Obiter Dicta Part 5

Considering him a little more in detail, we find it plain that he was a poet of no mean order. His resonant lines, informed as they often are with the force of their author's character--his strong sense, his fort.i.tude, his gloom--take possession of the memory, and suffuse themselves through one's entire system of thought. A poet spouting his own verses is usually a figure to be avoided; but one could be content to be a hundred and thirty next birthday to have heard Johnson recite, in his full sonorous voice, and with his stately elocution, _The Vanity of Human Wishes_. When he came to the following lines, he usually broke down, and who can wonder?--

'Proceed, ill.u.s.trious youth, And virtue guard thee to the throne of truth!

Yet should thy soul indulge the gen'rous 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 lettered 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 revers'd for thee.

Deign on the pa.s.sing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from letters to be wise; There mark what ills the scholar's life a.s.sail, 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.'

If this be not poetry, may the name perish!

In another style, the stanzas on the young heir's majority have such great merit as to tempt one to say that the author of _The Jolly Beggars_, Robert Burns himself, might have written them. Here are four of them:

'Loosen'd from the minor's tether, Free to mortgage or to sell; Wild as wind and light as feather, Bid the sons of thrift farewell.

'Call the Betseys, Kates, and Jennies, All the names that banish care, Lavish of your grandsire's guineas, Show the spirit of an heir.

'Wealth, my lad, was made to wander, Let it wander as it will; Call the jockey, call the pander, Bid them come and take their fill.

'When the bonny blade carouses, Pockets full and spirits high-- What are acres? what are houses?

Only dirt--or wet or dry.'

Johnson's prologues, and his lines on the death of Robert Levet, are well known. Indeed, it is only fair to say that our respected friend, the General Public, frequently has Johnsonian tags on its tongue:

'Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.'

'The unconquered lord of pleasure and of pain.'

'He left the name at which the world grew pale To point a moral or adorn a tale.'

'Death, kind nature's signal of retreat.'

'Panting Time toiled after him in vain.'

All these are Johnson's, who, though he is not, like Gray, whom he hated so, all quotations, is yet oftener in men's mouths than they perhaps wot of.

Johnson's tragedy, _Irene_, need not detain us. It is unreadable, and to quote his own sensible words, 'It is useless to criticise what n.o.body reads.' It was indeed the expressed opinion of a contemporary called Pot that _Irene_ was the finest tragedy of modern times; but on this judgment of Pot's being made known to Johnson, he was only heard to mutter, 'If Pot says so, Pot lies,' as no doubt he did.

Johnson's Latin Verses have not escaped the condemnation of scholars.

Whose have? The true mode of critical approach to copies of Latin verse is by the question--How bad are they? Croker took the opinion of the Marquess Wellesley as to the degree of badness of Johnson's Latin Exercises. Lord Wellesley, as became so distinguished an Etonian, felt the solemnity of the occasion, and, after bargaining for secrecy, gave it as his opinion that they were all very bad, but that some perhaps were worse than others. To this judgment I have nothing to add.

As a writer of English prose, Johnson has always enjoyed a great, albeit a somewhat awful reputation. In childish memories he is constrained to be a.s.sociated with dust and dictionaries, and those provoking obstacles to a boy's reading--'long words.' It would be easy to select from Johnson's writings numerous pa.s.sages written in that essentially vicious style to which the name Johnsonese has been cruelly given; but the searcher could not fail to find many pa.s.sages guiltless of this charge.

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 company of soldiers. Here is a pa.s.sage from the preface to Shakspeare:

'Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. Let him that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakspeare, and who desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read every play from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let it not stoop at correction or explanation. When his attention is strongly engaged, let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theobald and of Pope. Let him read on, through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his comprehension of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness and read the commentators.'

Where are we to find better sense, or much better English?

In the pleasant art of chaffing an author Johnson has hardly an equal. De Quincey too often overdoes it. Macaulay seldom fails to excite sympathy with his victim. In playfulness Mr. Arnold perhaps surpa.s.ses the Doctor, but then the latter's playfulness is always leonine, whilst Mr. Arnold's is surely, sometimes, just a trifle kittenish. An example, no doubt a very good one, of Johnson's humour must be allowed me. Soame Jenyns, in his book on the _Origin of Evil_, had imagined that, as we have not only animals for food, but choose some for our diversion, the same privilege may be allowed to beings above us, 'who may deceive, torment, or destroy us for the ends only of their own pleasure.'

