THE PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA - LEXICOGRAPHER (DICTIONARY) - DR. JOHNSON
THE PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA –
LEXICOGRAPHER (DICTIONARY) - DR. JOHNSON
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often referred to as
Dr. Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English
literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor
and lexicographer.
Lexicographer, “a writer of dictionaries”, Dr. Johnson was popularly known as
Dictionary Johnson. Johnson’s work - A Dictionary of the English Language,
the book took nearly a decade to complete.
In
its choice of authors and of illustrative selections, the Dictionary
is a personal work. These give the whole the aspect of both an encyclopedia and
a conduct book.
Johnson is more complex
than he is often taken to be. His wide range of interests included science and
manufacturing processes, and his knowledge seemed encyclopedic.
He was known for his
essay collections, biographies and a comprehensive dictionary as well as the
fable adaptation The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia.
Rasselas
Johnson’s essays included
numerous short fictions, but his only long fiction is Rasselas
(originally published as The Prince of Abissinia: A Tale), which he
wrote in 1759, during the evenings of a single week, in order to be able to pay
for the funeral of his mother. This “Oriental tale,” a popular form at the
time, explores and exposes the futility of the pursuit of happiness, a theme
that links it to The Vanity of Human Wishes. Prince Rasselas, weary of life in
the Happy Valley, where ironically all are dissatisfied, escapes with his
sister and the widely traveled poet Imlac to experience the world and make a
thoughtful “choice of life.” Yet their journey is filled with disappointment
and disillusionment. They examine the lives of men in a wide range of
occupations and modes of life in both urban and rural settings—rulers and
shepherds, philosophers, scholars, an astronomer, and a hermit. They discover
that all occupations fail to bring satisfaction. Rulers are deposed. The
shepherds exist in grubby ignorance, not pastoral ease. The Stoic’s philosophy
proves hollow when he experiences personal loss. The hermit, miserable in his
solitude, leaves his cell for Cairo. In his “conclusion in which nothing is
concluded,” Johnson satirizes the wish-fulfilling daydreams in which all
indulge. His major characters resolve to substitute the “choice of eternity”
for the “choice of life,” and to return to Abyssinia (but not the Happy Valley)
on their circular journey.
Next only
to William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson is
perhaps the most quoted of English writers.
“Marriage has many
pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.” - A famous quote by Dr. Johnson.
The ever witty Samuel Johnson was an essayist and
literary historian who was a prominent figure in 18th century England. Born on September 18, 1709, in Lichfield,
Staffordshire, England, Samuel Johnson had to overcome tremendous obstacles to
achieve such acclaim. Johnson was born
into strained circumstances, and was plagued by health problems from the
start of his life. As recounted in the biography written by his friend James
Boswell, Johnson once stated, "I was born almost dead and could not cry
for some time.
As a baby, Johnson suffered from scrofula, a form
of tuberculosis that he had contracted in his lymph nodes. His hearing and
vision were impaired, and Johnson displayed an array of physical and verbal
tics throughout his life (modern-day physicians believe that he may have had
Tourette's syndrome, but the disorder was unknown during Johnson's day).
Johnson also suffered from fits of depression.
The son of a bookseller, Johnson was an excellent
student who was particularly good at Latin. He attended Pembroke College at
Oxford in 1728. However, money problems forced him to leave school the next
year. Johnson then tried to find work as a teacher, but had no luck finding a
suitable long-term position.
Though he continued to look for teaching work, Johnson—who
had relocated to Birmingham—also began to work as a writer. During this
difficult period, Johnson married Elizabeth Porter, a widow, in 1735. With
money she brought to the marriage, Johnson was able to found his own school.
Unfortunately, the venture proved to be a flop.
In 1737, Johnson moved to London. There, he would
continue to work as a hack writer for years, churning out articles—in varying
degrees of quality—in an effort to earn money. He began contributing to The
Gentleman's Magazine in 1738. That same year, he anonymously published the
poem "London," a well-received political satire.
In 1746, Johnson agreed to tackle one of the
major projects of his career: A Dictionary of the English Language.
The book took nearly a decade to complete. While still working on the project,
Johnson received some notice for the Rambler, a twice-weekly
publication that came out between 1750 and 1752. Johnson's wife told him of her
admiration for his Rambler essays before her death in 1752.
Johnson's dictionary was published in 1755,
bringing him greater acclaim, but little financial reward. Johnson continued
writing, with later works that include the philosophical tale The History
of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759) and a collection of essays for The
Idler. In 1762, he received a pension from the English government, which
eased his ongoing economic woes. The next year, Johnson befriended Boswell, his
future biographer.
Johnson fulfilled an overdue contract and
published his own collection of William Shakespeare's plays in 1765. Beginning
in the late 1770s, Johnson began work on a series of critical examinations of poets. These analytical and biographical sketches were
published in several volumes and are usually known as The Lives of the
Poets.
