SAMUEL JOHNSON

which degrades nature by faintness and dim
inution, by obscuring its appearances, and
weakening its effects." In Chevy-Chase there
is not much of either bombast or affectation ;
but there is chill and lifeless imbecility. The
story cannot possibly be told in a manner that
shall make less impression on the mind.

As a teacher of wisdom, he may be confid
ently followed. His religion has nothing in
it enthusiastic or superstitious ; he appears
neither weakly credulous nor wantonly scepti
cal ; his morality is neither dangerously lax
nor impracticably rigid. All the enchantment
of fancy and all the cogency of argument are
employed to recommend to the reader his real
interest, the care of pleasing the Author of his
being. Truth is shown sometimes as the
phantom of a vision ; sometimes appears half-
veiled in an allegory; sometimes attracts re
gard in the robes of fancy; and sometimes
steps forth in the confidence of reason. She
wears a thousand dresses, and in all is pleasing.

Mille habet ornatus, ?nille decenter habet.

His prose is the model of the middle style ;
on grave subjects not formal, on light occa
sions not grovelling ; pure without scrupu
losity, and exact without apparent elaboration ;

LIVES OF THE POETS 171

always equable and always easy, without glow
ing words or pointed sentences. Addison
never deviates from his track to snatch a grace :
he seeks no ambitious ornaments and tries no
hazardous innovations. His page is always
luminous, but never blazes in unexpected
splendour.

It was apparently his principal endeavour to
avoid all harshness and severity of diction;
he is therefore sometimes verbose in his transi
tions and connections, and sometimes descends
too much to the language of conversation ;
yet if his language had been less idiomatical,
it might have lost somewhat of its genuine
Anglicism. What he attempted, he performed:
he is never feeble, and he did not wish to be
energetic ; he is never rapid, and he never
stagnates. His sentences have neither studied
amplitude nor affected brevity : his periods,
though not diligently rounded, are voluble
and easy. Whoever wishes to attain an Eng
lish style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant
but not ostentatious, must give his days and
nights to the volumes of Addison.

FROM " PRIOR

His numbers are such as mere diligence may
attain ; they seldom offend the ear, and seldom

1 72 SAMUEL JOHNSON

soothe it ; they commonly want airiness, light
ness, and facility: what is smooth is not soft.
His verses always roll, but they seldom flow.
A survey of the life and writings of Prior
may exemplify a sentence which he doubtless
understood well, when he read Horace at his
uncle s ; " the vessel long retains the scent
which it first receives. In his private relaxa
tion he revived the tavern, and in his amorous
pedantry he exhibited the college. But on
higher occasions, and nobler subjects, when
habit was overpowered by the necessity of re
flection, he wanted not wisdom as a statesman,
or elegance as a poet.

FROM " CONGREVE

IF I were required to select from the whole
mass of English poetry the most poetical para
graph, I know not what I could prefer to an
exclamation in The Mourning Bride :

ALMERIA.

It was a fancied noise ; for all is hush d.

LEONORA.

It bore the accent of a human voice.

ALMERIA.

It was thy fear, or else some transient wind
Whistling through hollows of this vaulted aisle:
We ll listen

LIVES OF THE POETS 173

LEONORA.

Hark!

ALMERIA.

No, all is hush d and still as death. Tis dreadful !
How reverend is the face of this tall pile,
Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads,
To bear aloft its arch d and pond rous roof,
By its own weight made steadfast and immoveable,
Looking tranquillity ! it strikes an awe
And terror on my aching sight; the tombs
And monumental caves of death look cold,
And shoot a chillness to my trembling heart.
Give me thy hand, and let me hear thy voice,
Nay, quickly speak to me, and let me hear
Thy voice my own affrights me with its echoes.

He who reads these lines enjoys for a
moment the powers of a poet ; he feels what
he remembers to have felt before ; but he feels
it with great increase of sensibility ; he recog
nizes a familiar image, but meets it again
amplified and expanded, embellished with
beauty and enlarged with majesty.

FROM " SAVAGE

THAT affluence and power, advantages ex
trinsic and adventitious, and therefore easily
separable from those by whom they are pos
sessed, should very often flatter the mind
with expectations of felicity which they cannot
give, raises no astonishment; but it seems

174 SAMUEL JOHNSON

rational to hope that intellectual greatness
should produce better effects; that minds
qualified for great attainments should first
endeavour their own benefit ; and that they
who are most able to teach others the way to
happiness, should with most certainty follow
it themselves.

But this expectation, however plausible, has
been very frequently disappointed. The heroes
of literary as well as civil history have been
very often no less remarkable for what they
have suffered, than for what they have
achieved; and volumes have been written
only to enumerate the miseries of the learned,
and relate their unhappy lives and untimely
deaths.

FROM " SWIFT

> >

WHEN Swift is considered as an author, it
is just to estimate his powers by their effects.
In the reign of Queen Anne he turned the
stream of popularity against the whigs, and
must be confessed to have dictated for a time
the political opinions of the English nation.
In the succeeding reign he delivered Ireland
from plunder and oppression ; and showed
that wit, confederated with truth, had such
force as authority was unable to resist. He

LIVES OF THE POETS 175

said truly of himself, that Ireland "was his
debtor." It was from the time when he first
began to patronize the Irish that they may
date their riches and prosperity. He taught
them first to know their own interest, their
weight, and their strength, and gave them
spirit to assert that equality with their fellow-
subjects, to which they have ever since been
making vigorous advances, and to claim those
rights which they have at last established.
Nor can they be charged with ingratitude to
their benefactor ; for they reverenced him as
a guardian, and obeyed him as a dictator.

In his works he has given very different
specimens both of sentiments and expression.
His Tale of a Tub has little resemblance to
his other pieces. It exhibits a vehemence and
rapidity of mind, a copiousness of images, and
vivacity of diction, such as he afterwards never
possessed or never exerted. It is of a mode so
distinct and peculiar that it must be considered
by itself; what is true of that, is not true of
any thing else which he has written.

In his other works is found an equable
tenour of easy language, which rather trickles
than flows. His delight was in simplicity.
That he has in his works no metaphor, as has
been said, is not true; but his few metaphors
seem to be received rather by necessity than

176 SAMUEL JOHNSON

choice. He studied purity; and though per
haps all his strictures are not exact, yet it is
not often that solecisms can be found; and
whoever depends on his authority may gener
ally conclude himself safe. His sentences are
never too much dilated or contracted ; and it
will not be easy to find any embarrassment in
the complication of his clauses, any inconse
quence in his connections, or abruptness in
his transitions. . . .

Of Swift s general habits of thinking, if his
letters can be supposed to afford any evidence,
he was not a man to be either loved or envied.
He seems to have wasted life in discontent, by
the rage of neglected pride and the languish-
ment of unsatisfied desire. He is querulous
and fastidious, arrogant and malignant; he
scarcely speaks of himself but with indignant
lamentations, or of others but with insolent
superiority when he is gay, and with angry con
tempt when he is gloomy. From the letters
that passed between him and Pope it might be
inferred, that they, with Arbuthnot and Gay,
had engrossed all the understanding and virtue
of mankind ; that their merits filled the world,
or that there was no hope of more. They show
the age involved in darkness, and shade the
picture with sullen emulation.

When the Queen s death drove him into

LIVES OF THE POETS 177

Ireland, he might be allowed to regret for a
time the interception of his views, the ex
tinction of his hopes, and his ejection from
gay scenes, important employment, and splen
did friendships ; but when time had enabled
reason to prevail over vexation, the complaints
which at first were natural became ridiculous
because they were useless. But querulous-
ness was now grown habitual, and he cried
out when he probably had ceased to feel.
His reiterated wailings persuaded Bolingbroke
that he was really willing to quit his deanery
for an English parish ; and Bolingbroke pro
cured an exchange, which was rejected; and
Swift still retained the pleasure of complaining.
The greatest difficulty that occurs, in analys
ing his character, is to discover by what de
pravity of intellect he took delight in revolving
ideas from which almost every other mind
shrinks with disgust. The ideas of pleasure,
even when criminal, may solicit the imagina
tion ; but what has disease, deformity and
filth, upon which the thoughts can be allured
to dwell? Delany is willing to think that
Swift s mind was not much tainted with this
gross corruption before his long visit to Pope.
He does not consider how he degrades his
hero, by making him at fifty-nine the pupil of
turpitude, and liable to the malignant in-

N

178 SAMUEL JOHNSON

fluence of an ascendant mind. But the truth
is, that Gulliver had described his Yahoos
before the visit ; and he that had formed those
images had nothing filthy to learn.

FROM " POPE

IT has been so long said as to be commonly
believed, that the true characters of men may
be found in their letters, and that he who
writes to his friend lays his heart open before
him. But the truth is, that such were the
simple friendships of the Golden Age, and
are now the friendships only of children.
Very few can boast of hearts which they dare
lay open to themselves, and of which, by
whatever accident exposed, they do not shun
a distinct and continued view ; and, certainly,
what we hide from ourselves we do not show
to our friends. There is, indeed, no trans
action which offers stronger temptation to
fallacy and sophistication than epistolary in
tercourse. In the eagerness of conversation
the first emotions of the mind often burst out
before they are considered ; in the tumult of
business, interest and passion have their
genuine effect ; but a friendly letter is a calm
and deliberate performance in the cool of lei
sure, in the stillness of solitude, and surely

LIVES OF THE POETS 179

no man sits down to depreciate by design his
own character.

Friendship has no tendency to secure vera
city ; for by whom can a man so much wish to
be thought better than he is, as by him whose
kindness he desires to gain or keep ! Even in
writing to the world there is less constraint;
the author is not confronted with his reader,
and takes his chance of approbation among the
different dispositions of mankind; but a letter
is addressed to a single mind, of which the pre
judices and partialities are known ; and must
therefore please, if not by favouring them, by
forbearing to oppose them.

To charge those favourable representations,
which men give of their own minds, with the
guilt of hypocritical falsehood, would show
more severity than knowledge. The writer
commonly believes himself. Almost every
man s thoughts, while they are general, are
right ; and most hearts are pure while tempta
tion is away. It is easy to awaken generous
sentiments in privacy ; to despise death when
there is no danger ; to glow with benevolence
when there is nothing to be given. While
such ideas are formed, they are felt ; and self-
love does not suspect the gleam of virtue to be
the meteor of fancy. . . .

[Pope] very frequently professes con tempt of

180 SAMUEL JOHNSON

the world, and represents himself as looking on
mankind, sometimes with gay indifference, as
on emmets of a hillock, below his serious atten
tion, and sometimes with gloomy indignation,
as on monsters more worthy of hatred than of
pity. These were dispositions apparently coun
terfeited. How could he despise those whom
he lived by pleasing, and on whose approbation
his esteem of himself was superstructed ? Why
should he hate those to whose favour he owed
his honour and his ease? Of things that ter
minate in human life, the world is the proper
judge; to despise its sentence, if it were pos
sible, is not just; and if it were just, is not
possible. Pope was far enough from this un
reasonable temper : he was sufficiently a fool to
fame, and his fault was that he pretended to
neglect it. His levity and his sullenness were
only in his letters ; he passed through common
life, sometimes vexed, and sometimes pleased,
with the natural emotions of common men. . . .
Integrity of understanding and nicety of dis
cernment were not allotted in a less proportion
to Dryden than to Pope. The rectitude of
Dryden s mind was sufficiently shown by the
dismission of his poetical prejudices, and the
rejection of unnatural thoughts and rugged
numbers. But Dryden never desired to apply
all the judgment that he had. He wrote, and

LIVES OF THE POETS 181

professed to write, merely for the people ; and
when he pleased others, he contented himself.
He spent no time in struggles to rouse latent
powers ; he never attempted to make that bet
ter which was already good, nor often to mend
what he must have known to be faulty. He
wrote, as he tells us, with very little considera
tion ; when occasion or necessity called upon
him, he poured out what the present moment
happened to supply, and, when once it had
passed the press, ejected it from his mind ; for
when he had no pecuniary interest, he had no
further solicitude.

Pope was not content to satisfy, he desired to
excel ; and therefore always endeavoured to do
his best ; he did not court the candour, but
dared the judgment, of his reader, and expect
ing no indulgence from others, he showed
none to himself. He examined lines and
words with minute and punctilious observa
tion, and retouched every part with indefatig
able diligence, till he had left nothing to be
forgiven. . . .

