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DR JOHNSON.

Dr Johnson's life may be divided into four parts: (i) 1709—1731, (ii) 1731—1737, (iii) 1737-1762, (iv) 1762—1784.

(i) 1709-1731. He was born at Lichfield (commonly then spelt Litchfield), Sept. 18, 1709, the son of a bookseller and stationer. Both his father and mother seem to have been of superior intelligence and aims. They taught him something themselves, and presently sent him to various schools; then two years were spent at home, his father's book-stock providing him with abundant mental food; then, through the kindness of some friend or relative, he was entered a commoner at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he kept terms for about three years.

(ii) 1731-1737. His career at Oxford, all along made distressing by his extreme poverty, was at last cut short by it. He returned home in great gloom in 1731. Fresh pecuniary troubles came with his father's death. Life, not easy before, now grew terribly hard. For some thirty years he was involved in perpetual straits and difficulties. He was an usher at Market Bosworth in Leicestershire; he essayed journalism and literature at Birmingham; he issued proposals for an edition of Politian from Lichfield; he set up a school, his wife, the widow of a Birmingham "mercer," having brought him some £800. All these ways and means failed dismally.

(iii] 1737-1762. At last, accompanied by David Garrick, one of his very few pupils, at this time as destitute as his master, he set off for London, with three acts of a play (Irene) in his pocket. For some time but little is known of his course in London; but it is certain that he had to endure the bitterest distresses. He bore them nobly, somewhat hardened and roughened externally, no doubt, but still always with a high fortitude and an inward spirit that never forgot to be truly gentle and tender. He slowly fought his way to fame. In 1738 appeared London, which won him the praise of Pope, and first made him generally known. Then he "reported" the House of Commons' debates in such way as was permitted in George II.'s reign, for the Gentleman's Magazine, at that time newly started. The Life of Savage (Savage and he had walked the streets starving together), The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749); The Rambler (March 20, 1750-March 14, 1752); The Dictionary (published in 1755), The Idler, Rasselas (1759), and other works gradually secured for him the foremost literary position of the day. His wife died in 1752, his mother in 1759.

(iv) 1762—1784. His pecuniary troubles, which had by no means ceased with his obscurity, were at last happily ended by the bestowal upon him by the Crown of a well-deserved pension of £300 a year. During this fourth period of his life he was a very literary and social king; no greater ever reigned either in literature or literary society. His private life was replete with benevolences. "His house was filled with dependants, whose perverse tempers frequently drove him out of it, yet nothing of this kind could induce him to relieve himself at their expence. His noble expression was, 'If I dismiss them, who will receive them?"" (Chalmers). His edition of Shakspere, certain political pamphlets, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, The Lives of the Poets now successively appeared. In 1784, Dec. 13th, full of years as of glory, he died at his house in Johnson's Court, Fleet Street. "On the 20th, his body was interred with great solemnity in Westminster Abbey, close to the grave of his friend Garrick. Of the other honours paid to his memory, it may suffice to say that they were more in number and in quality than were ever paid to any man of literature." (Chalmers).

Of Johnson as an author the estimate commonly formed now widely differs from that of his contemporaries. For his style, it abounded in Latinisms both in its vocabulary and in its structure. Perhaps of all English writers he is the least Teutonic, which is as much as to say