Dr. Johnson
In 1765 Johnson received
an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Trinity College, Dublin, and 10 years
later he was awarded the Doctor of Civil Laws from the University of Oxford. He
never referred to himself as Dr. Johnson, though a number of his contemporaries
did, and Boswell’s consistent use of the title in The Life of Samuel
Johnson, LL.D. made it popular. The completion of the Shakespeare edition
left Johnson free to write by choice, and one such choice was his secret
collaboration with Robert Chambers, professor of English law at the University
of Oxford from 1766 to 1773. While it is difficult to determine just how much
of Chambers’ lectures Johnson may have written, his help was clearly
substantial, and the skilled editor was valued by the dilatory professor.
Johnson’s bust in London Johnson’s House
At the age of 75, Johnson died on December 13,
1784, in London, England. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Boswell's famous biography, published in 1791,
provided a lasting tribute to Johnson's life and work.
Samuel Johnson was the son of Michael Johnson, a
bookseller, and his wife, Sarah. From childhood he suffered from a number of
physical afflictions. By his own account, he was born “almost dead,” and he
early contracted scrofula
(tuberculosis of
the lymphatic glands). Because of a popular belief that the sovereign’s touch
was able to cure scrofula, he was taken to London at the age of 30 months and
touched by the queen, whose gold “touch piece” he kept about him for the rest
of his life. This was succeeded by various medical treatments that left him
with disfiguring scars on his face and neck. He was nearly blind in his left
eye and suffered from highly noticeable tics that may have been indications of Tourette syndrome.
Until he began to speak, new acquaintances sometimes took him for an idiot, as
did the artist William
Hogarth, who came to admire him greatly. Despite his many physical
afflictions, Johnson was strong, vigorous, and, after a fashion, athletic. He
liked to ride, walk, and swim, even in later life. He was tall and became huge.
A few accounts bear witness to his physical strength—as well as his
character—such as his hurling an insolent theatergoer together with his seat
from the stage into the pit or his holding off would-be robbers until the
arrival of the watch.
From his earliest years
Johnson was recognized not only for his remarkable intelligence but also for
his pride and indolence. In 1717 he entered grammar school in Lichfield. The
master of the school, John Hunter, was a learned though brutal man who “never
taught a boy in his life—he whipped and they learned.” This regime instilled
such terror in the young boy that, even
years later the resemblance of the poet Anna Seward to her
grandfather Hunter caused him to tremble. At school he made two lifelong
friends: Edmund Hector, later a surgeon, and John Taylor, future prebendary of Westminster
and justice of the peace for Ashbourne. In 1726 Johnson visited his cousin, the
urbane Reverend Cornelius Ford in Stourbridge, Worcestershire,
who may have provided a model for him, though it was Ford’s conviviality and
scholarship rather than his dissipation (he is thought to be one of those
depicted carousing in Hogarth’s A Midnight Modern Conversation [1733])
that attracted Johnson.
In 1728 Johnson entered
Pembroke College, Oxford.
He stayed only 13 months, until December 1729, because he lacked the funds to
continue. Yet it proved an important year. While an undergraduate, Johnson, who
claimed to have been irreligious in adolescence, read a new book, William Law’s
A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, which led him to make
concern for his soul the polestar of his life. Despite the poverty and pride that
caused him to leave, he retained great affection for Oxford. He would later say
with reference to the poets of his college, “We were a nest of singing birds.”
In 1731, the year of his father’s death, his first publication, a translation
of Pope’s
“Messiah” into Latin, appeared in A Miscellany of Poems, along with
the poetry of other Oxford
students. Pope was the leading poet of the age, and throughout most of his
lifetime Johnson would comment on Pope’s achievement in various writings.
In the following year
Johnson became undermaster at Market Bosworth grammar school, a position made
untenable by the overbearing and boorish Sir Wolstan Dixie, who controlled
appointments. With only £20 inheritance from his father, Johnson left his
position with the feeling that he was escaping prison. After failing in his
quest for another teaching position, he joined his friend Hector in Birmingham.
In 1732 or 1733 he published some essays in The Birmingham Journal, none
of which have survived. Dictating to Hector, he translated into English Joachim
Le Grand’s translation of the Portuguese Jesuit Jerome Lobo’s A Voyage to Abyssinia, an account of a Jesuit
missionary expedition. Published in 1735, this work shows signs of the mature
Johnson, such as his praise of Lobo, in the preface, for not attempting to
present marvels: “He meets with no basilisks that destroy with their eyes, his
crocodiles devour their prey without tears, and his cataracts fall from the rock
without deafening the neighboring inhabitants.”
In 1735 Johnson married
Elizabeth Porter, a widow 20 years his senior. Convinced that his parents’
marital unhappiness was caused by his mother’s want of learning, he would not
follow their example, choosing instead a woman whom he found both attractive
and intelligent. His wife’s marriage settlement enabled him to open a school in
Edial, near Lichfield, the following year. One of his students, David
Garrick, would become the greatest English actor of the age and a lifelong
friend, though their friendship was not without its strains. It was with
Garrick that some of the unflattering accounts of Johnson’s wife originated,
and his mimicry of the couple later became a favorite comic set-piece of his.
While at Edial, Johnson began his historical tragedy Irene, which
dramatizes the love of Sultan Mahomet (Mehmed II)
for the lovely Irene, a Christian slave captured in Constantinople. The school
soon proved a failure, and he and Garrick left for London in 1737.