In acquired knowledge, the superiority must
be allowed to Dryden, whose education was
more scholastic, and who, before he became an
author, had been allowed more time for study,
with better means of information. His mind
has a larger range, and he collects his images

1 82 SAMUEL JOHNSON

and illustrations from a more extensive cir
cumference of science. Dryden knew more
of man in his general nature, and Pope in his
local manners. The notions of Dryden were
formed by comprehensive speculation ; and
those of Pope by minute attention. There is
more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden,
and more certainty in that of Pope.

Poetry was not the sole praise of either ; for
both excelled likewise in prose ; but Pope did
not borrow his prose from his predecessor.
The style of Dryden is capricious and varied ;
that of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden
observes the motions of his own mind ; Pope
constrains his mind to his own rules of com
position. Dryden is sometimes vehement and
rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and
gentle. Dryden s page is a natural field, rising
into inequalities, and diversified by the varied
exuberance of abundant vegetation ; Pope s is a
velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and levelled
by the roller.

Of genius, that power which constitutes a
poet; that quality without which judgment
is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy
which collects, combines, amplifies, and anim
ates ; the superiority must, with some hesi
tation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be
inferred, that of this poetical vigour Pope had

LIVES OF THE POETS 183

only a little, because Dryden had more; for
every other writer since Milton must give
place to Pope ; and even of Dryden it must be
said, that, if he has brighter paragraphs, he
has not better poems. Dryden s performances
were always hasty, either excited by some
external occasion, or extorted by domestic
necessity ; he composed without consideration,
and published without correction. What his
mind could supply at call, or gather in one
excursion, was all that he sought, and all that
he gave. The dilatory caution of ; Pope
enabled him to condense his sentiments, to
multiply his images, and to accumulate all
that study might produce, or chance might
supply. If the flights of Dryden, therefore,
are higher, Pope continues longer on the
wing. If of Dryden s fire the blaze is brighter,
of Pope s the heat is more regular and con
stant. Dryden often surpasses expectation,
and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read
with frequent astonishment, and Pope with
perpetual delight. . . .

[Pope] cultivated our language with so much
diligence and art, that he has left in his
Homer a treasure of poetical elegances to
posterity. His version may be said to have
tuned the English tongue ; for since its appear
ance no writer, however deficient in other

184 SAMUEL JOHNSON

powers, has wanted melody. Such a series of
lines, so elaborately corrected, and so sweetly
modulated, took possession of the public ear ;
the vulgar was enamoured of the poem, and
the learned wondered at the translation. . . .

There is a time when nations, emerging from
barbarity, and falling into regular subordina
tion, gain leisure to grow wise, and feel the
shame of ignorance and the craving pain of
unsatisfied curiosity. To this hunger of the
mind plain sense is grateful ; that which fills
the void removes uneasiness, and to be free
from pain for a while is pleasure ; but repletion
generates fastidiousness ; a saturated intellect
soon becomes luxurious, and knowledge finds
no willing reception till it is recommended by
artificial diction. Thus it will be found, in the
progress of learning, that in all nations the
first writers are simple, and that every age
improves in elegance. One refinement always
makes way for another; and what was ex
pedient to Virgil was necessary to Pope. . . .

The Essay \on Man] affords an egregious
instance of the predominance of genius, the
dazzling splendour of imagery, and the seduc
tive powers of eloquence. Never were penury
of knowledge and vulgarity of sentiment so
happily disguised. The reader feels his mind
full, though he learns nothing ; and, when he

LIVES OF THE POETS 185

meets it in its new array, no longer knows
the talk of his mother and his nurse. When
these wonder-working sounds sink into sense,
and the doctrine of the Essay, disrobed of its
ornaments, is left to the powers of its naked
excellence, what shall we discover? That we
are, in comparison with our Creator, very weak
and ignorant ; that we do not uphold the
chain of existence; and that we could not
make one another with more skill than we
are made. We may learn yet more ; that the
arts of human life were copied from the in
stinctive operations of other animals ; that, if
the world be made for man, it may be said
that man was made for geese. To those pro
found principles of natural knowledge are
added some moral instructions equally new ;
that self-interest, well understood, will pro
duce social concord; that men are mutual
gainers by mutual benefits ; that evil is some
times balanced by good ; that human advan
tages are unstable and fallacious, of uncer
tain duration and doubtful effect; that our
true honour is, not to have a great part, but
to act it well ; that virtue only is our own ;
and that happiness is always in our power.

Surely a man of no very comprehensive
search may venture to say that he has heard
all this before; but it was never till now

1 86 SAMUEL JOHNSON

recommended by such a blaze of embellish
ments, or such sweetness of melody. The
vigorous contraction of some thoughts, the
luxuriant amplification of others, the incidental
illustrations, and sometimes the dignity, some
times the softness, of the verses, enchain
philosophy, suspend criticism, and oppress
judgment by overpowering pleasure. . . .

After all this, it is surely superfluous to
answer the question that has once been asked,
Whether Pope was a poet ? otherwise than by
asking, in return, If Pope be not a poet, where
is poetry to be found ? To circumscribe poetry
by a definition will only show the narrowness
of the definer, though a definition which shall
exclude Pope will not easily be made. Let us
look round upon the present time, and back
upon the past; let us inquire to whom the
voice of mankind has decreed the wreath of
poetry; let their productions be examined,
and their claims stated, and the pretensions
of Pope will be no more disputed. Had he
given the world only his version, the name of
poet must have been allowed him ; if the
writer of the Iliad were to class his successors,
he would assign a very high place to his trans
lator, without requiring any other evidence of
genius. . . .

LIVES OF THE POETS 187

Pope s epitaph on Mrs. Corbet who died
of a Cancer in her Breast

Here rests a woman, good without pretence,
Blest with plain reason and with sober sense ;
No conquest she, but o er herself, desired :
No arts essay d, but not to be admired.
Passion and pride were to her soul unknown,
Convinced that virtue only is our own.
So unaffected, so composed a mind,
So firm, yet soft, so strong, yet so refined,
Heaven, as its purest gold, by tortures tried ;
The saint sustain d it, but the woman died.

I have always considered this as the most
valuable of all Pope s epitaphs; the subject of
it is a character not discriminated by any
shining or eminent peculiarities; yet that which
really makes, though not the splendour, the
felicity of life, and that which every wise man
will choose for his final and lasting companion
in the languor of age, in the quiet of privacy,
when he departs weary and disgusted from
the ostentatious, the volatile, and the vain.
Of such a character, which the dull overlook,
and the gay despise, it was fit that the value
should be made known, and the dignity estab
lished. Domestic virtue, as it is exerted with
out great occasions, or conspicuous conse
quences, in an even unnoted tenour, required
the genius of Pope to display it in such a

SAMUEL JOHNSON

manner as might attract regard, and enforce
a reverence.

FROM " YOUNG

IN the latter part of life, Young was fond
of holding himself out for a man retired from
the world. But he seemed to have forgotten
that the same verse which contains " oblitus
meorum," contains also " obliviscendus et
illis." The brittle chain of worldly friendship
and patronage is broken as effectually, when
one goes beyond the length of it, as when the
other does. To the vessel which is sailing
from the shore, it only appears that the shore
also recedes; in life it is truly thus. He who
retires from the world will find himself, in
reality, deserted as fast, if not faster, by the
world. The public is not to be treated as the
coxcomb treats his mistress ; to be threatened
with desertion, in order to increase fondness.

FROM " GRAY

IN the character of his Elegy I rejoice to
concur with the common reader; for by the
common sense of readers, uncorrupted with
literary prejudices, after all the refinements of
subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must

LIVES OF THE POETS 189

be finally decided all claim to poetical honours.
The Church-yard abounds with images which
find a mirror in every mind, and with senti
ments to which every bosom returns an echo.
The four stanzas, beginning " Yet even these
bones," are to me original : I have never seen
the notions in any other place ; yet he that
reads them here persuades himself that he has
always felt them. Had Gray written often
thus, it had been vain to blame, and useless to
praise him.

LETTERS.

r obis Wife 1

DEAREST TETTY,

AFTER hearing that you are in so much danger,
as I apprehend from a hurt in a tendon, I shall
be very uneasy till I know that you are re
covered, and beg that you will omit nothing
that can contribute to it, nor deny yourself
anything that may make confinement less
melancholy. You have already suffered more
than I can bear to reflect upon, and I hope
more than either of us shall suffer again. One
part at least I have often flattered myself we
shall avoid for the future, our troubles will
surely never separate us more. ... I can send
you twenty pouns [sic] more on Monday,
which I have received this night ; I beg there
fore that you will more regard my happiness,
than to expose yourself to any hazards. I still
promise myself many happy years from your
tenderness and affection . . .

Of the time which I have spent from thee,

By kind permission of Mr. W. R. Smith, owner of
the MS.

190

LETTERS 191

and of my dear Lucy and other affairs, my
heart will be at ease on Monday to give thee
a particular account, especially if a Letter
should inform me that thy leg is better, for
I hope you do not think so unkindly of me
as to imagine that I can be at rest while I
believe my dear Tetty in pain.

Be assured, my dear Girl, that I have seen
nobody in these rambles upon which I have
been forced, that has not contribute [sic] to
confirm my esteem and affection for thee,
though that esteem and affection only con
tributed to encrease my unhappiness when I
reflected that the most amiable woman in the
world was exposed by my means to miseries
which I could not relieve.

I am,

My charming Love
Yours

SAM. JOHNSON.

January 3U/, 1739-40.

To Mr. James Elphinston

DEAR SIR,

You have, as I find by every kind of evidence,
lost an excellent mother ; and I hope you will
not think me incapable of partaking of your
grief. I have a mother, now eighty-two years

1 92 SAMUEL JOHNSON

of age, whom therefore I must soon lose, un
less it please God that she rather should
mourn for me. I read the letters in which
you relate your mother s death to Mrs. Strahan,
and think I do myself honour, when I tell
you, that I read them with tears; but tears
are neither to you, nor to me^ of any farther
use, when once the tribute of nature has been
paid. The business of life summons us away
from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise
of those virtues, of which we are lamenting
our deprivation.

The greatest benefit which one friend can
confer upon another, is to guard, and excite,
and elevate his virtues. This your mother will
still perform, if you diligently preserve the
memory of her life, and of her death : a life,
so far as I can learn, useful, wise, and inno
cent; and a death, resigned, peaceful, and
holy. I cannot forbear to mention, that neither
reason nor revelation denies you to hope that
you may increase her happiness by obeying
her precepts ; and that she may, in her pre
sent state, look with pleasure upon every act
of virtue to which her instructions or example
have contributed. Whether this be more than
a pleasing dream, or a just opinion of separate
spirits, is, indeed, of no great importance to
us, when we consider ourselves as acting under

LETTERS 193

the eye of God : yet, surely, there is some
thing pleasing in the belief, that our separa
tion from those whom we love is merely
corporeal ; and it may be a great incitement
to virtuous friendship, if it can be made prob
able, that that union, which has received the
divine approbation, shall continue to eternity.
There is one expedient, by which you may,
in some degree, continue her presence. If you
write down minutely what you remember of
her from your earliest years, you will read it
with great pleasure, and receive from it many
hints of soothing recollection, when time shall
remove her yet farther from you, and your
grief shall be matured to veneration. To this,
however painful for the present, I cannot but
advise you, as to a source of comfort and
satisfaction in the time to come.

Sept. 25^, 1750

the Reverend Joseph Warton

How little can we venture to exult in any
intellectual powers or literary attainments,
when we consider the condition of poor
Collins. I knew him a few years ago full of
hopes and full of projects, versed in many
languages, high in fancy, and strong in re-

o

1 94 SAMUEL JOHNSON

tention. This busy and forcible mind is now
under the government of those who lately
would not have been able to comprehend the
least and most narrow of its designs.

March 8M, 1754.

To Miss Boothby

MY SWEET ANGEL,

I have read your book, I am afraid
you will think without any great improve
ment. . . . You ought not to be offended ; I
am perhaps as sincere as the writer. In all
things that terminate here I shall be much
guided by your influence, and should take or
leave by your direction ; but I cannot receive
my religion from any human hand. I desire
however to be instructed. . . . Dear Angel, do
not forget me. My heart is full of tenderness.

December 3 1st [1755].

To James Boswell (on his way home from

Corsica)
DEAR SIR,

Apologies are seldom of any use. We
will delay till your arrival the reasons, good
or bad, which have made me such a sparing
and ungrateful correspondent. Be assured, for

LETTERS 195

the present, that nothing has lessened either
the esteem or love with which I dismissed
you at Harwich. Both have been increased
by all that I have been told of you by your
self or others ; and when you return, you will
return to an unaltered, and, I hope, unalter
able friend.