X

the least idiomatic. But there is no denying that in his own way he is a great master. If he takes a very low place amongst our idiomatic writers, he deserves very high one amongst the Latinistic. In his own language he can express whatever he wishes to express with the utmost vigour and with consummate nicety. That language was deliberately adopted in his works in preference to a more truly native tongue. He could and did speak-no doubt he thought-in thoroughly idiomatic English; but out of a false taste, as surely it was, he for the most part in his writings translated the vernacular into something utterly different. An author's conversational style always of course differs from the style of his books: but in Johnson's case there were two separate languages. In the present age, when the Teutonism of our national tongue is certainly more and more prevailing to the complete subordination of all secondary influences, "Johnsonese" is liable perhaps to receive less appreciation than it really deserves. Though highly artificial, and balanced and counter-balanced, epithet for epithet, and verb for verb, to a wearisome degree, yet it was certainly a very potent and effective vehicle of thought. As a critic, there are few dicta of Dr Johnson's which later judgments do not modify or reverse. His critical code is conventional and narrow. In this respect he was the spokesman of his time. There is in him but little of what is called spiritual criticism; he knows not art" in that modern sense the Germans have taught the world. He seems scarcely to distinguish between an artistic and a moral purpose; he criticizes always from the moralist's point of view. Of style he is a somewhat severe critic; the value of his remarks must of course depend upon his knowledge of the language; and it may be safely said that his knowledge of the English language was but circumscribed and limited (see the Dictionary, passim). His strong Latinistic predilections somewhat disqualified him for this office of criticism. Yet in him as a critic his natural acuteness and power are perpetually manifested; they are, it may be, perverted, but they are there. As an essayist, the character of his style is highly detrimental. Such a style is indeed incompatible with success in what was called essay-writing in the last century. It cannot relax, or trifle, or toy Johnson as a writer is always in full dress, and full dress of the stiffest and most unrelenting description. Perhaps even the skilfullest trainer could not make an elephant waltz. To use Goldsmith's figure, Johnson cannot but make even little fishes talk like whales. As a dramatist his Irene contains some noble sentiments; so do many of the Ramblers and the Idlers. It is wanting in characterization, in grace, in music, in interest, in humanity. The moral overbears everything else; the persona are but ethical puppets. As a political pamphleteer, Johnson failed even in the estimate of his own prepossessed time. His political views were mostly obstructive or retrograde. He was a Tory, a Jacobite, a fierce opposer of American independence. His poetry is but a small part of his works. He may perhaps be defined as more of a rhetorician than a poet. He can declaim finely, and with power. He might have produced vigorous satires, had not Providence designed him for something better; but verse is not his natural form of expression. 'As a lexicographer, he deserves the gratitude of all English posterity, not for the final excellence of his compilation, but for the splendid beginning it made. Defective as his Dictionary is, however grotesque in etymologies, however chaotic the order of its definitions, yet it made an epoch in its department. By this work Johnson was the greatest benefactor of his native language. Many of the definitions are in themselves admirable; the collection of illustrating quotations is most valuable; there is everywhere strong sense, if not always assisted by competent learning.

After all, Johnson's greatest works are his conversations as so happily preserved by Boswell, his most assiduous and faithful retainer. His wide information, his acuteness, his power of language, his trenchant wit, his noble nature show more clearly and brilliantly in them than in any of his more formal productions. Had he but written more as he talked, he would have filled a greater place in our literature than can now be conceded him; he would still and always come home to many who will never know him in his strange literary disguise. The greatest non-literary service he did his day and all following days was the freeing the profession of literature from the slavery of patronage. He too was in his sphere a Washington, with whatever eyes he regarded that famous leader; he too waged and won a

war of independence; he manfully took his stand upon the dignity of Letters, and made his age and country acknowledge that illustrious power. Authors by profession were no longer forced to be parasites. It is true that the time was rife for this emancipation; so Teutonic Europe was ripe for the Reformation; so the Colonies for the Declaration of Independence ; but we thank and praise Martin Luther and George Washington; therefore must we thank and praise Samuel Johnson.

year.

LONDON.
INTRODUCTION.

London was published in 1738, on the same morning with Pope's Satire named after that It bears evident marks of that period of Johnson's life, in which it was written; see Life, It is pervaded by a bitterness, almost inseparable from his then circumstances. For the style, it belongs to Johnson's earlier manner. He had not yet formed that style which especially characterizes him, though many symptoms of it may be detected.

Satires were the height of the literary fashion about the time Johnson came up to London. The master poets of the two preceding ages had given their best energies-one was still doing so-to that form of composition. A young poet in the reign of George the Second wrote a Satire as naturally as one of the time of James I. wrote a play.