The Gentleman’s Magazine and early publications
In 1738 Johnson began his
long association with The
Gentleman’s Magazine, often considered the first modern magazine. He
soon contributed poetry and
then prose, including panegyrics on Edward Cave, the magazine’s proprietor, and
another contributor, the learned Elizabeth Carter. Johnson intended to
translate the Venetian Paolo Sarpi’s The
History of the Council of Trent but was forestalled by the coincidence of
another Johnson at work on the same project. However, his biography
of Sarpi, designed as a preface to that work, appeared in The
Gentleman’s Magazine, as did a number of his early biographies of
European scholars, physicians, and British admirals.
In 1738 and 1739 he
published a series of satiric works that attacked the government of Sir
Robert Walpole and even the Hanoverian monarchy: London (his first
major poem), Marmor Norfolciense, and A Complete Vindication of
the Licensers of the Stage. London
is an “imitation” of the Roman satirist Juvenal’s third satire.
(A loose translation, an imitation applies the manner and topics of an earlier
poet to contemporary conditions.) Thales, the poem’s main speaker, bears some
resemblance to the poet Richard
Savage, of whom Johnson knew and with whom he may have become friendly at
this time. Before he leaves the corrupt metropolis for Wales, Thales rails
against the pervasive deterioration of London (and English) life, evident in
such ills as masquerades, atheism,
the excise tax, and the ability of foreign nations to offend against “English
honor” with impunity. The most famous line in the poem (and the only one in
capitals) is: “SLOW RISES WORTH, BY POVERTY DEPRESSED,” which may be taken as
Johnson’s motto at this time. When the poem appeared anonymously in 1738, Pope
was led to predict that its author would be “déterré” (unearthed).
Pope undoubtedly approved of Johnson’s politics along with admiring his poetry
and tried unsuccessfully to arrange patronage for him. Marmor
Norfolciense satirizes Walpole and the house of Hanover. A Complete Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage
is an ironic defense of the government’s Stage Licensing Act of 1737 requiring
the lord chamberlain’s approval of all new plays, which in 1739 led to the
prohibition of Henry
Brooke’s play Gustavus Vasa attacking the English monarch and his
prime minister by Swedish analogy. The latter two works show the literary
influence of the Irish writer Jonathan Swift.
Johnson at this time
clearly supported the governmental opposition, which was composed of
disaffected Whigs,
Tories, Jacobites
(those who continued their allegiance to the Stuart line of James
II), and Nonjurors (those who refused to take either the oath of allegiance
to the Hanover kings or the oath of abjuration of James II and the Stuarts).
Despite claims to the contrary, Johnson was neither a Jacobite
nor a Nonjuror. His Toryism, which he sometimes expressed for shock value, was
based upon his conviction that the Tories could be counted upon to support the
Church of England as a state institution. When Johnson attacked Whiggism or
defended Toryism (an ideology for him more than a practical politics,
especially since Tories remained a minority throughout most of his lifetime),
he always took an outsider’s position. Later in life he expressed a high regard
for Walpole.
In 1739 Johnson published
a translation and annotation of the Swiss philosopher Jean-Pierre
de Crousaz’s Commentary on Pope’s philosophical poem An Essay
on Man. Although he was able to show that many of Crousaz’s critical
observations rested on a faulty French translation, Johnson often agreed with
his judgment that some of Pope’s philosophical and social ideas are marred by
complacency. About this time Johnson tried again to obtain a position as a
schoolteacher. His translations and magazine writings barely supported him; a
letter to Cave is signed “impransus,” signifying that he had gone without
dinner. Despite his claim that “no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for
money,” he never made a hard bargain with a bookseller and often received
relatively little payment, even for large projects. He also contradicted his
assertion frequently by contributing prefaces and dedications to the books of
friends without payment.
From 1741 to 1744
Johnson’s most substantial contribution to The Gentleman’s Magazine was
a series of speeches purporting to represent the actual debates in the House of
Commons. This undertaking was not without risk because reporting the
proceedings of Parliament, which had long been prohibited, was actually
punished since the spring of 1738. The series was dubbed “Debates
in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia,” and this Swiftian expedient gives the
speeches satiric overtones. Their status was complicated by the fact that
Johnson, who had visited the House of Commons only once, wrote the debates on
the basis of scant information about the speakers’ positions. Hence they were
political fictions, though paradoxically they appeared to be fact masquerading
as fiction.
Johnson later had misgivings about his role in writing speeches that were
taken as authentic and may have stopped writing them for this reason. While Johnson’s
claim that he “took care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it” has
become notorious, Johnson’s Walpole defends himself skillfully, and many of the
debates seem evenhanded.
In the early 1740s Johnson
continued his strenuous work for The Gentleman’s Magazine; collaborated
with William Oldys, antiquary and editor, on a catalog of the great Harleian
Library; helped Dr. Robert James, his Lichfield schoolfellow, with A
Medicinal Dictionary; and issued proposals for an edition of Shakespeare.
His Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth (1745),
intended as a preliminary sample of his work, was his first significant
Shakespeare criticism. In 1746 he wrote The Plan of a Dictionary of the
English Language and signed a contract for A
Dictionary of the English Language. His major publication of this
period was An Account of the Life of Mr. Richard
Savage, Son of the Earl Rivers (1744). If, as Johnson claimed,
the best biographies were written by those who had eaten and drunk and “lived
in social intercourse” with their subjects, this was the most likely of his
many biographies to succeed. The Life was widely admired by, among
others, the painter Joshua Reynolds,
and it was reviewed in translation by the French philosopher Denis Diderot.
Although Johnson had few illusions about his self-publicizing friend’s conduct
and character, he nonetheless became his defender to a significant extent.
Johnson’s title supports Savage’s
claim to be the natural son of a nobleman—a claim of which others have been
highly skeptical—but his biography, in its mixture of pathos and satire, at
once commemorates and criticizes Savage. Johnson thought that Savage’s poverty
cost society a great deal:
On a bulk, in a cellar, or in a glasshouse among
thieves and beggars, was to be found the author of The Wanderer,…the
man whose remarks on life might have assisted the statesman, whose ideas of
virtue might have enlightened the moralist, whose eloquence might have
influenced senates, and whose delicacy might have polished courts.
Yet the conclusion leaves
no doubt about Johnson’s ultimate judgment: “negligence and irregularity, long
continued, will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius
contemptible.” If Johnson served as defense attorney throughout much of the
biography, no prosecutor could have summed up the case against Savage more
devastatingly.
The Vanity of Human Wishes
In 1749 Johnson published The
Vanity of Human Wishes, his most impressive poem as well as the first
work published with his name. It is a panoramic survey of the futility of human
pursuit of greatness and happiness. Like London, the poem is an
imitation of one of Juvenal’s
satires, but it emphasizes the moral over the social and political themes of
Juvenal. Some of the definitions Johnson later entered under “vanity” in his Dictionary
suggest the range of meaning of his title, including “emptiness,” “uncertainty,”
“fruitless desire, fruitless endeavor,” “empty pleasure; vain pursuit; idle
show; unsubstantial enjoyment; petty object of pride,” and “arrogance.” He
portrays historical figures, mainly from England and continental Europe (Thomas
Cardinal Wolsey, Charles
XII of Sweden, the Persian king Xerxes I), alternating
them with human types (the traveler, the rich man, the beauty, the scholar),
often in juxtaposition with their opposites, to show that all are subject to
the same disappointment of their desires. The Vanity of Human Wishes is
imbued with the Old
Testament message of Ecclesiastes
that “all is vanity” and replaces Juvenal’s Stoic virtues with the
Christian virtue of “patience.” The poem surpasses any of Johnson’s other poems
in its richness of imagery and powerful conciseness.
The theatre
Johnson’s connections to
the theatre in these
years included writing several prologues,
one for Garrick’s farce Lethe in 1740 and one for the opening of the
Drury Lane theatre. Garrick, now its manager, returned the favours. Early in
1749 Johnson’s play Irene was at last performed.
Thanks to Garrick’s production, which included expensive costumes, an excellent
cast (including Garrick himself), and highly popular afterpieces for the last
three performances, the tragedy ran a respectable nine nights. The audience
objected to seeing the apostate Greek Christian Irene strangled by Sultan
Mahomet—an innovation of Garrick’s—and the murder was performed offstage
thereafter. Irene is Johnson’s least-appealing major work, and he is
reported to have said when hearing someone read it aloud, “I thought it had
been better.”
From The Rambler to The Adventurer
With The Rambler
(1750–52), a twice-weekly periodical, Johnson entered upon the most successful
decade of his career. He wrote over 200 numbers, and stories abound of his
finishing an essay while the
printer’s boy waited at the door; in his last essay he confessed to “the
anxious employment of a periodical writer.” The essays cover a wide range of
subjects. A large number of them appropriately stress daily realities; others
are devoted to literature,
including criticism and the theme of authorship (particularly the early ones,
driven by the writer’s consciousness of his own undertaking) and to literary
forms, such as the novel and biography, that had not received much examination.
Whatever their topic, Johnson intended his essays to “inculcate wisdom or
piety” in conformity with Christianity. In tone these essays are far more
serious than those of his most important predecessor, Joseph Addison,
published in The Spectator (1711–12; 1714). Johnson himself ranked them
highly among his achievements, commenting “My other works are wine and water;
but my Rambler is pure wine.” Although The Rambler may
have sold only 500 copies an issue on its first appearance—in his last number
he claimed he had “never been much a favorite of the public”—it was widely
reprinted in provincial newspapers and sold well in later editions.
Johnson’s Rambler
series also was admired by his wife Elizabeth, who praised its author by
saying, “I thought very well of you before this; but I did not imagine you
could have written anything equal to this.” She died on March 17, 1752, just
three days after the publication of its last number. In her later years “Tetty”
frequently lived away from him in Hampstead. Signs of marital tensions may be
glimpsed in surviving letters and in Johnson’s prayers, which were published
after his death. He wrote a sermon for her funeral that praises her submissive
piety—her “exact and regular” devotions—as well as her charitable disposition.