All that you have to fear from me is the
vexation of disappointing me. No man loves
to frustrate expectations which have been
formed in his favour ; and the pleasure which
I promise myself from your journals and re
marks is so great, that perhaps no degree of
attention or discernment will be sufficient to
afford it.

Come home, however, and take your chance.
I long to see you, and to hear you ; and hope
that we shall not be so long separated again.
Come home, and expect such welcome as is
due to him, whom a wise and noble curiosity
has led where perhaps no native of his country
ever was before.

I have no news to tell you that can deserve
your notice ; nor would I lessen the pleasure
that any novelty may give you at your return.
I am afraid we shall find it difficult to keep
among us a mind which has been so long
feasted with variety. But let us try what
esteem and kindness can effect.

x 9 6 SAMUEL JOHNSON

As your father s liberality has indulged you
with so long a ramble, I doubt not but you
will think his sickness, or even his desire to
see you, a sufficient reason for hastening your
return. The longer we live, and the more we
think, the higher value we learn to put on the
friendship and tenderness of parents and of
friends. Parents we can have but once ; and
he promises himself too much, who enters life
with the expectation of finding many friends.
Upon some motive, I hope that you will be
here soon ; and am willing to think that it
will be an inducement to your return, that it
is sincerely desired by, dear Sir,

Your affectionate humble servant,

SAM. JOHNSON.

"January l\th, 1766.

To the Reverend Dr. Dodd (on the eve of his
execution for forgery}

DEAR SIR,

That which is appointed to all men is
now coming upon you. Outward circum
stances, the eyes and the thoughts of men,
are below the notice of an immortal being
about to stand the trial for eternity, before
the Supreme Judge of heaven and earth. Be
comforted : your crime, morally or religiously

LETTERS 1 97

considered, has no very deep dye of turpitude.
It corrupted no man s principles ; it attacked
no man s life. It involved only a temporary
and repairable injury. Of this, and of all
other sins, you are earnestly to repent; and
may God, who knoweth our frailty, and de-
sireth not our death, accept your repentance,
for the sake of his Son Jesus Christ our
Lord.

In requital of those well intended offices 1
which you are pleased so emphatically to ac
knowledge, let me beg that you make in your
devotions one petition for my eternal welfare.

I am, dear Sir,
Your most affectionate servant,

SAM. JOHNSON.

January 26 f 6, 1777.

To James Boswell

DEAR SIR,

Why should you importune me so
earnestly to write ? Of what importance can it
be to hear of distant friends, to a man who finds
himself welcome wherever he goes, and makes
new friends faster than he can want them ? If

Dr. Johnson had written the petitions for a reprieve
and, in part, Dr. Dodd s last sermon to his fellow-
prisoners.

198 SAMUEL JOHNSON

to the delight of such universal kindness of
reception, anything can be added by knowing
that you retain my good will, you may indulge
yourself in the full enjoyment of that small
addition.

In the place where you now are, there is
much to be observed. . . . But what will you
do to keep away the black dog 1 that worries
you at home ? . . . The great direction which
Burton has left to men disordered like you, is
this : Be not solitary ; be not idle: which I would
thus modify- -If you are idle, be not solitary;
if you are solitary, be not idle.

There is a letter for you, from

Your humble servant,

SAM. JOHNSON.

October 27 th, 1779.

To Dr. Lawrence
DEAR SIR,

At a time when all your friends ought
to shew their kindness, and with a character
which ought to make all that know you your

^ * i

rnends, you may wonder that you have yet
heard nothing from me. . . .

The loss, dear Sir, which you have lately
suffered, I felt many years ago, and know there-

Boswell s melancholy.

LETTERS 199

fore how much has been taken from you, and
how little help can be had from consolation.
He that outlives a wife whom he has long
loved, sees himself disjoined from the only
mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and
interest ; from the only companion with whom
he has shared much good or evil; and with
whom he could set his mind at liberty, to re
trace the past or anticipate the future. The
continuity of being is lacerated ; the settled
course of sentiment and action is stopped ; and
life stands suspended and motionless, till it is
driven by external causes into a new channel.
But the time of suspense is dreadful.

Our first recourse, in this distressed soli
tude, is, perhaps for want of habitual piety, to
a gloomy acquiescence in necessity. Of two
mortal beings, one must lose the other ; but
surely there is a higher and better comfort to
be drawn from the consideration of that Pro
vidence which watches over all, and a belief
that the living and the dead are equally in the
hands of God, who will reunite those whom
he has separated ; or who sees that it is best
not to reunite. I am, dear Sir,

Your most affectionate

and most humble servant,
SAM. JOHNSON.

January ^Q>th, 1780.

200 SAMUEL JOHNSON

To the Lord Chancellor, who had offered an
advance of five hundred founds

MY LORD,

After a long and not inattentive ob
servation of mankind, the generosity of your
Lordship s offer raises in me not less wonder
than gratitude. Bounty, so liberally bestowed,
I should gladly receive if my condition made
it necessary; for to such a mind who would
not be proud to own his obligations? But it
has pleased God to restore me to so great a
measure of health, that, if I should now appro
priate so much of a fortune destined to do
good, I could not escape from myself the charge
of advancing a false claim. My journey to the
continent, though I once thought it necessary,
was never much encouraged by my physicians:
and I was very desirous that your Lordship
should be told it by Sir Joshua Reynolds as
an event very uncertain ; for if I grew much
better, I should not be willing, if much worse,
I should not be able, to migrate. Your Lord
ship was first solicited without my knowledge;
but when I was told that you were pleased to
honour me with your patronage, I did not
expect to hear of a refusal ; yet, as I have had
no long time to brood hopes, and have not

LETTERS 201

rioted in imaginary opulence, this cold recep
tion had been scarce a disappointment ; and
from your Lordship s kindness I have received
a benefit which only men like you are able to
bestow. I shall now live mihi carior^ with a
higher opinion of my own merit.
I am, my Lord,

Your Lordship s most obliged,
most grateful, and most humble servant,

SAMUEL JOHNSON.
Sept. 1784.

To the author of " Ossian

>

MR. JAMES MACPHERSON,

I received your foolish and impudent
letter. Any violence offered me I shall do my
best to repel; and what I cannot do for my
self the law shall do for me. I hope I shall
never be deterred from detecting what 1 think
a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian.

What would you have me retract ? I thought
your book an imposture ; I think it an im
posture still. For this opinion I have given
my reasons to the public, which I here dare
you to refute. Your rage I defy. Your abili
ties since your Homer are not so formidable,
and what I hear of your morals inclines me to
pay regard not to what you shall say, but to

202 SAMUEL JOHNSON

what you shall prove. You may print this if

you will.

SAM. JOHNSON.

Extracts from Mrs. Thr -ale s collection

You have more than once wondered at my
complaint of solitude when you hear that I
am crowded with visits. Inopem me copia fecit.
Visitors are no proper companions in the
chamber of sickness. They come when I could
sleep or read, they stay till I am weary, they
force me to attend when my mind calls for
relaxation, and to speak when my powers will
hardly actuate my tongue. The amusements
and consolations of languor and depression
are conferred by familiar and domestic com
panions, which can be visited or called at will
and can occasionally be quitted or dismissed,
who do not obstruct accommodation by cere
mony, or destroy indolence by awakening
effort.

Those that have loved longest love best. A
sudden blaze of kindness may by a single
blast of coldness be extinguished, but that
fondness which length of time has connected
with many circumstances and occasions, though
it may for a while be suppressed by disgust

LETTERS 203

or resentment, with or without a cause, is
hourly revived by accidental recollection. To
those that have lived long together, every
thing heard and every thing seen recalls some
pleasure communicated, or some benefit con
ferred, some petty quarrel, or some slight en
dearment. Esteem of great powers, or amiable
qualities newly discovered, may embroider a
day or a week, but a friendship of twenty
years is interwoven with the texture of life.
A friend may be often found and lost, but an
old friend never can be found, and nature has
provided that he cannot easily be lost.

The world is not so unjust or unkind as it
is peevishly represented. Those who deserve
well seldom fail to receive from others such
services as they can perform ; but few have
much in their power, or are so stationed as to
have great leisure from their own affairs, and
kindness must be commonly the exuberance
of content. The wretched have no compassion ;
they can do good only from strong principles
of duty.

Nothing is more common than mutual dis
like where mutual approbation is particularly
expected. There is often on both sides a
vigilance not over benevolent ; and as atten-

204 SAMUEL JOHNSON

tion is strongly excited, so that nothing drops
unheeded, any difference in taste or opinion,
and some difference where there is no restraint
will commonly appear, immediately generates
dislike.

Daily business adds no more to wisdom
than daily lesson to the learning of the teacher.
. . . Far the greater part of human minds
never endeavour their own improvement.
Opinions once received from instruction, or
settled by whatever accident, are seldom re
called to examination ; having been once sup
posed to be right they are never discovered to
be erroneous, for no application is made of
any thing that time may present, either to
shake or to confirm them. From this acqui
escence in preconceptions none are wholly
free; between fear of uncertainty and dislike
of labour every one rests while he might yet
go forward, and they that were wise at thirty-
three are very little wiser at forty-five.

He begins to reproach himself with neglect
of * s education, and censures that

idleness or that deviation, by the indulgence
of which he has left uncultivated such a fertile
mind. I advised him to let the child alone ;
and told him that the matter was not great,

LETTERS 205

whether he could read at the end of four years
or of five, and that I thought it not proper to
harass a tender mind with the violence of
painful attention. I may perhaps procure both
father and son a year of quiet : and surely I
may rate myself among their benefactors.

You know I never thought confidence with
respect to futurity any part of the character of
a brave, a wise, or a good man. Bravery has
no place where it can avail nothing ; wisdom
impresses strongly the consciousness of those
faults of which it is itself perhaps an aggrava
tion ; and goodness, always wishing to be
better, and imputing every deficience to criminal
negligence and every fault to voluntary cor
ruption, never dares to suppose the condition
of forgiveness fulfilled, nor what is wanting
in the crime supplied by penitence. This is
the state of the best : but what must be the
condition of him whose heart will not suffer
him to rank himself among the best, or among
the good? Such must be his dread of the
approaching trial as will leave him little atten
tion to the opinion of those whom he is leaving
for ever ; and the serenity that is not felt it
can be no virtue to feign.

Write to me no more about dying with a

206 SAMUEL JOHNSON

grace ; when you feel what I have felt in ap
proaching eternity, in fear of soon hearing
the sentence of which there is no revocation,
you will know the folly ; my wish is that you
may know it sooner. The distance between
the grave and the remotest point of human
longevity is but a very little ; and of that little
no path is certain. You knew all this, and I
thought that I knew it too; but I know it
now with a new conviction. May that new
conviction not be vain.

Unlimited obedience is due only to the
Universal Father of Heaven and Earth. My
parents may be mad or foolish; may be wicked
and malicious ; may be erroneously religious
or absurdly scrupulous. I am not bound to
compliance with mandates, either positive or
negative, which either religion condemns, or
reason rejects. There wanders about the world
a wild notion which extends over marriage
more than over any other transaction. If
Miss * * * followed a trade, would it be said
that she was bound in conscience to give or
refuse credit at her father s choice ? And is not
marriage a thing in which she is more inter
ested, and has therefore more right of choice ?
When I may suffer for my own crimes, when
I may be sued for my own debts, I may judge

LETTERS 207

by parity of reason for my own happiness. The
parent s moral right can arise only from his
kindness, and his civil right only from his
money. Conscience cannot dictate obedience
to the wicked or compliance with the foolish;
and of interest mere prudence is the judge.

When you favoured me with your letter,
you seemed to be in want of materials to fill
it, having met with no great adventures either
of peril or delight, nor done or suffered any
thing out of the common course of life. When
you have lived longer and considered more
you will find the common course of life very
fertile of observation and reflection. Upon the
common course of life must our thoughts and
our conversation be generally employed. Our
general course of life must denominate us wise
or foolish ; happy or miserable : if it is well re
gulated we pass on prosperously and smoothly;
as it is neglected we live in embarrassment,
perplexity, and uneasiness. ... A letter may
be always made out of the books of the morn
ing or talk of the evening.

Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must
be always in progression ; we must always
purpose to do more or better than in time
past. The mind is enlarged and elevated by

208 SAMUEL JOHNSON

mere purposes, though they end as they began,
by airy contemplation. We compare and judge
though we do not practise.

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless
sorrow ; but there is something in it so like
virtue, that he who is wholly without it can
not be loved, nor will by me at least be thought
worthy of esteem.

To grieve for evils is often wrong ; but it
is much more wrong to grieve without them.
All sorrow that lasts longer than its cause is
morbid, and should be shaken off as an attack
of melancholy, as the forerunner of a greater
evil than poverty or pain.