London is a free imitation of Juvenal's Third Satire. This Satire had previously been so treated by Oldham, as well as vigorously translated by Dryden.

[Make a short abstract of this poem. Into how many parts would you divide it? Read the original poem side by side with it.]

59. 2. Thales. Juvenal calls his friend Umbricius. Probably enough Johnson is thinking of Savage. Somewhat in the spirit of Thales here did Savage actually leave London for Wales in 1739, fulfilling then a scheme formed some time previously. As to Savage's "injuries," see Johnson's Life of him. Perhaps the most grievous were those inflicted by himself.

4. I praise the hermit. The Doctor was wiser in 1759, when Prince Rasselas and his sister visit such an one in their search for happiness, "I have indeed lived fifteen years in solitude,' said the hermit, but have no desire that my example should gain any imitators... ... The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout."" (Rasselas, chap. xxi.). See the following note. From the sentiment there mentioned arose a tendency to believe, or at least affect belief, in hermits and hermitages.

5. From vice and London far. A belief in the iniquity of towns and the innocence of country life was one of the besetting delusions of the last century of the time of Rousseau and his fellows. In Rasselas, written and published in 1759, Johnson speaks more wisely.

7. Cambria. The old Roman names for the various countries of Western Europe were much used by poets at this time. According to the poetic creed of the day they were supposed to be more "poetical." Thus England and Wales are superseded by Britannia and Cambria. So Hibernia in 1. 9. See Gray's Bard, Thomson's famous song Rule, Britannia, in his masque of Alfred, &c.

8. St David. David, who succeeded Dubritius (him who crowned and married Arthur; see Tennyson's Coming of Arthur), removed the see from Caerleon to Menapia, which name was presently superseded by his own.

9. Many were doing so at this very time. Smollett arrived in London in 1739, Burke in 1750, Goldsmith in 1756.

woud. From this spelling it seems that would was once in danger of being corrupted by coud, just as coud has actually been corrupted by would; for the 7 in could is probably due to a mistaken assimilation of the proper form to would, where of course the is a root-letter.

10. The barrenness of Scotland and the poverty of its inhabitants were favourite jests with Englishmen of the last century, especially with Dr Johnson.

14. a rabble. "Fielding, in the Covent Garden Journal, has an amusing passage on the power of the fourth estate,' by which he means the mob." See Knight's Pop. Hist. Eng. VII. vi. The offences with which Fielding charges them are pretty much the same as those which distinguish the Roughs of our own day. The Fourth Estate, in his sense of the phrase, is strikingly like what it was, in its ways and in its power.

15. ambush strictly an in-lurking, a hiding in a bush. The a here answers to the French e of embûche. The bush is the French bûche, which is from the Low Latin boscus, less changed in the Ital. imboscare. Comp. boskage (Tennyson's Dream of F.W.), bosky, Boscobel in Shropshire, &c.

18. A female atheist. Pope says of Narcissa (Moral Essays, ii. 65, 66):

"Now Conscience chills her, and now Passion burns,
And Atheism and Religion take their turns."

Young's Love of Fame, Sat. vi., published in 1728:

"Atheists have been but rare; since Nature's birth

Till now, she-atheists ne'er appeared on earth," &c.

[What part of the sentence is dead?]

19. wherry. From the oldest Eng. werian = our weary, meaning something urged on, say some; a corruption of ferry, Dutch veer, Germ. fähr, and so connected with fare, say

others.

wait. See note to Prothal. 135.

20. [What is meant by dissipated here ?]

22. silver flood. See note to Prothal. 11.

23. Elizabeth, afterwards Queen, was born at Greenwich, Sept. 7, 1533.

24. See Sir Roger de Coverley's admiration for her, Spect. 329.

60. 27. main. In King Lear, III. i. 6. main main-land. [Explain the word.]

28. Spain was still at this time a most formidable power in the estimation of England and other countries. We were on the verge of a great war with it. See Anson's Voyages, passim.