A diary entry suggests
that a year after Elizabeth’s death Johnson was seeking a new wife “without any
derogation from dear Tetty’s memory.” The one he most probably had in mind was
the pious Hill Boothby, to whom he wrote with some frequency in the years
immediately following this resolve. Three dozen of her letters to him, rarely
quoted by biographers, are in print. The relationship, however, came to an end
with her death in 1756.
During the course of one
year starting in March 1753, Johnson contributed 29 essays to his friend John Hawkesworth’s
periodical The Adventurer, written in imitation of The Rambler.
Johnson purposely (and ineffectively) lightened his style in order to hide his
authorship. He wanted his essays unrecognized, for he had given them to Dr.
Richard Bathurst, the friend whom he said he loved more than any other, to sell
as his own, but he confessed his part to the persistent Hill Boothby.
The Dictionary
A
Dictionary of the English Language was published in two volumes in
1755, six years later than planned but remarkably quickly for so extensive an
undertaking. The degree of master of arts, conferred on him by the University
of Oxford for his Rambler essays and the Dictionary, was
proudly noted on the title page. Johnson henceforth would be known in familiar
18th-century style as “Dictionary Johnson” or “The Rambler.” There had been
earlier English dictionaries, but none on the scale of Johnson’s. In addition
to giving etymologies, not the strong point of Johnson and his contemporaries,
and definitions, in which he excelled, Johnson illustrated usage with
quotations drawn almost entirely from writing from the Elizabethan period to
his own time, though few living authors were quoted (the novelists Samuel Richardson
and Charlotte
Lennox, Garrick, Reynolds, and Johnson himself among them). His preface
boldly asserts that the “chief glory of every people arises from its authors,”
and his book (the phrase he always used for it) was his own claim to be ranked
among them. He was pleased that what took the French Academy 40 years to
perform for their language
was accomplished by one Englishman in 9 years. It may have been his desire to
fix the language by his work, yet he realized that languages do not follow
prescription but are continually changing. Johnson did not work systematically
from a word list but marked up the books he read for copying. Thus it is no
surprise that some earlier dictionaries contain more words and that Johnson’s has
striking omissions (“literary” for one). Yet his definitions were a great
improvement over those of his predecessors, and his illustrations from writers
since the Elizabethan Age form an anthology and established a canon. Because he
insisted not only on correct usage but also on morality and piety, the
illustrations of words often come from sermons and conduct books as well as
from a range of literature. The skeptical philosopher Thomas Hobbes and
the writer Bernard
de Mandeville, who praised the public benefits of brothels, were excluded
on moral grounds, and in the Plan for the Dictionary Johnson
explains that the inclusion of a writer could be taken as an invitation to read
his work.
Johnson had been persuaded
to address his Plan to the earl
of Chesterfield as his patron, but his appeal had been met with years of
neglect. Johnson’s defensive pride was awakened when the nobleman, learning of
the impending publication of the Dictionary, praised it in two essays
in The World, a weekly paper of entertainment. His
letter to Chesterfield is often taken as sounding “the death-knell of
patronage,” which it did not. But it did assert the dignity of the author.
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 labors, 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.
The Dictionary
defines “patron” as “one who countenances, supports, or protects - Commonly a
wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.”
In its choice of authors
and of illustrative selections, the Dictionary is a personal work.
These give the whole the aspect of both an encyclopedia and a conduct book.
Even though Johnson defined “lexicographer” as “a writer of dictionaries; a
harmless drudge,” the drudgery of the Dictionary fell into the decade
of Johnson’s most important writing and must be seen in part as enabling it.
The payment for the Dictionary amounted to relatively little after
deductions were made for his six amanuenses and his own expenses. He left his
house in Gough Square (now the most famous of Johnson museums) for smaller
lodgings in 1759, ending the major decade of his literary activity famous and
poor.
The Literary Magazine
From 1756 onward Johnson
wrote harsh criticism and satire of England’s policy in the Seven Years’ War
(1756–63) fought against France (and others) in North America, Europe, and
India. This work appeared initially in a new journal he was editing, The
Literary Magazine, where he also published his biography of the Prussian
king, Frederick
II (the Great). He also contributed important book reviews when reviewing
was still in its infancy. His bitingly sardonic dissection of a dilettantish
and complacent study of the nature of evil and of human suffering, A Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil,
by the theological writer Soame Jenyns, may
well be the best review in English during the 18th century:
This author and Pope perhaps never saw the
miseries which they imagine thus easy to be borne. The poor indeed are
insensible of many little vexations which sometimes embitter the possessions
and pollute the enjoyments of the rich. They are not pained by casual
incivility, or mortified by the mutilation of a compliment; but this happiness
is like that of a malefactor who ceases to feel the cords that bind him when
the pincers are tearing his flesh.
The Idler
Johnson’s busiest decade
was concluded with yet another series of essays, called The Idler.