Of whatever we see we always wish to know;
always congratulate ourselves when we know
that of which we perceive another to be ignor
ant. Take therefore all opportunities of learn
ing that offer themselves, however remote the
matter may be from common life or common
conversation. Look in Herschel s telescope ;
go into a chemist s laboratory ; if you see a
manufacturer at work, remark his operations.
By this activity of attention you will find in
every place diversion and improvement.

LETTERS 209

The traveller wanders through a naked
desert, gratified sometimes, but rarely, with
the sight of cows, and now and then finds a
heap of loose stones and turf in a cavity be
tween rocks, where a being, born with all those
powers which education expands and all those
sensations which culture refines, is condemned
to shelter itself from the wind and rain. Philo
sophers there are who try to make themselves
believe that this life is happy, but they believe
it only while they are saying it, and never yet
produced conviction in a single mind; he,
whom want of words or images sunk into
silence, still thought, as he thought before, that
privation of pleasure can never please, and that
content is not to be much envied when it has
no other principle than ignorance of good.

It is said, and said truly, that experience is
the best teacher ; and it is supposed that as
life is lengthened experience is increased. But
a closer inspection of human life will discover
that time often passes without any incident
which can much enlarge knowledge or ratify
j udgment. When we are young we learn much,
because we are universally ignorant, we ob
serve every thing because every thing is new.
But, after some years, the occurrences of daily
life are exhausted ; one day passes like another

210 SAMUEL JOHNSON

in the same scene of appearances, in the same
course of transactions ; we have to do what
we have often done, and what we do not try,
because we do not wish, to do much better ;
we are told what we already know, and there
fore what repetition cannot make us know
with greater certainty.

Never let criticisms operate upon your face
or your mind ; it is very rarely that an author
is hurt by his critics. The blaze of reputation
cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the
socket ; a very few names may be considered
as perpetual lamps that shine unconsumed.

To Mrs. Thrale.

BOSWELL, with some of his troublesome kind
ness, has informed this family, and reminded
me, that the i8th of September is my birth
day. The return of my birth-day, if I re
member it, fills me with thoughts which it
seems to be the general care of humanity to
escape. I can now look back upon three score
and four years, in which little has been done,
and little has been enjoyed ; a life diversified
by misery, spent part in the sluggishness of
penury, and part under the violence of pain,
in gloomy discontent or importunate distress.

LETTERS

211

But perhaps I am better than I should have
been if I had been less afflicted. With this I
will try to be content.

In proportion as there is less pleasure in
retrospective considerations, the mind is more
disposed to wander forward into futurity ; but
at sixty-four what promises, however liberal,
of imaginary good can futurity venture to
make? yet something will be always promised,
and some promises will be always credited. I
am hoping and I am praying that I may live
better in the time to come, whether long or
short, than I have yet lived, and in the solace
of that hope endeavour to repose.

September ^\st, 1773.

To Mrs. Thrale

THE event is now irrevocable: it remains
only to bear it. Not to wish it had been
different is impossible; but as the wish is
painful without use, it is not prudent, perhaps
not lawful, to indulge it. As life, and vigour
of mind, and sprightliness of imagination, and
flexibility of attention, are given us for valu
able and useful purposes, we must not think
ourselves at liberty to squander life, to ener
vate intellectual strength, to cloud our thoughts,

212 SAMUEL JOHNSON

or fix our attention, when by all this expense
we know that no good can be produced. Be
alone as little as you can ; when you are alone,
do not suffer your thoughts to dwell on what
you might have done to prevent this disappoint
ment. You perhaps could not have done what
you imagine, or might have done it without
effect. But even to think in the most reason
able manner, is for the present not so useful
as not to think. Remit yourself solemnly into
the hands of God, and then turn your mind
upon the business and amusements which lie
before you. " All is best," says Chene, " as
it has been, excepting the errours of our own
free will." Burton concludes his long book
upon Melancholy with this important precept:
" Be not solitary ; be not idle."

November \2th, 1773.

To Mrs. Thrale

IN a man s letters, you know, Madam, his
soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror
of his breast; whatever passes within him is
shown undisguised in its natural process ;
nothing is inverted, nothing distorted : you
see systems in their elements; you discover
actions in their motives.

LETTERS 213

Of this great truth, sounded by the know
ing to the ignorant, and so echoed by the
ignorant to the knowing, what evidence have
you now before you ? Is not my soul laid open
in these veracious pages ? Do not you see me
reduced to my first principles ? This is the
pleasure of corresponding with a friend, where
doubt and distrust have no place, and every
thing is said as it is thought. The original
idea is laid down in its simple purity, and all
the supervenient conceptions are spread over
it, stratum super stratum, as they happen to
be formed. These are the letters by which
souls are united, and by which minds naturally
in unison move each other as they are moved
themselves. I know, dearest lady, that in the
perusal of this, such is the consanguinity of
our intellects, you will be touched as I am
touched. I have indeed concealed nothing
from you, nor do I expect ever to repent of
having thus opened my heart.

October zjt/?, 1777.

T o Mrs. ^hrale

DEAR MADAM,

On Sunday I dined with poor Law
rence, who is deafer than ever. When he was
told that Dr. Moisy visited Mr. Thrale, he

2i 4 SAMUEL JOHNSON

inquired for what ? and said there was nothing
to be done, which Nature would not do for
herself. On Sunday evening I was at Mrs.
Vesey s, and there was inquiry about my mas
ter, but I told them all good. There was Dr.
Bernard of Eton, and we made a noise all the
evening; and there was Pepys, and Wraxal till
I drove him away. And I have no loss of my
mistress, who laughs, and frisks, and frolics it
all the long day, and never thinks of poor
Colin.

If Mr. Thrale will but continue to mend,
we shall, I hope, come together again, and do
as good things as ever we did ; but perhaps
you will be made too proud to heed me, and
yet, as I have often told you, it will not be
easy for you to find such another.

Queeny has been a good girl, and wrote me
a letter ; if Burney said she would write, she
told you a fib. She writes nothing to me. She
can write home fast enough. I have a good
mind not to let her know that Dr. Bernard, to
whom I had recommended her novel, speaks
of it with great commendation, and that the
copy which she lent me has been read by Dr.
Lawrence three times over. And yet what a
gypsey it is. She no more minds me than if
I were a Branghton. Pray speak to Queeny to
write again.

LETTERS 2 1 5

I have had a cold and a cough, and taken
opium, and think I am better. We have had
very cold weather ; bad riding weather for my
master, but he will surmount it all. Did Mrs.
Browne make any reply to your comparison
of business with solitude, or did you quite
down her ? I am much pleased to think that
Mrs. Cotton thinks me worth a frame, and a
place upon her wall ; her kindness was hardly
within my hope, but time does wonderful
things. All my fear is, that if I should come
again, my print would be taken down. I fear
I shall never hold it.

Who dines with you ? Do you seek Dr.
Woodward or Dr. Harrington ? Do you go to
the house where they write for the myrtle ?
You are at all places of high resort, and bring
home hearts by dozens; while I am seeking
for something to say about men of whom I
know nothing but their verses, and sometimes
very little of them. Now I have begun, how
ever, 1 do not despair of making an end. Mr.
Nichols holds that Addison is the most taking
of all that I have done. I doubt they will not
be done before you come away.

Now you think yourself the first writer in
the world for a letter about nothing. Can you
write such a letter as this ? So miscellaneous,
with such noble disdain of regularity, like

216 SAMUEL JOHNSON

Shakspeare s works ; such graceful negligence
of transition, like the ancient enthusiasts ? The
pure voice of nature and of friendship. Now
of whom shall I proceed to speak ? Of whom
but Mrs. Montague? Having mentioned
Shakspeare and Nature, does not the name of
Montague force itself upon me ? Such were
the transitions of the ancients, which now seem
abrupt, because the intermediate idea is lost to
modern understandings. I wish her name had
connected itself with friendship ; but, ah Colin,
thy hopes are in vain ! One thing however is
left me, I have still to complain ; but I hope
I shall not complain much while you have any
kindness for me. I am, dearest and dearest
Madam, your, etc.

SAM. JOHNSON.

London, April \\th, 1780.

70 Mrs. Thrale (after his slight stroke of

paralysis)

DEAR MADAM,

I am sitting down in no cheerful soli
tude to write a narrative which would once
have affected you with tenderness and sorrow,
but which you will perhaps pass over now with
the careless glance of frigid indifference. For
this diminution of regard, however, I know

LETTERS 217

not whether I ought to blame you, who may
have reasons which I cannot know, and I do
not blame myself who have for a great part of
human life done you what good I could, and
have never done you evil. . . .

I hope that what, when I could speak, I
spoke of you, and to you, will be in a sober
and serious hour remembered by you ; and
surely it cannot be remembered but with some
degree of kindness. I have loved you with
virtuous affection ; I have honoured you with
sincere esteem. Let not all our endearments
be forgotten, but let me have in this last dis
tress your pity and your prayers. You see I
yet turn to you with my complaints as a settled
and inalienable friend; do not, do not drive
me from you, for I have not deserved either
neglect or hatred.

June 19^, 1783.

Mrs. Thrale

MADAM,

If I interpret your letter right, you are
ignominiously married: if it is yet undone,
let us once more talk together. If you have
abandoned your children and your religion,
God forgive your wickedness; if you have
forfeited your fame and your country, may

218 SAMUEL JOHNSON

your folly do no further mischief. If the last
act is yet to do, I, who have loved you, es
teemed you, reverenced you, and served you,
I, who long thought you the first of woman
kind, entreat that, before your fate is irrevoc
able, I may once more see you.

I was, I once was, Madam, most truly yours,

SAM. JOHNSON.

July 2, 1784. , j

I will come down if you permit it. 1

1 Mrs. Thrale s reply is so honourable an example of
a diction and a dignity almost worthy of Johnson him
self, that it may be allowed in this place to follow his
letter once more :

" SIR,

" I have this morning received from you so rough
a letter in reply to one which was both tenderly and
respectfully written, that I am forced to desire the con
clusion of a correspondence which I can bear to con
tinue no longer. The birth of my second husband is not
meaner than that of my first; his sentiments are not
meaner ; his profession is not meaner ; and his superiority
in what he professes acknowledged by all mankind. It is
want of fortune, then, that is ignominious ; the character
of the man I have chosen has no other claim to such an
epithet. The religion to which he has been always a
zealous adherent will, I hope, teach him to forgive in
sults he has not deserved ; mine will, I hope, enable me
to bear them at once with dignity and patience. To hear
that I have forfeited my fame is indeed the greatest in
sult I ever yet received. My fame is as unsullied as snow,

LETTERS 219

fo Mrs. Thrale

DEAR MADAM,

What you have done, however I may
lament it, I have no pretence to resent, as it
has not been injurious to me ; I therefore
breathe out one sigh more of tenderness,
perhaps useless, but at least sincere.

I wish that God may grant you every bless
ing, that you may be happy in this world for
its short continuance, and eternally happy in
a better state ; and whatever I can contribute
to your happiness I am very ready to repay,
for that kindness which soothed twenty years
of a life radically wretched.

or I should think it unworthy of him who must hence
forth protect it.

" I write by the coach the more speedily and effectu
ally to prevent your coming hither. Perhaps by my fame
(and I hope it is so) you mean only that celebrity which
is a consideration of a much lower kind. I care for that
only as it may give pleasure to my husband and his
friends.

" Farewell, dear Sir, and accept my best wishes. You
have always commanded my esteem, and long enjoyed
the fruits of a friendship never infringed by one harsh
expression on my part during twenty years of familiar
talk. Never did I oppose your will, or control your
wish ; nor can your unmerited severity itself lessen my
regard ; but till you have changed your opinion of
Mr. Piozzi, let us converse no more. God bless you."

220 SAMUEL JOHNSON

Do not think slightly of the advice which
I now presume to offer. Prevail upon Mr.
Piozzi to settle in England: you may live
here with more dignity than in Italy, and with
more security; your rank will be higher, and
your fortune more under your own eye. 1
desire not to detail all my reasons ; but every
argument of prudence and interest is for
England, and only some phantoms of imagina
tion seduce you to Italy.

I am afraid, however, that my counsel is
vain, yet I have eased my heart by giving it.

When Queen Mary took the resolution of
sheltering herself in England, the Archbishop
of St. Andrews, attempting to dissuade her,
attended on her journey ; and when they came
to the irremeable stream that separated the
two kingdoms, walked by her side into the
water, in the middle of which he seized her
bridle, and with earnestness proportioned to
her danger and his own affe&ion pressed her
to return. The queen went forward. If the
parallel reaches thus far, may it go no farther.
The tears stand in my eyes.