29. masquerades. See note to Rape of the Lock, 1. 256.

debauch'd. In King Lear, I. iv. 263, occurs the form debosh'd. The word is of Fr. origin. "Débaucher faire sortir de l'atelier (qui est bauche dans notre vieille langue)." (Brachet.) excise. "Excise duties are said to have had their origin in this country in the reign of Charles I., when a tax was laid upon beer, cider and perry of home production. The act by which these duties were authorised was passed by the Long Parliament in 1643. This act was adopted and enforced under the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, and by statute 12 Charles II. c. 24. The duties of excise were granted to the crown as part of its revenue. For a long time this class of duties was viewed with particular dislike by the people, on account of its inquisitorial interference with industrial pursuits, &c." (Stand. Libr. Cyclop. of Political Knowledge.) See The New Litany in The Cavalier Songs and Ballads of Eng

land:

"From being taken in a disguise,
From believing of the printed lies,
From the Devil and the Excise,
Libera nos, Domine."

Marvel:

"Excise

With hundred rows of teeth, the shark exceeds,
And on all trades like Cassawar she feeds.'

Johnson in his Dict. defines it to be "a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by common judges of property but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid." The came popular feeling appears in Burns' lines The Deil's awa' with the Exciseman. The unpopularity of excise duties had perhaps reached its height some five years before this Satire was published. In the Session of Parliament which commenced in January, 1733, such a storm was raised by the very name of excise as went nigh to shake the monarchy to its foundations. See Knight's Pop. Hist. Eng. VI. iv. See also Kerr's Blackstone's Commentaries, I. 312-315. Ed. 1857, and Knight's London, V. 97–108.

32. [What does sense mean here?]

36. wants lacks, is without, caret not eget. So often in old English, as King Lear, I. i. 282, &c.

devote. Devote often occurs in a participial sense, being in fact but an Englished form of the Lat. part. devotus. At a later time the word was used as a verb, and then there was formed a fresh part. in the common English way, viz. devoted. So with nominate, situate, derogate (King Lear, I. iv. 302.), &c.

38. [Is there anything pleonastic in this line?]

Science. This word had not commonly in the last century the special meaning that
It meant knowledge in the broadest sense; as in Gray's Elegy:

now attaches to it.

"Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth."

He here follows Juvenal pretty closely:

"quando artibus, inquit, honestis

Nullus in urbe locus, nulla emolumenta laborum,

Res hodie minor est here quam fuit, atque eadem cras

Deteret exiguis aliquid," &c.

39. sooths. So bath, where we should now write bathe, as in Milton's Hist. Eng. Cordelia, hearing of King Lear's coming, "appoints one of her most trusty servants....to array him, bath him," &c. The verb soothe is not at all connected with the old subst. sooth, any more than bless is with bliss. It is probably from the Gothic suthjan, to tickle the ears.

40. [What part of the sentence is less?]
41. See Juvenal:

1

"et pedibus me

Porto meis, nullo dextram subeunte bacillo."

48. His foes the low German invaders of the 5th and 6th centuries = the Anglians or English.

51. pensions. In his Dict., published 1755, Johnson's definition of a pension is: "An allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country." And one definition of a pensioner is: "A slave of state hired by stipend to obey his master." It was not till 1780 that in a bill brought in by Burke the principle was asserted that "distress or desert ought to be considered as regulating the future grants of such pensions, and that parliament had a full right to be informed in respect to this exercise of the prerogative in order to ensure and enforce the responsibility of the ministers of the crown." Till that time the distribution of pensions had lain altogether in the hands of the sovereign and his ministers, and no doubt the patronage was often abused. During the ten years of Walpole's administration, into which an enquiry was ordered by the House of Commons, of £150,000 per annum, paid away to secure support for the government, part had gone in the shape of pensions. The law passed in Queen Anne's reign, and ratified in that of George I., that no person having a pension under the Crown during pleasure, or for any term of years, is capable of being elected or sitting in the House of Commons, would seem to have been utterly set at nought, or at least triumphantly evaded. But the royal patronage was not always abused. In 1762 (some twenty-four years after the publication of London) Johnson himself received a well-deserved pension.

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