Lighter in tone and style than those of The Rambler, its 104 essays
appeared from 1758 to 1760 in a weekly newspaper, The
Universal Chronicle. While not admired as greatly as The Rambler,
Johnson’s last essay series contained many impressive numbers, such as No. 84,
in which he praised autobiography over biography and drew his self-portrait as
“Mr. Sober,” a consummate idler. The original No. 22, his account of an old
vulture explaining to her offspring man’s propensities as a killer and
concluding that man more than any other animal is “a friend to vultures,” was
considered too strong to be included in the collected editions.
Johnson never again had to
write in order to raise funds. In 1762 he was awarded a pension of £300 a year,
“not,” as Lord Bute, the prime minister, told him, “given you for anything you
are to do, but for what you have done.” This in all likelihood meant not only
his literary accomplishments but also his opposition to the Seven Years’ War,
which the new king, George
III, and his prime minister had also opposed. Although in his Dictionary
Johnson had added to his definition of “pension,” “In England it is generally
understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country,”
he believed that he could accept his with a clear conscience.
In 1763 Johnson met the
22-year-old James Boswell,
who would go on to make him the subject of the best-known and most highly
regarded biography in English. The first meeting with this libertine son of a
Scottish laird and judge was not auspicious, but Johnson quickly came to
appreciate the ingratiating and impulsive young man. Boswell kept detailed
journals, published only in the 20th century, which provided the basis for his
biography of Johnson and also form his own autobiography.
Johnson participated
actively in clubs. In 1764 he and his close friend Sir Joshua Reynolds
founded The
Club (later known as The Literary Club), which became famous for the
distinction of its members. The original nine members included the politician Edmund
Burke, the playwright Oliver
Goldsmith, and Sir
John Hawkins, the historian of music whom Johnson was to call “unclubable.”
Boswell, whose 1768 account of the Corsican struggle against Genoese rule and
its revolutionary leader, General Pasquale Paoli,
earned him a reputation throughout Europe, was admitted in 1773. Other members
elected later included Garrick, the historian Edward Gibbon,
the dramatist Richard
Brinsley Sheridan, the economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith, and the
Orientalist Sir William
Jones. In 1749 Johnson had been one of 10 members of the Ivy Lane Club, and
the year before his death he founded The Essex Head Club. These clubs, at which
he often “talked for victory,” provided the conversation and society he desired
and kept him from the loneliness and insomnia that he faced at home.
This is not to say that
his house was empty after the death of his wife. He had living with him at
various times Anna Williams, a blind poet; Elizabeth Desmoulins, the daughter
of his godfather Dr. Samuel Swynfen, and her daughter; Poll Carmichael,
probably a former prostitute; “Dr.” Robert Levett, a medical practitioner among
the poor; Francis Barber, Johnson’s black servant, whom he treated in many ways
like a son and made his heir; and Barber’s wife Betsy. They were at once
recipients of Johnson’s charity and providers of company, but the relationship
among them was not always amicable. In a letter of 1778 Johnson says, “We have
tolerable concord at home, but no love. Williams hates everybody; Levett hates
Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll loves
none of them.”
In 1765 Johnson
established a friendship that soon enabled him to call another place “home.”
Henry Thrale, a wealthy brewer and member of Parliament for Southwark, and his
lively and intelligent wife, Hester,
opened their country house at Streatham to him and invited him on trips to
Wales and, in 1775, to France, his only tour outside Great Britain. Their
friendship and hospitality gave the 56-year-old Johnson a new interest in life.
Following her husband’s death in 1781 and her marriage to her children’s music
master, Gabriel Piozzi, Hester Thrale’s and Johnson’s close friendship came to
an end. His letters to Mrs. Thrale, remarkable for their range and intimacy,
helped make him one of the great English letter writers.
The pension Johnson had
received in 1762 had freed him from the necessity of writing for a living, but
it had not released him from his obligation to complete the Shakespeare
edition, for which he had taken money from subscribers. His long delay in
bringing that project to fruition provoked some satiric notice from the poet Charles Churchill:
He for subscribers baits his hook,
And takes their cash—but where’s the book?
The edition finally
appeared in eight volumes in 1765. Johnson edited and annotated the text and
wrote a preface, which is his greatest work of literary criticism.
As editor and annotator he sought to establish the text, freed from later corruptions,
and to explain diction that by then had become obsolete and obscure. Johnson’s
approach was to immerse himself in the books Shakespeare had read—his extensive
reading for his Dictionary eased this task—and to examine the early
editions as well as those of his 18th-century predecessors. His annotations are
often shrewd, though his admiration reveals at times different concerns from
those of some of his contemporaries and of later scholars.