London, July Stfr, 1784.

FROM THE DIARY.

Sunday, Oct. 1 8, 1767.

YESTERDAY, Oct. 17, at about ten in the
morning, I took my leave for ever of my
dear old friend, Catherine Chambers, who
came to live with my mother about 1724,
and has been but little parted from her since.
She buried my father, my brother, and my
mother. She is now fifty-eight years old.

I desired all to withdraw, then told her that
we were to part for ever ; that, as Christians,
we should part with prayer ; and that I would,
if she were willing, say a short prayer beside
her. She expressed great desire to hear me ;
and held up her poor hands, as she lay in bed,
with great fervour, while I prayed, kneeling
by her, nearly in the following words :

Almighty and most merciful Father, whose
loving-kindness is over all thy works, behold,
visit, and relieve this thy servant, who is
grieved with sickness. Grant that the sense
of her weakness may add strength to her
faith, and seriousness to her repentance. And
grant that by the help of thy Holy Spirit,

221

222 SAMUEL JOHNSQN

after the pains and labours of this short life,
we may all obtain everlasting happiness
through Jesus Christ our Lord, for whose
sake hear our prayers. Amen. Our Father.

I then kissed her. She told me that to part
was the greatest pain that she had ever felt,
and that she hoped we should meet again in
a better place. I expressed with swelled eyes
and great emotion of tenderness the same
hopes. We kissed and parted, 1 humbly
hope, to meet again and to part no more.

March 28 (1782). This is the day on
which, in 1752, dear Tetty died. I have now
uttered a prayer of repentance and contrition ;
perhaps Tetty knows that I prayed for her.
Perhaps Tetty is now praying for me. God
help me.

POEMS

The Vanity of Human Wishes; in imitation of
the Tenth Satire of Juvenal

LET Observation, with extensive view,
Survey mankind from China to Peru;
Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife,
And watch the busy scenes of crowded life ;
Then say, how hope and fear, desire and hate,
O erspread with snares the clouded maze of

fate,
Where wavering man, betray d by vent rous

pride

To tread the dreary paths without a guide,
As treacherous phantoms in the mist delude,
Shuns fancied ills, or chases airy good ;
How rarely reason guides the stubborn choice,
Rules the bold hand, or prompts the suppliant

voice ;

How nations sink, by darling schemes oppress d,
When Vengeance listens to the fool s request ;
Fate wings with every wish th afflictive dart.
Each gift of nature, and each grace of art ;
With fatal heat impetuous courage glows,
With fatal sweetness elocution flows ;

223

224 SAMUEL JOHNSON

Impeachment stops the speaker s powerful

breath,
And restless fire precipitates on death.

But, scarce observed, the knowing and the

bold

Fall in the general massacre of gold ;
Wide wasting pest ! that rages unconfined,
And crowds with crimes the records of man
kind :

For gold his sword the hireling ruffian draws,
For gold the hireling judge distorts the laws ;
Wealth heap d on wealth nor truth nor safety

buys,
The dangers gather as the treasures rise.

Let history tell, where rival kings command,
And dubious title shakes the madded land,
When statutes glean the refuse of the sword,
How much more safe the vassal than the lord;
Low sculks the hind beneath the rage of power,
And leaves the wealthy traitor in the Tower,
Untouch d his cottage, and his slumbers sound,
Though Confiscation s vultures hover round.

The needy traveller, serene and gay,
Walks the wild heath, and sings his toil away.
Does envy seize thee ? crush th upbraiding ioy ;

T L i J i i &J /

Increase his riches, and his peace destroy!
Now fears in dire vicissitude invade,
The rustling brake alarms, and quivering
shade ;

POEMS 225

Nor light nor darkness brings his pain relief,
One shows the plunder, and one hides the

thief.

Yet still one general cry the skies assails,
And gain and grandeur load the tainted gales ;
Few know the toiling statesman s fear or care,
Th insidious rival and the gaping heir.

Once more, Democritus, arise on earth,
With cheerful wisdom and instructive mirth,
See motley life in modern trappings dress d,
And feed with varied fools th eternal jest:
Thou who could st laugh where want enchain d

caprice,

Toil crush d conceit, and man was of a piece ;
Where wealth, unloved, without a mourner

died,

And scarce a sycophant was fed by pride ;
Where ne er was known the form of mock

debate,

Or seen a new-made mayor s unwieldy state ;
Where change of favourites made no change

of laws,

And senates heard before they judged a cause ;
How wouldst thou shake at Britain s modish

tribe,
Dart the quick taunt, and edge the piercing

gibe!

Attentive, truth and nature to descry,
And pierce each scene with philosophic eye,

226 SAMUEL JOHNSON

To thee were solemn toys, or empty show,
The robes of pleasure and the veils of wo :
All aid the farce, and all thy mirth maintain,
Whose joys are causeless, and whose griefs are

vain.
Such was the scorn that fill d the sage s

mind,

Renew d at every glance on human kind ;
How just that scorn ere yet thy voice declare,
Search every state, and canvass every prayer.
Unnumber d suppliants crowd Preferment s

gate,

Athirst for wealth, and burning to be great ;
Delusive Fortune hears th incessant call ;
They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall.
On every stage the foes of peace attend,
Hate dogs their flight, and insult mocks their

end.
Love ends with hope, the sinking statesman s

door

Pours in the morning worshipper no more ;
For growing names the weekly scribbler lies,
To growing wealth the dedicator flies,
From every room descends the painted face,
That hung the bright palladium of the place ;
And, smoked in kitchens, or in auctions sold,
To better features yields the frame of gold ;
For now no more we trace in every line
Heroic worth, benevolence divine ;

POEMS

227

The form distorted justifies the fall,
And detestation rids th indignant wall.

But will not Britain hear the last appeal,
Sign her foes doom, or guard her favourites

zeal ?

Through Freedom s sons no more remon
strance rings,

Degrading nobles and controlling kings ;
Our supple tribes repress their patriot throats,
And ask no questions but the price of votes ;
With weekly libels and septennial ale,
Their wish is full to riot and to rail.

In full-blown dignity, see Wolsey stand,
Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand :
To him the church, the realm, their powers

consign,

Through him the rays of regal bounty shine,
Turn d by his nod the stream of honour

flows,

His smile alone security bestows :
Still to new heights his restless wishes tower,
Claim leads to claim, and power advances

power ;

Till conquest unresisted ceased to please,
And rights, submitted, left him none to s eize.
At length his sovereign frowns the train of
state

Mark the keen glance, and watch the sign to
hate.

228 SAMUEL JOHNSON

Where er he turns, he meets a stranger s eye,
His suppliants scorn him, and his followers fly ;
Now drops at once the pride of awful state,
The golden canopy, the glittering plate,
The regal palace, the luxurious board,
The liveried army, and the menial lord.
With age, with cares, with maladies oppress d,
He seeks the refuge of monastic rest.
Grief aids disease, remember d folly stings,
And his last sighs reproach the faith of kings.
Speak thou, whose thoughts at humble peace

repine,
Shall Wolsey s wealth, with Wolsey s end, be

thine ?

Or livest thou now, with safer pride content,
The wisest justice on the banks of Trent?
For, why did Wolsey, near the steeps of fate,
On weak foundations raise th enormous weight?
Why but to sink beneath misfortune s blow,
With louder ruin to the gulphs below?
What gave great Villiers to th assassin s

knife,

And fix d disease on Harley s closing life ?
What murder d Wentworth, and what exiled

Hyde,

By kings protected, and to kings allied ?
What but their wish indulged in courts to

shine,
And power too great to keep, or to resign ?

POEMS 229

When first the college rolls receive his name,
The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame ;
Resistless burns the fever of renown,
Caught from the strong contagion of the gown;
O er Bodley s dome his future labours spread,
And Bacon s 1 mansion trembles o er his head.
Are these thy views? Proceed, illustrious

youth,

And Virtue guard thee to the throne of Truth !
Yet, should thy soul indulge the generous heat
Till captive Science yields her last retreat ;
Should Reason guide thee with her brightest

ray,

And pour on misty Doubt resistless day ;
Should no false kindness lure to loose delight,
Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright ;
Should tempting Novelty thy cell refrain,
And Sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain ;
Should Beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart,
Nor claim the triumph of a letter d heart ;
Should no disease thy torpid veins invade,
Nor Melancholy s phantoms haunt thy shade ;
Yet hope not life from grief or danger free,
Nor think the doom of man reversed for thee:

There is a tradition, that the study of friar Bacon,
built on an arch over the bridge, will fall when a man
greater than Bacon shall pass under it. To prevent so
shocking an accident, it was pulled down many years
since,

2 3 o SAMUEL JOHNSON

Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
And pause awhile from Letters, to be wise ;
There mark what ills the scholar s life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol.
See nations, slowly wise, and meanly just,
To buried merit raise the tardy bust.
If dreams yet flatter, once again attend,
Hear Lydiat s life, and Galileo s end.

Nor deem, when Learning her last prize be
stows,

The glitt ring eminence exempt from woes ;
See, when the vulgar scape, despised or awed,
Rebellion s vengeful talons seize on Laud.
From meaner minds though smaller fines con
tent,

The plunder d palace, or sequester d tent ;
Mark d out by dangerous parts, he meets the

shock,

And fatal Learning leads him to the block :
Around his tomb let Art and Genius weep,
But hear his death, ye blockheads, hear and

sleep.

The festal blazes, the triumphal show,
The ravish d standard, and the captive foe,
The senate s thanks, the Gazette s pompous

tale,

With force resistless o er the brave prevail.
Such bribes the rapid Greek o er Asia whirl d,
For such the steady Romans shook the world;

POEMS 231

For such in distant lands the Britons shine,

And stain with blood the Danube or the Rhine;

This power has praise that virtue scarce can
warm.

Till fame supplies the universal charm.

Yet Reason frowns on War s unequal game,

Where wasted nations raise a single name ;

And mortgaged states their grandsires wreaths
regret,

From age to age in everlasting debt ;

Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right
convey,

To rust on medals, or on stones decay.

On what foundation stands the warrior s
pride,

How just his hopes, let Swedish Charles de
cide ;

A frame of adamant, a soul of fire,

No dangers fright him, and no labours tire ;

O er love, o er fear, extends his wide domain,

Unconquer d lord of pleasure and of pain ;

No joys to him pacific sceptres yield ;

War sounds the trump, he rushes to the field.

Behold surrounding kings theirpower combine,

And one capitulate, and one resign ;

Peace courts his hand, but spreads her charms
in vain ;

"Think nothing gain d," he cries, "till nought

remain,

232 SAMUEL JOHNSON

On Moscow s walls till Gothic standards fly,
And all be mine beneath the polar sky/ 1
The march begins in military state,
And nations on his eye suspended wait ;
Stern Famine guards the solitary coast,
And Winter barricades the realm of Frost ;
He comes, nor want nor cold his course delay.
Hide, blushing Glory, hide Pultowa s day !
The vanquish d hero leaves his broken bands,
And shows his miseries in distant lands ;
Condemn d, a needy supplicant, to wait,
While ladies interpose and slaves debate.
But did not Chance at length her error mend?
Did no subverted empire mark his end ?
Did rival monarchs give the fatal wound ?
Or hostile millions press him to the ground ?
His fall was destined to a barren strand,
A petty fortress, and a dubious hand ;
He left a name, at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale.

All times their scenes of pompous woes afford,
From Persia s tyrant to Bavaria s lord.
In gay hostility and barbarous pride,
With half mankind embattled at his side,
Great Xerxes comes to seize the certain prey,
And starves exhausted regions in his way ;
Attendant Flattery counts his myriads o er,
Till counted myriads soothe his pride no
more;

POEMS 233

Fresh praise is try d till madness fires his mind,

The waves he lashes, and enchains the wind ;

New powers are claim d, new powers are still
bestow d,

Till rude Resistance lops the spreading god ;

The daring Greeks deride the martial show,

And heap their valleys with the gaudy foe ;

Th insulted sea with humbler thoughts he
gains,

A single skiff to speed his flight remains ;

The incumbered oar scarce leaves the dreaded
coast,

Through purple billows and a floating host.
The bold Bavarian, in a luckless hour,

Tries the dread summits of Caesarian power,

With unexpected legions bursts away,

And sees defenceless realms receive his sway;

Short sway] fair Austria spreads her mourn
ful charms,

The queen, the beauty, sets the world in arms;

From hill to hill the beacon s rousing blaze

Spreads wide the hope of plunder and of praise;

The fierce Croatian, and the wild Hussar,

With all the sons of ravage, crowd the war ;

The baffled prince, in honour s flattering bloom,

Of hasty greatness finds the fatal doom ;

His foes derision, and his subjects blame ;

And steals to death from anguish and from
shame.