On this hint writes our merry Doctor as follows:

'I cannot resist the temptation of contemplating this a.n.a.logy, which I think he might have carried farther, very much to the advantage of his argument. He might have shown that these "hunters, whose game is man," have many sports a.n.a.logous to our own. As we drown whelps or kittens, they amuse themselves now and then with sinking a ship, and stand round the fields of Blenheim, or the walls of Prague, as we encircle a c.o.c.kpit. As we shoot a bird flying, they take a man in the midst of his business or pleasure, and knock him down with an apoplexy. Some of them perhaps are virtuosi, and delight in the operations of an asthma, as a human philosopher in the effects of the air-pump. Many a merry bout have these frolick beings at the vicissitudes of an ague, and good sport it is to see a man tumble with an epilepsy, and revive and tumble again, and all this he knows not why. The paroxysms of the gout and stone must undoubtedly make high mirth, especially if the play be a little diversified with the blunders and puzzles of the blind and deaf. . . . One sport the merry malice of these beings has found means of enjoying, to which we have nothing equal or similar. They now and then catch a mortal, proud of his parts, and flattered either by the submission of those who court his kindness, or the notice of those who suffer him to court theirs. A head thus prepared for the reception of false opinions, and the projection of vain designs, they easily fill with idle notions till, in time, they make their plaything an author; their first diversion commonly begins with an ode or an epistle, then rises perhaps to a political irony, and is at last brought to its height by a treatise of philosophy. Then begins the poor animal to entangle himself in sophisms and to flounder in absurdity.'

The author of the philosophical treatise, _A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil_, did not at all enjoy this 'merry bout' of the 'frolick' Johnson.

The concluding paragraphs of Johnson's Preface to his Dictionary are historical prose, and if we are anxious to find pa.s.sages fit to compare with them in the melancholy roll of their cadences and in their grave sincerity and manly emotion, we must, I think, take a flying jump from Dr. Johnson to Dr. Newman.

For sensible men the world offers no better reading than the _Lives of the Poets_. They afford an admirable example of the manner of man Johnson was. The subject was suggested to him by the booksellers, whom as a body he never abused. Himself the son of a bookseller, he respected their calling. If they treated him with civility, he responded suitably.

If they were rude to him he knocked them down. These worthies chose their own poets. Johnson remained indifferent. He knew everybody's poetry, and was always ready to write anybody's Life. If he knew the facts of a poet's life--and his knowledge was enormous on such subjects--he found room for them; if he did not, he supplied their place with his own shrewd reflections and sombre philosophy of life. It thus comes about that Johnson is every bit as interesting when he is writing about Sprat, or Smith, or Fenton, as he is when he has got Milton or Gray in hand. He is also much less provoking. My own favourite _Life_ is that of Sir Richard Blackmore.

The poorer the poet the kindlier is the treatment he receives. Johnson kept all his rough words for Shakspeare, Milton, and Gray.

In this trait, surely an amiable one, he was much resembled by that eminent man the late Sir George Jessel, whose civility to a barrister was always in inverse ratio to the barrister's practice; and whose friendly zeal in helping young and nervous pract.i.tioners over the stiles of legal difficulty was only equalled by the fiery enthusiasm with which he thrust back the Attorney and Solicitor General and people of that sort.

As a political thinker Johnson has not had justice. He has been lightly dismissed as the last of the old-world Tories. He was nothing of the sort. His cast of political thought is shared by thousands to this day.

He represents that vast army of electors whom neither canva.s.ser nor caucus has ever yet cajoled or bullied into a polling-booth. Newspapers may scold, platforms may shake; whatever circulars can do may be done, all that placards can tell may be told; but the fact remains that one- third of every const.i.tuency in the realm shares Dr. Johnson's 'narcotic indifference,' and stays away.

It is, of course, impossible to reconcile all Johnson's recorded utterances with any one view of anything. When crossed in conversation or goaded by folly he was capable of anything. But his dominant tone about politics was something of this sort. Provided a man lived in a State which guaranteed him private liberty and secured him public order, he was very much of a knave or altogether a fool if he troubled himself further. To go to bed when you wish, to get up when you like, to eat and drink and read what you choose, to say across your port or your tea whatever occurs to you at the moment, and to earn your living as best you may--this is what Dr. Johnson meant by private liberty. Fleet Street open day and night--this is what he meant by public order. Give a sensible man these, and take all the rest the world goes round. Tyranny was a bugbear. Either the tyranny was bearable, or it was not. If it was bearable, it did not matter; and as soon as it became unbearable the mob cut off the tyrant's head, and wise men went home to their dinner. To views of this sort he gave emphatic utterance on the well-known occasion when he gave Sir Adam Ferguson a bit of his mind. Sir Adam had innocently enough observed that the Crown had too much power. Thereupon Johnson:

'Sir, I perceive you are a vile Whig. Why all this childish jealousy of the power of the Crown? The Crown has not power enough. When I say that all governments are alike, I consider that in no government power can be abused long; mankind will not bear it. If a sovereign oppresses his people, they will rise and cut off his head. There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny that will keep us safe under every form of government.'