In his “Preface” Johnson
addressed several critical issues. For one, he vigorously defends Shakespeare
against charges of failing to adhere to the Neoclassical doctrine of the
dramatic unities
of time, place, and action. Johnson alertly observes that time and place are
subservient to the mind: since the audience does not confound stage action with
reality, it has no trouble with a shift in scene from Rome to Alexandria. Some
critics had made similar points before, but Johnson’s defense was decisive. He
also questions the need for purity of dramatic genre. In defending
Shakespearian tragicomedy against detractors, he asserts that “there is always
an appeal open from criticism to nature.” Echoing Hamlet,
Johnson claims that Shakespeare merits praise, above all, as “the poet of
nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and
of life.” He goes on to say that “in the writings of other poets a character is
too often an individual: in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species” and
that “Shakespeare has no heroes; his scenes are occupied only by men.” These
comments inveigh against the rigid notions of decorum upheld by critics, such
as Voltaire, who
would not allow kings to be drunkards or senators to be buffoons. Johnson’s
concern for “general nature” means that he is not much interested in accidental
traits of a character, such as the “Romanness” of Julius
Caesar or Brutus, but in traits that are common to all humanity.
Political pamphlets
In the early 1770s Johnson
wrote a series of political pamphlets supporting positions favorable to the
government but in keeping with his own views. These have often appeared
reactionary to posterity but are worth considering on their own terms. The False Alarm (1770) supported the resolution of
the House of Commons not to readmit one of its members, the scandalous John Wilkes, who
had been found guilty of libel. The pamphlet ridiculed those
who thought the case precipitated a constitutional crisis. Thoughts
on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland’s Islands (1771) argued
against a war with Spain over who should become “the undisputed lords of
tempest-beaten barrenness.” This pamphlet, his most-admired and least-attacked,
disputes the “feudal gabble” of the earl of Chatham and the complaints of the
pseudonymous political controversialist who wrote the “Junius” letters.
The
Patriot (1774) was designed to influence an upcoming election. Johnson had
become disillusioned in the 1740s with those members of the political
opposition who attacked the government on “patriotic” grounds only to behave
similarly once in power. This essay examines expressions of false patriotism
and includes in that category justifications of “the ridiculous claims of
American usurpation,” the subject of his longest tract, Taxation
No Tyranny (1775). The title summarizes his position opposing the American
Continental Congress, which in 1774 had passed resolutions against taxation by
England, perceived as oppression, especially since the colonies had no
representation in Parliament. Johnson argues that the colonists had not been
denied representation but rather had willingly left the country where they had
votes, that England had expended vast sums on the colonies, and that they were
rightly required to support the home country. The tract became notorious in the
colonies, contributing considerably to the caricature of Johnson the arch-Tory.
Yet this view is too simplistic. His rhetorical question to the colonists “How
is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negroes?”
can be traced in large part to a principled and consistent stance against
colonial oppression.
Journey to the Hebrides
In 1773 Johnson set forth
on a journey to the Hebrides. Given his age, ailments, and purported opinion of
the Scots, Johnson may have seemed a highly unlikely traveler to this distant
region, but in the opening pages of his A
Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) he confessed to a
long-standing desire to make the trip and the inducement of having Boswell as
his companion. He was propelled by a curiosity to see strange places and study
modes of life unfamiliar to him. His book, a superb contribution to
18th-century travel literature,
combines historical information with what would now be considered sociological
and anthropological observations about the lives of common people. (Boswell’s
complementary narrative of their journey, The
Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with its rich store of Johnson’s
conversation, was published only in 1785, the year after Johnson’s death.)
The Lives of the Poets
Johnson’s last great work,
Prefaces,
Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets
(conventionally known as The Lives of
the Poets), was conceived modestly as short prefatory notices to an
edition of English poetry. When Johnson was approached by some London
booksellers in 1777 to write what he thought of as “little Lives, and little
Prefaces, to a little edition of the English Poets,” he readily agreed. He
loved anecdote and “the biographical part” of literature best of all. The
project, however, expanded in scope; Johnson’s prefaces alone filled the first
10 volumes (1779–81), and the poetry grew to 56 volumes. Johnson was angered by
the appearance of his name on the spines, because he had neither “recommended”
nor “revised” these poets, except for adding Isaac Watts, Sir Richard
Blackmore, John Pomfret, Thomas Yalden, and James
Thomson to the list.
The lives are ordered
chronologically by date of death, not birth, and range in length from a few
pages to an entire volume. Among the major lives are those of Abraham Cowley, John Milton, John Dryden, Joseph Addison,
and Alexander
Pope; some of the minor ones, such as those of William Collins
and William Shenstone, are striking. Johnson’s personal dislike of some of the
poets whose lives he wrote, such as John Milton and Thomas
Gray, has been used as a basis for arguing that he was prejudiced against
their poetry, but too much has been made of this. His opinions of a poet and
his work diverge at times as, for example, in the case of Collins. Johnson
liked the man but disapproved of his poetic manner: “he puts his words out of
the common order, seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that
not to write prose is certainly to write poetry.” He was justly proud of The
Life of Cowley, especially of its lengthy discussion of the 17th-century
Metaphysical poets, of whom Cowley may be considered the last representative.
The
Life of Pope is at once the longest and best. Pope’s life and career were
fresh enough and public enough to provide ample biographical material. Johnson
found Pope’s poetry highly congenial. His moving, unsentimental account of
Pope’s life is sensitive to his physical sufferings and yet unwilling to accept
them as an excuse. His riposte to Pope’s detractors, such as the poet Joseph Warton, is
vigorous and memorable: “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?” Yet in his
masterly comparison of Pope and Dryden he acknowledges Dryden as the greater
poet.