234 SAMUEL JOHNSON

Enlarge my life with multitude of days !
In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays:
Hides from himself his state, and shuns to

know

That life protracted is protracted wo.
Time hovers o er, impatient to destroy,
And shuts up all the passages of joy:
In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour,
The fruit autumnal, and the vernal flower ;
With listless eyes the dotard views the store,
He views, and wonders that they please no

more:

Now pall the tasteless meats and joyless wines,
And luxury with sighs her slave resigns.
Approach, ye minstrels, try the soothing strain,
Diffuse the tuneful lenitives of pain :
No sounds, alas ! would touch th impervious

ear,
Though dancing mountains witness d Orpheus

near ;

Nor lute nor lyre his feeble powers attend,
Nor sweeter music of a virtuous friend ;
But everlasting dictates crowd his tongue,
Perversely grave, or positively wrong.
The still returning tale, and lingering jest,
Perplex the fawning niece and pamper d guest,
While growing hopes scarce awe the gather
ing sneer,
And scarce a legacy can bribe to hear ;

POEMS 235

The watchful guests still hint the last offence,
The daughter s petulance, the son s expense;
Improve his heady rage with treach rous skill,
And mould his passions till they make his will.

Unnumber d maladies his joints invade,
Lay siege to life, and press the dire blockade;
But unextinguish d Avarice still remains,
And dreaded losses aggravate his pains;
He turns, with anxious heart and crippled

hands,

His bonds of debt, and mortgages of lands;
Or views his coffers with suspicious eyes,
Unlocks his gold, and counts it till he dies.

But grant, the virtues of a temperate prime
Bless with an age exempt from scorn or crime;
An age that melts in unperceived decay,
And glides in modest innocence away;
Whose peaceful day Benevolence endears,
Whose night congratulating Consciencecheers;
The general favourite as the general friend ;
Such age there is, and who shall wish its end?

Yet even on this her load Misfortune flings,
To press the weary minutes flagging wings;
New sorrow rises as the day returns,
A sister sickens, or a daughter mourns.
Now kindred Merit fills the sable bier,
Now lacerated Friendship claims a tear ;
Year chases year, decay pursues decay,
Still drops some joy from withering life away;

236 SAMUEL JOHNSON

New forms arise, and different views engage,
Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage,
Till pitying Nature signs the last release,
And bids afflicted worth retire to peace.

But few there are whom hours like these

await,

Who set unclouded in the gulphs of Fate.
From Lydia s monarch should the search de
scend,

By Solon caution d to regard his end,
In life s last scene what prodigies surprise,
Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise !
From Maryborough s eyes the streams of dot
age flow,
And Swift expires, a driveller and a show.

The teeming mother, anxious for her race,
Begs for each birth the fortune of a face ;
Yet Vane could tell what ills from beauty

spring; ;..

And Sedley cursed the form that pleased a

king.

Ye nymphs of rosy lips and radiant eyes,
Whom Pleasure keeps too busy to be wise ;
Whom joys with soft varieties invite,
By day the frolic, and the dance by night ;
Who frown with vanity, who smile with art,
And ask the latest fashion of the heart ;
What care, what rules, your heedless charms
shall save,

POEMS 237

Each nymph your rival, and each youth your
slave ?

Against your fame with fondness hate com
bines,

The rival batters, and the lover mines.

With distant voice neglected Virtue calls ;

Less heard and less, the faint remonstrance
falls ;

Tired with contempt, she quits the slippery
reign,

And Pride and Prudence take her seat in
vain.

In crowd at once, where none the pass defend,

The harmless freedom, and the private friend.

The guardians yield, by force superior plied,

To Interest, Prudence ; and to Flattery, Pride.

Here Beauty falls, betray d, despised, dis-
tress d,

And hissing Infamy proclaims the rest.

Where then shall Hope and Fear their ob
jects find?

Must dull suspense corrupt the stagnant mind ?

Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,

Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate ?

Must no dislike, alarm, no wishes rise,

No cries invoke the mercies of the skies ?

Enquirer, cease ; petitions yet remain

Which Heaven may hear, nor deem Religion
vain.

238 SAMUEL JOHNSON

Still raise for good the supplicating voice,
But leave to Heaven the measure and the

choice,

Safe in His power, whose eyes discern afar
The secret ambush of a specious prayer ;
Implore His aid, in His decisions rest,
Secure, whatever He gives, He gives the best.
Yet, when the sense of sacred presence fires,
And strong devotion to the skies aspires,
Pour forth thy fervours for a healthful mind,
Obedient passions and a will resign d ;
For love, which scarce collective man can fill ;
For patience, sovereign o er transmuted ill ;
For faith, that, panting for a happier seat,
Counts death kind Nature s signal of retreat.
These goods for man the laws of Heaven

ordain,
These goods He grants, who grants the power

to gain ;

With these celestial Wisdom calms the mind,
And makes the happiness she does not find.

POEMS 239

Prologue, spoken by Mr. Garrick, at the open
ing of the Theatre- Royal, Drury-Lane, 1 747

WHEN Learning s triumph o er her barbarous

foes
First rear d the stage, immortal Shakspeare

rose;

Each change of many-colour d life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new :
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time toil d after him in vain.
His powerful strokes presiding Truth im-

press d,

And unresisted Passion storm d the breast.
Then Jonson came, instructed from the

school,

To please in method, and invent by rule ;
His studious patience and laborious art
By regular approach assail d the heart :
Cold approbation gave the lingering bays,
For those, who durst not censure, scarce could

praise.

A mortal born, he met the general doom,
But left, like Egypt s kings, a lasting tomb.
The Wits of Charles found easier ways to

fame,
Nor wish d for Jonson s art, or Shakspeare s

flame;
Themselves they studied, as they felt they writ ;

2 4 o SAMUEL JOHNSON

Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit;
Vice always found a sympathetic friend ;
They pleased their age, and did not aim to

mend.

Yet bards like these aspired to lasting praise,
And proudly hoped to pimp in future days.
Their cause was general, their supports were

strong,
Their slaves were willing, and their reign was

long :

Till Shame regained the post that Sense be
tray d,
And Virtue call d Oblivion to her aid.

Then, crush d by rules, and weaken d as

refined,

For years the power of Tragedy declined ;
From bard to bard the frigid caution crept,
Till Declamation roar d, while Passion slept;
Yet still did Virtue deign the stage to tread ;
Philosophy remain d though Nature fled ;
But forced, at length, her ancient reign to

quit,

She saw great Faustus lay the ghost of Wit ;
Exulting Folly hail d the joyful day,
And Pantomime and Song confirmed her

sway.

But who the coming changes can presage,
And mark the future periods of the Stage ?
Perhaps, if skill could distant times explore,

POEMS 241

New Behns, new Durfeys, yet remain in store;

Perhaps, where Lear has raved, and Hamlet
died,

On flying cars new sorcerers may ride;

Perhaps (for who can guess th effects of
chance ?)

Here Hunt may box, or Mahomet ] may

dance.
Hard is his lot that, here by Fortune placed,

Must watch the wild vicissitudes of taste ;

With every meteor of caprice must play,

And chase the new-blown bubbles of the day.

Ah ! let not Censure term our fate our choice ;

The stage but echoes back the public voice ;

The drama s laws the drama s patrons give,

For we, that live to please, must please, to live.
Then prompt no more the follies you decry,

As tyrants doom their tools of guilt to die ;

Tis yours, this night, to bid the reign com
mence

Of rescued Nature and reviving Sense ;

To chase the charms of Sound, the pomp of
Show,

For useful Mirth, and salutary Wo ;

Bid scenic Virtue form the rising age,

And Truth diffuse her radiance from the stage.

Hunt, a famous boxer on the stage ; Mahomet,
a rope-dancer, who had exhibited at Covent-Garden
Theatre the winter before, said to be a Turk.

R

242 SAMUEL JOHNSON

Prologue, spoken by Mr. Garrick, April 5, 1 750,
before the Masque of Comus, acted at
Drury-Lane Theatre for the Benefit of
Milton s Grand-daughter

YE patriot crowds, who burn for England s

fame,
Ye nymphs, whose bosoms beat at Milton s

name,
Whose generous zeal, unbought by flattering

rhymes,

Shames the mean pensions of Augustan times,
Immortal patrons of succeeding days,
Attend this prelude of perpetual praise ;
Let wit, condemn d the feeble war to wage
With close malevolence, or public rage,
Let study, worn with virtue s fruitless lore,
Behold this theatre, and grieve no more.
This night, distinguish d by your smiles, shall

tell

That never Briton can in vain excel ;
The slighted arts futurity shall trust,
And rising ages hasten to be just.

At length our mighty bard s victorious lays
Fill the loud voice of universal praise ;
And baffled spite, with hopeless anguish dumb,
Yields to renown the centuries to come :
With ardent haste each candidate of fame,

POEMS 243

Ambitious, catches at his towering name;
He sees, and pitying sees, vain wealth bestow
Those pageant honours which he scorn d below,
While crowds aloft the laureat bust behold,
Or trace his form on circulating gold.
Unknown, unheeded, long his offspring lay,
And want hung threatening o er her slow decay.
What though she shine with no Miltonian fire,
No favouring Muse her morning dreams in
spire ;

Yet softer claims the melting heart engage,
Her youth laborious, and her blameless age ;
Hers the mild merits of domestic life,
The patient sufferer, and the faithful wife.
Thus graced with humble virtue s native

charms,

Her grandsire leaves her in Britannia s arms;
Secure with peace, with competence, to dwell,
While tutelary nations guard her cell.
Yours is the charge, ye fair, ye wise, ye brave !
Tis yours to crown desert, beyond the grave.

244 SAMUEL JOHNSON

Prologue to the Comedy of The Good- Nat ured

Man, 1769

PREST by the load of life, the weary mind
Surveys the general toil of human kind,
With cool submission joins the labouring

train,

And social sorrow loses half its pain :
Our anxious bard without complaint may share
This bustling season s epidemic care ;
Like Caesar s pilot dignified by Fate,
Tost in one common storm with all the great;
Distrest alike the statesman and the wit,
When one a Borough courts, and one the

Pit.

The busy candidates for power and fame
Have hopes, and fears, and wishes, just the

same;

Disabled both to combat or to fly,
Must hear all taunts, and hear without reply.
Unchecked on both loud rabbles vent their

rage,

As mongrels bay the lion in a cage.
Th offended burgess hoards his angry tale,
For that blest year when all that vote may rail ;
Their schemes of spite the poet s foes dismiss,
Till that glad night when all that hate may

hiss.

POEMS 245

" This day the powder d curls and golden
coat,"

Says swelling Crispin, " begg d a cobbler s

*
vote.

"This night our Wit," the pert apprentice cries,
" Lies at my feet ; I hiss him, and he dies."
The great, tis true, can charm the electing

tribe ;

The bard may supplicate, but cannot bribe.
Yet, judged by those whose voices ne er were

sold,

He feels no want of ill-persuading gold ;
But, confident of praise, if praise be due,
Trusts without fear to merit and to you.

246 SAMUEL JOHNSON

Prologue to the Comedy of A Word to the Wise,
(by Hugh Kelly). Spoken by Mr. Hull

THIS night presents a play which public rage,
Or right, or wrong, once hooted from the stage.
From zeal or malice, now no more we dread,
For English vengeance wars not with the dead.
A generous foe regards with pitying eye
The man whom fate has laid where all must lie.

To wit reviving from its author s dust,
Be kind, ye judges, or at least be just,
For no renew d hostilities invade
The oblivious grave s inviolable shade.
Let one great payment every claim appease,
And him, who cannot hurt, allow to please ;
To please by scenes unconscious of offence,
By harmless merriment or useful sense.
Where aught of bright, or fair, the piece dis
plays,

Approve it only ; tis too late to praise.
If want of skill, or want of care appear,
Forbear to hiss ; the poet cannot hear.
By all, like him, must praise and blame be

found

At best a fleeting gleam, or empty sound.
Yet then shall calm reflection bless the night
When liberal pity dignify d delight ;
When pleasure fired her torch at Virtue s flame,
And Mirth was Bounty with an humbler name.

POEMS 247

From Irene

TO-MORROW S action 1 Can that hoary wisdom,
Borne down with years, still doat upon to
morrow ?