This is not, and never was, the language of Toryism. It is a much more intellectual 'ism.' It is indifferentism. So, too, in his able pamphlet, _The False Alarm_, which had reference to Wilkes and the Middles.e.x election, though he no doubt attempts to deal with the const.i.tutional aspect of the question, the real strength of his case is to be found in pa.s.sages like the following:

'The grievance which has produced all this tempest of outrage, the oppression in which all other oppressions are included, the invasion which has left us no property, the alarm that suffers no patriot to sleep in quiet, is comprised in a vote of the House of Commons, by which the freeholders of Middles.e.x are deprived of a Briton's birthright--representation in Parliament. They have, indeed, received the usual writ of election; but that writ, alas! was malicious mockery; they were insulted with the form, but denied the reality, for there was one man excepted from their choice. The character of the man, thus fatally excepted, I have no purpose to delineate. Lampoon itself would disdain to speak ill of him of whom no man speaks well.

Every lover of liberty stands doubtful of the fate of posterity, because the chief county in England cannot take its representative from a gaol.'

Temperament was of course at the bottom of this indifference. Johnson was of melancholy humour and profoundly sceptical. Cynical he was not--he loved his fellow-men; his days were full of

'Little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love.'

But he was as difficult to rouse to enthusiasm about humanity as is Mr.

Justice Stephen. He pitied the poor devils, but he did not believe in them. They were neither happy nor wise, and he saw no reason to believe they would ever become either. 'Leave me alone,' he cried to the sultry mob, bawling 'Wilkes and Liberty.' 'I at least am not ashamed to own that I care for neither the one nor the other.'

No man, however, resented more fiercely than Johnson any unnecessary interference with men who were simply going their own way. The Highlanders only knew Gaelic, yet political wiseacres were to be found objecting to their having the Bible in their own tongue. Johnson flew to arms: he wrote one of his monumental letters; the opposition was quelled, and the Gael got his Bible. So too the wicked interference with Irish enterprise, so much in vogue during the last century, infuriated him.

'Sir,' he said to Sir Thomas Robinson, 'you talk the language of a savage. What, sir! would you prevent any people from feeding themselves, if by any honest means they can do so?'

Were Johnson to come to life again, total abstainer as he often was, he would, I expect, denounce the principle involved in 'Local Option.' I am not at all sure he would not borrow a guinea from a bystander and become a subscriber to the 'Property Defence League;' and though it is notorious that he never read any book all through, and never could be got to believe that anybody else ever did, he would, I think, read a larger fraction of Mr. Spencer's pamphlet, '_Man_ versus _the State_,' than of any other 'recent work in circulation.' The state of the Strand, when two vestries are at work upon it, would, I am sure, drive him into open rebellion.

As a letter-writer Johnson has great merits. Let no man despise the epistolary art. It is said to be extinct. I doubt it. Good letters were always scarce. It does not follow that, because our grandmothers wrote long letters, they all wrote good ones, or that n.o.body nowadays writes good letters because most people write bad ones. Johnson wrote letters in two styles. One was monumental--more suggestive of the chisel than the pen. In the other there are traces of the same style, but, like the old Gothic architecture, it has grown domesticated, and become the fit vehicle of plain tidings of joy and sorrow--of affection, wit, and fancy. The letter to Lord Chesterfield is the most celebrated example of the monumental style. From the letters to Mrs. Thrale many good examples of the domesticated style might be selected One must suffice:

'Queeney 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 tell her 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 gipsy it is. She no more minds me than if I were a Branghton. Pray, speak to Queeney to write again. . . . 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 n.o.ble disdain of regularity, like 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.'

But the extract had better end, for there are, (I fear) 'modern understandings who will not perceive the intermediate idea' between Shakspeare and Mrs. Montague, and to whom even the name of Branghton will suggest no meaning.

Johnson's literary fame is, in our judgment, as secure as his character.

Like the stone which he placed over his father's grave at Lichfield, and which, it is shameful to think, has been removed, it is 'too ma.s.sy and strong' to be ever much affected by the wind and weather of our literary atmosphere. 'Never,' so he wrote to Mrs. Thrale, '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. From the author of _Fitzosborne's Letters_ I cannot think myself in much danger. I met him only once, about thirty years ago, and in some small dispute soon reduced him to whistle.' Dr. Johnson is in no danger from anybody. None but Gargantua could blow him out, and he still burns brightly in his socket.

How long this may continue who can say? It is a far cry to 1985. Science may by that time have squeezed out literature, and the author of the _Lives of the Poets_ may be dimly remembered as an odd fellow who lived in the Dark Ages, and had a very creditable fancy for making chemical experiments. On the other hand, the Spiritualists may be in possession, in which case the c.o.c.k Lane Ghost will occupy more of public attention than Boswell's hero, who will, perhaps, be reprobated as the profane utterer of these idle words: 'Suppose I know a man to be so lame that he is absolutely incapable to move himself, and I find him in a different room from that in which I left him, shall I puzzle myself with idle conjectures, that perhaps his nerves have by some unknown change all at once become effective? No, sir, it is clear how he got into a different room--he was _carried_.'