Johnson divided his biographies
into three distinct parts: a narrative of the poet’s life, a presentation of
his character (summarized traits), and a critical assessment of his main poems.
He adopted this method not because he failed to perceive relationships between
a poet’s life and his works but because he did not think that a good poet was
necessarily a good man. His method allowed him to make use of his recognition
that “a manifest and striking contrariety between the life of an author and his
writings” can exist and to assign different purposes to his analysis of his
subjects’ lives and their poetry. Johnson expressed a hope that the
biographical parts of his lives were composed “in such a manner, as may tend to
the promotion of Piety,” and his moral intent is borne out in his readiness to
chastise failings and to commend virtue. Johnson responded most favorably to
the works of poets from Dryden to Pope and was skeptical of those produced in
his own generation, including the poetry of Gray, Collins, and Shenstone,
though he admired Gray’s An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard.
Throughout much of his
adult life Johnson suffered from physical ailments as well as depression
(“melancholy”). After the loss of two friends, Henry Thrale in 1781 and Robert
Levett in 1782, and the conclusion of The Lives of the Poets, his
health deteriorated. Above all, his chronic bronchitis and
“dropsy” (edema), a
swelling of his legs and feet, caused great discomfort. In 1783 he suffered a stroke. His last
year was made still bleaker by his break with Mrs. Thrale over her remarriage.
He compared himself at one point to those from whom confessions were extorted
by the placement of heavy stones upon their chests. Yet he insisted on
fighting: “I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.” A profoundly devout
Anglican, Johnson was in dread at the prospect of death and judgment, for he
feared damnation. Yet in the winter of 1784, following a day of prayer after
which his edema spontaneously disappeared, he entered into a previously unknown
state of serenity. He accepted this release from illness as a sign that he
might be saved after all and referred to it as a “late conversion.” He died on
December 13 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Achievement and reputation
Johnson is well remembered
for his aphorisms, which contributed to his becoming one of the most frequently
quoted of English writers. Many of these are recorded in Boswell’s The Life
of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., including his famous assertion “Patriotism is
the last refuge of a scoundrel” and his admonition “Clear your mind of cant.”
Others appear in his own writings, including “Marriage has many pains, but
celibacy has no pleasures.” He possessed the gift of contracting “the great
rules of life into short sentences.”
Johnson’s criticism
is, perhaps, the most significant part of his writings. His assessment of
Dryden’s critical works holds good for his own: “the criticism of Dryden is the
criticism of a poet; not a dull collection of theorems, nor a rude detection of
faults, which perhaps the censorer was not able to have committed; but a gay
and vigorous dissertation, where delight is mingled with instruction, and where
the author proves his right of judgment by his power of performance.” Although
some have spoken of Johnson as a “literary dictator,” he rejected the role for
himself and in general spoke against the notion of enforcing precepts. As a
critic and editor, through his Dictionary, his edition of Shakespeare,
and his Lives of the Poets in particular, he helped invent what we now
call “English Literature.”
Religion was central to
Johnson’s understanding of literature and of the moral life generally. His
personal uneasiness about religion seems traceable to an orthodox fear that he
might be among the damned. He saw himself as someone who did not practice what
he preached and lived in dread that he would be, in the words of St. Paul, a
castaway. His watch bore in Greek the biblical text, “The night cometh,” a
reminder of death and work left undone.
Johnson is more complex
than he is often taken to be. His wide range of interests included science and manufacturing
processes, and his knowledge seemed encyclopaedic. Although his late political
tracts in defense of the government are antidemocratic, Johnson combined a high
regard for monarchy with a low opinion of most kings. He frequently expressed
minority or unpopular views, such as his principled stands against slavery, colonialism, and mistreatment
of indigenous peoples. He also urged better treatment of prisoners of war,
prostitutes, and the poor generally, and he once tried to save a convicted
forger from the gallows.
If, as has often been
claimed—largely because of Boswell’s biography—we know Johnson as we know few
other people in history
(or few other characters in literature), we know him primarily as a man who
overcame a host of difficulties to become the leading scholar and writer of his
age. His imposing scope made him what might now be called a public
intellectual. In the 19th century the interest in Johnson centered on his
personality, the subject of Boswell’s biography. In the 20th century his
writings regained their rightful prominence.
Dr. Samuel Johnson or
“Dictionary Johnson” was liked by me mainly for his encyclopedic knowledge in
writing dictionary. Until such time
“GOOGLE” became the mother of all dictionaries and encyclopedia, the most
literary tribute was paid to the work of dictionary by the learned people. I still remember my childhood when a distant
relative gifted me the first English language dictionary and I considered it as
a prized possession. Needless to say, in
today’s world “Google” and “Social Media” revolutionized the life of modern
citizen.
Dr. Johnson was
undoubtedly a great genius and a man of respect who rose to that distinction
under strained circumstances in his lifetime.
His quotes are real pearls of wisdom. JOHNNY'S BLOG take pride in presenting the life and works of Dr. Johnson.
Kudos to one of the most
precious contributors of pre-Victorian Literature.
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