That fatal mistress of the young, the lazy,
The coward, and the fool, condemn d to lose
A useless life in waiting for to-morrow,
To gaze with longing eyes upon to-morrow,
Till interposing death destroys the prospect !
Strange! that this general fraud from day to day
Should fill the world with wretches unde
tected.
The soldier, labouring through a winter s

march,

Still sees to-morrow drest in robes of triumph;
Still to the lover s long-expecting arms
To-morrow brings the visionary bride.
But thou, too old to bear another cheat,
Learn, that the present hour alone is man s.

248 SAMUEL JOHNSON

Friendship: An Ode

FRIENDSHIP! peculiar boon of heaven,
The noble mind s delight and pride,

To men and angels only given,
To all the lower world denied.

While love, unknown among the blest,
Parent of thousand wild desires,

The savage and the human breast
Torments alike with raging fires;

With bright, but oft destructive, gleam,
Alike o er all, his lightnings fly;

Thy lambent glories only beam
Around the favourites of the sky.

Thy gentle flows of guiltless joys
On fools and villains ne er descend;

In vain for thee the tyrant sighs,
And hugs a flatterer for a friend.

Directress of the brave and just,

O guide us through life s darksome way!
And let the tortures of mistrust

On selfish bosoms only prey.

Nor shall thine ardours cease to glow,
When souls to blissful climes remove:

What raised our virtue here below,
Shall aid our happiness above.

POEMS 249

Robert Levett

CONDEMN D to Hope s delusive mine,

As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blast or slow decline

Our social comforts drop away.

Well try d through many a varying year,
See Levett to the grave descend;

Officious, innocent, sincere,

Of every friendless name the friend.

Yet still he fills affection s eye,

Obscurely wise, and coarsely kind;

Nor, letter d arrogance, deny
Thy praise to merit unrefin d.

When fainting Nature call d for aid,
And hov ring Death prepared the blow,

His vigorous remedy displayed

The power of art without the show.

In Misery s darkest caverns known,

His ready help was ever nigh,
Where hopeless Anguish pour d his groan.

And lonely Want retir d to die.

No summons mock d by chill delay,
No petty gains disdain d by pride;

The modest wants of every day
The toil of every day supply d.

250 SAMUEL JOHNSON

His virtues walk d their narrow round,
Nor made a pause, nor left a void;

And sure the Eternal Master found
His single talent well employ d.

The busy day, the peaceful night,

Unfelt, uncounted, glided by;
His frame was firm, his powers were bright,

Though now his eightieth year was nigh.

Then, with no throbs of fiery pain,

No cold gradations of decay,
Death broke at once the vital chain,

And freed his soul the nearest way.

A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF
JOHNSON S WORKS

COMPLETE EDITIONS. PROSE AND POETRY

THE WORKS OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, together with his Life,
and notes on his Lives of the Poets, by Sir J. Hawkins.
15 vols. London, 1787-9. 8vo.

Another edition, with an Essay on his Life and

Genius, by Arthur Murphy. 12 vols. London,
1792. 8vo.

Another edition. 6 vols. Dublin, 1793. 8vo.

Another edition. 12 vols. London, 1796 8vo.

Another edition. 12 vols. London, 180 1. 8vo.

Another edition. 12 vols. London, 1805. 8vo.

THE WORKS OF SAMUEL JOHNSON. Another edition.

(Edited by A. Chalmers.) London, 1 8 10. 8vo.

Another edition. (Edited by A. Chalmers.) 12

vols. London, 1816. i2mo.

Another edition. lovols. London, 1818. I2mo.

Another edition, n vols. Oxford, 1825. 8vo.

Another edition. 6 vols. London, 1825. 8vo.

Another edition. 2 vols. 1850. 8vo.

POETRY

THE POETICAL WORKS OF S. J., now first collected, in

one vol. London, 1785. I2mo.
THE POETICAL WORKS OF S. J. Another edition. Dublin,

1785. I2mo.

Editions in 1789, 1795, 1797-

25 1

252 SAMUEL JOHNSON

THE POETICAL WORKS OF S. J. Collated with the best
editions, by Thomas Park. London, 1805. i6mo.

THE POEMS OF DR. S. J., to which is prefixed a life of
the author, by F. W. Blagdon. London, 1808.
24010.

THE POEMS OF S. J. (Chalmers Works of the English
Poets, vol. xvi). London, 1810. 8vo.

THE POETICAL WORKS OF GOLDSMITH, SMOLLETT, JOHN
SON, ETC. (Routledgc s British Poets.) 1853. 8vo.

THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHNSON, PARNELL, GRAY, AND
SMOLLETT. With memoirs, critical dissertations,
and explanatory notes, by the Rev. G. Gilfillan.
Edinburgh, 1855. 8vo.

THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHNSON, ETC. Another edition.
London (1878). 8vo.

THE POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH, TOBIAS
SMOLLETT, S. J., ETC. With biographical notices
and notes. London (1881). 8vo.

SINGLE WORKS

A VOYAGE TO ABYSSINIA, by Father Jerome Lobo. From
the French. (By S. J.) London, 1735. 8vo -

This was the first prose work of Dr. Johnson.
It was printed at Birmingham, and published
anonymously.

LONDON: a Poem. London, 1738. Fol.
Second edition, 1738. Fol.

Fourth edition, 1739. Fol.

A COMPLETE VINDICATION OF THE LICENSERS OF THE
STAGE from the malicious and scandalous aspersions
of Mr. Brooke. By an Impartial Hand (i.e., S. J.).
London, 1739. 4 to -

MARMOR NORFOLCIENSE. By Probus Britannicus (i.e.,
Dr. S. Johnson). London, 1739. 8vo.

A new edition. London, 1775. 8vo -

BIBLIOGRAPHY 253

AN ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF MR. RICHARD SAVAGE, etc.
(By S. J.) London, 1744. 8vo.

Second edition. London, 1748. 8vo.

MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS ON THE TRAGEDY OF

MACBETH. (By S. J.) London, 1/45. lamo.
THE PLAN OF A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

London, 1747. 4to.
IRENE, a tragedy (in five acts and in verse). London,

1749. 8vo.

Another edition. London, 1781. 8vo.

THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES. London, 1749. 4 to -
THE RAMBLER. (By S. J.) 2 vols. London, 1750-52.
Fol.

Farther editions in 1752, 1767, 1779, 1789,

!793-99> J 79 6 > l8 9 I8l 7> l82 3> 1827, 1856,
1876.

A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 2 vols.
London, 1755. Fol.

Second edition. 2 vols. London, 1755. Fol.

Further editions in 1755, 1756, 1765, 1773

(2), 1775, i77 8 > 1785, I8 5 I8l8 > l8 55> i 8 7
etc.

THE PRINCE OF ABISSINIA (i.e., Rasselas). A Tale, in

two volumes. (First edition.) London, 1759. 8vo -

This work has been translated into Bengalee,

Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian,

Polish, Modern Greek, and Spanish.

Further editions in 1759(2), 1760, 1783, 1787

(2), 1789, 1793, 1794. 795 I8oi > I8 4> I8 5
1806, 1807, 1810 (2), 1812 (2), 1815, 1816,
1817, 1819, 1823(2), 1835, I8 3 8 > i 8 45, * 8 49,

1852, 1855, l8 5 8 > I86o > l86 7> I868 I86 9( 2 ),
1870, 1879, 1880, 1882 (2), 1883 (3), 1884(2),

etc.

THE IDLER. (By S. J. and others.) 2 vols. London,
1761. 8vo.

254 SAMUEL JOHNSON

THE IDLER. Further editions in 1795, (2) 1799, 1807,

1810, 1817, 1823, (2) 1824, 1827, 1856, (at
Boston, U.S.A.) 1781, etc.

THE LIFE OF MR. R. SAVAGE. The third edition, to
which are added the Lives of Sir Francis Drake
and Admiral Blake, etc. (By S. J.) London, 1769.
8vo.

Fourth edition. London, 1777. I2mo.

THE FALSE ALARM. (By S. J.) London, 1770. 8vo.

Second edition. London, 1770. 8vo.

THOUGHTS ON THE LATE TRANSACTIONS RESPECTING
FALKLAND S ISLANDS. (By S. J.) London, 1771.
8vo.
THE PATRIOT. London, 1774. 8vo.

Third edition. London, 1775. $vo.

A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND.
(By S. J.) London, 1775. 8vo.

Further editions in 1775, 1791, 1792, 1798, 1800,

1811, 1816, 1819, 1876.

TAXATION NO TYRANNY. London, 1775. 8vo.

THE WORKS OF R. SAVAGE, with an account of the life
and writings of the author. By S. J. 2 vols. Lon
don, 1775. 8vo.

Another edition. 2 vols. Dublin, 1777. I2mo.

POLITICAL TRACTS. (By S. J.) London, 1776. 8vo.
THE CONVICT S ADDRESS, etc. (Written by Dr. J.)

London, 1777. 8vo.

Second edition. London, 1777. 8vo.

Another edition. Salisbury, 1777. I2mo.

THOUGHTS IN PRISON, to which are added The Convicts

Address, etc. Third edition. London, 1779.
I2mo.

THE WORKS OF THE ENGLISH POETS. With prefaces,
biographical and critical, by S. J. 68 vols. Lon
don, 1779-81. 8vo.

Another edition. 75 vols. London, 1790-80. 8vo.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 255

THE WORKS OF THE ENGLISH POETS. Prefaces, biographical
and critical, to The Works of the English Poets.
10 vols. London, 1779-81. izmo.

PRAYERS AND MEDITATIONS, composed by S. J. Lon
don, 1785. 8vo.

Further editions, 1785, 1806, 1813, 1817, 1823,

1826, 1836, 1860.

MEMOIRS OF CHARLES FREDERICK, KING OF PRUSSIA.
London, 1786. 8vo.

DEBATES IN PARLIAMENT, by S. J. 2 vols. London,
1787. 8vo.

SERMONS on different subjects (attributed to S. Johnson),
left for publication by John Taylor, LL.D. Pub
lished by S. Hayes. To which is added a sermon
written by S. J. for the funeral of his wife. 2 vols.
London, 1788-89. 8vo.

Further editions in 1790-92, 1793, 1800, 1806,

1812.

A VOYAGE TO ABYSSINIA. London, 1789. 8vo.

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN HIS MOST SACRED MAJESTY
GEORGE III AND S. J. Illustrated with observa
tions, by James Boswell. London, 1790. Fol.

THE CELEBRATED LETTER from S. J. to P. D. Stanhope,
Earl of Chesterfield. Now first published, with
notes, by J. Boswell. London, 1790. 410.

AN ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF S. J. from his birth to his
eleventh year, written by himself. London, 1805.
8vo.

THE WORKS OF THE ENGLISH POETS. With prefaces,
biographical and critical, by Dr. S. J. 21 vols.
London, 1810. 8vo.

Further editions in 1797, 1819, 1822, 1826, 1840,

1847, 1854 ( 2 )> I8 5 8 > 1864-65, 1868, 1878, 1886,
etc.

IRENE (Modern British Drama, vol. 2). London, 1811.
8vo.

256 SAMUEL JOHNSON

A DIARY OF A JOURNEY INTO NORTH WALES IN 1774,
edited, with illustrative notes, by R. Duppa.
London, 1816. 8vo.

JUVENAL TRANSLATED BY C. BAHAM, with an Appendix
containing imitations of the Third and Tenth
Satires of Juvenal, by S. J. London, 1831. i6mo.

SELECTIONS AND MODERN REPRINTS.

LETTERS OF DR. JOHNSON, collected by G. B. Hill.

Oxford. 1845. 2 vols. 8vo.
LIVES OF DRYDEN AND POPE. Clarendon Press series.

1866, etc. 8vo.
Six CHIEF LIVES OF THE POETS, edited by Matthew

Arnold. 1878. 8vo.
LIVES OF THE POETS. Cassell s National Library. 1886.

8vo.
RASSELAS. Introduction by Henry Morley. Cassell s

National Library. 1886. 8vo.
MILTON. Tutorial series. 1887. 8vo.
MILTON. Macmillan s English Classics. 1892. 8vo.
LIFE OF ADDISON. Bell s English Classics. 1893. 8vo.
VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES. Blackie s English Classics.

1893. 8vo.

MILTON. Bell s series. 1894. 8vo.
SWIFT. Bell s series. 1894. 8vo.
DRYDEN. Bell s series. 1895. 8vo.
LIVES OF THE POETS. 6 vols. Kegan Paul & Co. 1896.

8vo.

MILTON. Berry s P. I. series. 1896. 8vo.
PRIOR AND CONGREVE. Bell s scries. 1897. 8vo.
DRYDEN. Macmillan s English Classics. 1899. 8vo.
POPE. Macmillan s English Classics. 1899. 8vo.
LIVES OF THE POETS. Blackie s English Classics. 1900.

8vo.
RASSELAS. Greening Masterpieces. 1900. 8vo.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 257

LIVES OF THE POETS. World s Classics. 2 vols. 1901. 8vo.
Long s Carlton Classics. 1905. 8vo.

York Library. 1906. 8vo.

RASSELAS. Cassell s National Library (new series). 1903.

8vo.

In " New Universal Library." 1905. 8vo.
BOSWELL S LIFE. Temple Classics. 1904. 8vo.
Red Letter series. 1904. 8vo.

,, Arnold Prose Books. 1905. 8vo.

,, " Everyman " series. 1906. 8vo.

Edited by Roger Ingpen. 1906. 8vo.

LIFE. By John Dennis. Bell s Miniature series. 1905.

8vo.

WIT AND SAGACITY OF JOHNSON. Elzevir Library. 1909.
i6mo.

BIOGRAPHY, CRITICISM, AND PERSONALIA

may be found in John C. Adelung s Three Philological
Essays, 1798; Robert Anderson s Life of Samuel Johnson,
1795; Augustine Birrell s Obiter Dicta, 1884; The
Biographical Magazine, 1853, vol. 4, pp. 1-12; James
Boswell s Journal of the Tour to the Hebrides, 1785 and
later editions ; James Boswell s Life of Dr. Johnson,
1791 and later editions; Lord Brougham s Lives of Men
of Letters and Science, 1846, vol. 2, pp. 1-85; Anna
Buckland s Story of English Literature, 1882; Frances
Burney (afterwards Madame D Arblay), Diary and
Letters, 1832-46; Carlyle s Biographical Essays, 1853,
and Critical Essays, 1885; Cowper s Letters (T. Wright s
edition, 1904 numerous references); Dr. Courthope s
History of English Poetry, 1895-1910; Cunningham s
English Nation, 1863, vol. 4, pp. 208-220; George
Dawson s Biographical Lectures, 1886; Nathan Drake s
Essays, 1810, vol. i, pp. Hi- 199; Percy Fitzgerald s
Croker s Boswell, 1880; George Gilfillan s Literary Por-

S

258 SAMUEL JOHNSON

traits, 1857, vol. 2, pp. 217-226; Nathaniel Hawthorne s
Tales, Sketches, and other Papers, 1883; Hazlitfs com
pleted edition of Johnsorfs "Lives of the Poets," 1854;
G. B. Hill s Dr. Johnson, 1878; Thomas Hobhouse s
Elegy to the memory of Dr. Johnson, 1785; Laurence
Hutton s Literary Landmarks, 1885; Macaulay s article
in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1860, pp. 75-135, and
Critical Essays, 1852; Mezieres Histoire critique de la
litter at ure anglaise, 1841, torn. 2, pp. 28-131; R.
Monckton Milnes Bosweltiana, 1885; Miss Mitford s
Recollections, 1852, pp. 200-225; Newman s Essays,
1872; Walter Raleigh s Six Essays on Johnson, 1910;
Thomas Seccombe s Bookman History of English Literature,
1905-1906; Leslie Stephen s Samuel Johnson ("English
Men of Letters " series), 1878; Taine s History of
English Literature, 1864, torn. 3, pp. 336-345; Mrs.
Thrale s Autobiography and Letters, 1861; T. H. Ward s
The English Poets, 1884; Charles Duke Yonge s Three
Centuries of English Literature, 1873, etc.

ICONOGRAPHY

Before 1752. ENGRAVING by Finden from miniature.
Reproduced in Mr. Roger Ingpen s edition of Bos-
well s Life of Johnson, 1907.

1756. PAINTING by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Reproduced
in G. B. Hill s edition of Boswell s Life ; Mr. A.
Birrell s edition of same, 1901 ; Mr. Ingpen s edition,
and elsewhere.

1770. MEZZOTINT by Zobel after Reynolds. Repro
duced in Mr. Birrell s and Mr. Ingpen s editions
of the Life by Boswell.

1773. PAINTING by Reynolds (in the National Gallery).
Reproduced in Hill s edition of the Life, and in
numerous other places.

ETCHING by Mrs. Turner after drawing by Ozias

Humphrey, R.A. Reproduced in Mr. Ingpen s
edition of the Life.

1781. PORTRAIT by Barry, engraved by Finden. Re
produced in Napier s edition of the Life, 1884, and
elsewhere. Now in National Portrait Gallery.

1782. DRAWING by Trotter. Reproduced in Beauties of
Johnson (Kearsley s edition) as frontispiece.

1783. MINIATURE by Miss Frances Reynolds. Repro
duced in Mr. Ingpen s edition of Life, 1907.

1784. PORTRAIT by James Roberts, said to be the last
portrait of Johnson. Reproduced in Mr. Ingpen s
edition of Life, 1907.

PORTRAIT by Opie. Reproduced in Biographical

Magazine, 1794, and elsewhere.

DRAWING by Bosland, engraved by Finden. For-

259

260 SAMUEL JOHNSON

merly known as " belonging to Archdeacon Cam
bridge." Reproduced in Napier s edition of the
Life, 1884, and elsewhere.

1784. CARICATURE by Rowlandson. Reproduced in
Mr. Ingpen s edition of Life, 1907.

PAINTING by James Doyle, " The Literary Party."

Reproduced in Eclectic Magazine, 1 849 ; Mr. Ing-
pen s edition of Life, and elsewhere.

BUST by Nollekens, R.A. Reproduced in Mr.

Birrell s edition of Life ; Mr. Ingpen s edition of
same, and elsewhere.

DRAWING by P. S. Lamborn. Reproduced in

Mr. Ingpen s edition of Life.

DRAWING by Luggan. Reproduced in Mr. Ing
pen s edition of Life.

PORTRAIT by James Northcote, engraved by

Finden. Reproduced in Mr. Ingpen s edition of
Life.

DRAWING by Trotter of Johnson in his Hebridean

dress. Reproduced in Mr. Ingpen s edition of Life.

DEATH MASK. Reproduced in Harper s Magazine,

1893, and elsewhere.

APPRECIATIONS AND TESTIMONIA

MADAME D ARBLAY

My dear, dear Doctor Johnson ! what a charming man
you are! Letter to Miss S. Burney, July $th, 1778.

CARLYLE

The last of the Tories . . . the bravest of the brave.
. . . Few men on record have had a more merciful,
tenderly affectionate nature than old Samuel. He was
called the Bear ; and did indeed too often look, and roar,
like one; being forced to it in his own defence; yet
within that shaggy exterior of his there beat a heart warm
as a mother s, soft as a little child s. . . . Tears trick
ling down the granite rock : a soft well of Pity springs
within ! Essays.

Johnson in the eighteenth century and as Man of
Letters was one of such ; and the bravest of the brave.
. . . Who so will understand what it is to have a man s
heart may find that since the time of John Milton no
braver heart had beat in any English bosom than Samuel
Johnson now bore. Essays.

LESLIE STEPHEN

The names of many greater writers are inscribed on the
walls of Westminster Abbey ; but scarcely anyone lies
there whose heart was more acutely responsive during
life to the deepest and tenderest human emotions. In
visiting that strange gathering of departed heroes and
statesmen and philanthropists and poets, there are many

261

262 SAMUEL JOHNSON

whose words and deeds have a far greater influence on
our imagination ; but there are very few whom, when
all has been said, we can love so heartily as Samuel
Johnson. Samuel Johnson.

MACAULAY

The best proof that Johnson was really an extra
ordinary man is that his character, instead of being de
graded has, on the whole been decidedly raised by a
work (The Life of Boswell) in which all his vices and
weaknesses are exposed more unsparingly than they were
ever exposed by Churchill or by Kenrick. Critical
Essays.

The characteristic peculiarity of his intellect was the
union of great powers with low prejudices. The judge
ments which Johnson passed on books . . . are the judge
ments of a strong but enslaved understanding. Within
his narrow limits he displayed a vigour and an activity
which ought to have enabled him to clear the barrier
which confined him. Critical Essays.

NEWMAN

Few men have the gifts of Johnson, who, to great
vigour and resource of intellect, when it was fairly
roused, united a rare common sense and a conscientious
regard for veracity which preserved him from flippancy
or extravagance in writing. Essays.

TAINE

We now send for his books and after an hour we ob
serve, that whatever the work be, tragedy or dictionary,
biography or essay, he always writes in the same style.
His phraseology rolls ever in solemn and majestic periods,
in which every substantive marches ceremoniously ac
companied by its epithet; grand pompous words peal
like an organ ; every proposition is set forth balanced by

TESTIMONIA 263

a proposition of equal length ; thought is developed with
the compressed regularity and official splendour of a pro
cession. Classical prose attains its perfection in him, as
classical poetry in Pope. Art cannot be more finished or
nature more forced. None has confined ideas in straiter
compartments ; none has given stronger relief to disser
tation and proof; none has imposed more despotically
on story and dialogue the forms of argumentation and
violent declamation. We understand now that an ora
torical age would recognize him as a master, and attribute
to him in eloquence the mastery which it attributed to
Pope in verse. History of English Literature.

PROFESSOR WALTER RALEIGH

It will be wise to face at once the charge so often
brought against these writings, that they are dull.
M. Taine, who somehow got hold of the mistaken idea
that Johnson s periodical essays are the favourite reading
of the English people has lent his support to this charge.
. . . This is the greatness of Johnson, that he is greater
than his work. He thought of himself as a man rather
than as an author ; and of literature as a means not as an
end in itself. Six Essays on Johnson.

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL

As a writer of English prose, Johnson has always en
joyed a great albeit somewhat awful reputation. In
childish memories he is constrained to be associated with
dust and dictionaries and those provoking obstacles to a
boy s reading " long words." The characteristics of
Johnson s prose style are colossal good sense, though with
a strong sceptical bias, good humour, vigorous language,
and movement from point to point which can only be
compared to the measured tread of a well-drilled com
pany of soldiers. Obiter Dicta.

264 SAMUEL JOHNSON

DR. CoURTHOPE

The chief characteristic of Johnson s ethical poetry is
the depth of feeling with which he illustrates universal
truths by individual examples. . . . Nowhere is the char
acter of Johnson reflected more strongly than in his
Prologues. Only a great man would dare to preach
morality to a crowded theatre. History of English Poetry.

COWPER

I am very much the biographer s humble admirer.
His uncommon share of good sense, and his forcible ex
pression, secure to him that tribute from all his readers.
He has a penetrating insight into character, and a happy
talent of correcting the popular opinion upon all occa
sions when it is erroneous ; and this he does with the
boldness of a man who will think for himself, but, at the
same time, with a justness of sentiment that convinces
us he does not differ from others through affectation, but
because he has a sounder judgement. This remark, how
ever, has his narrative for its object, rather than his
critical performance. In the latter, I do not always think
him just when he departs from the general opinion.
Letter to Rev. W. Unwin, March 2ist, 1784.

His treatment of Milton is unmerciful to the last de
gree. A pensioner is not likely to spare the republican ;
and the Doctor, in order, I suppose, to convince his
royal patron of the sincerity of his monarchical prin
ciples has belaboured that great poet s character with the
most industrious cruelty.

As a poet, he has treated him with severity enough,
and has plucked one or two of the most beautiful feathers
out of his Muse s wing, and trampled them under his
great foot. He has passed condemnation upon Lycidas.
. . . Oh, I could thresh his old jacket, till I made his

TESTIMONIA 265

pension jingle in his pocket. Letter to Unzuin, Sept
ember 2 ist, 1779.

THOMAS SECCOMBE

Dr. Johnson s very appearance is more familiar to us
through portraits and descriptions than that of any other
person of past generations. His massive figure still haunts
Fleet Street, and he has "stamped his memory upon the
remote Hebrides." His personal habits, his tricks of
speech, his outlook upon life, all have become part of
our national consciousness, and have encouraged both
men in the past and men now living to support life with
a manlier fortitude and an enlarged hope. The courage
and beneficence of his own life, confirmed by the reports
of all who knew him best, have justly become a treasured
possession of the English race, of whose good points and
of whose foibles he was an epitome. His intellect was not
unworthy of his other qualities, the strength and weak
ness of which it reflected with fidelity. His conversation
was even more remarkable than his writings, admirable
though the best of these were, and has conferred upon
him a species of fame which no Englishman shares with
him in any considerable degree. The exceptional traits
which were combined in his personality have met in the
person of Boswell with a delineator unrivalled in patience,
dexterity, and dramatic insight. The result has been a
portrait of a man of letters more lifelike than that which
any other age or nation has bequeathed to us. Bookman
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