Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson, with a Selection from his Essay on Johnson

19 31. It was published in 1755, price £4 10s., bound.

20 17. The letter, which needs no comment, is as follows:

February 7, 1755.

To the Right Honourable the Earl of Chesterfield.

My Lord,

I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of the World, that two papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to the publick, 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 overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment 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 attendance so little encouraged that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in publick, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I have 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 past, since I waited in your outward rooms or was 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 at last 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 confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the Publick 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 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,

Most obedient servant,

Sam. Johnson.

20 24. Horne Tooke. A name assumed by John Horne, a politician and philologist whose career is briefly outlined in The Century Dictionary. The passage which so moved him follows.

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 authour, and the world is little solicitous to know whence proceeded 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 academick 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 lexicons 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 academicians, did not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the embodied criticks of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its oeconomy, and give their second edition another form, I may surely be contented without the praise of 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.

This extract is taken from the fourth edition, London, MDCCLXXIII, the last to receive Johnson's corrections. If you possibly can get the opportunity, turn these volumes over enough to find a few of the whimsical definitions, such, for example, as that of lexicographer, according to Johnson "a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge." Other words worth looking up are excise, oats, and networks.

21 6. Junius and Skinner. Johnson frankly admitted that for etymologies he turned to the shelf which contained the etymological dictionaries of these seventeenth-century students of the Teutonic languages. This phase of dictionary making was not considered so deeply then as it is now.

21 13. spunging-houses. Johnson's Dictionary says: "Spunging-house. A house to which debtors are taken before commitment to prison, where the bailiffs sponge upon them, or riot at their cost."

21 26. Jenyns. This writer, who, according to Boswell, "could very happily play with a light subject," ventured so far beyond his depth that it was easy for Johnson to expose him.

22 10. Rasselas. Had Johnson written nothing else, says Boswell, Rasselas "would have rendered his name immortal in the world of literature.... It has been translated into most, if not all, of the modern languages."

22 12. Miss Lydia Languish. Of course plays are not necessarily written to be read, but Sheridan's well-known comedy, The Rivals, is decidedly readable. Every one should be familiar with Miss Languish and Mrs. Malaprop.

23 8. Bruce. The Dictionary of National Biography says that James Bruce—whose Travels to Discover the Sources of the Nile, five volumes, appeared in 1790—"will always remain the poet, and his work the epic, of African travel."

23 13. Mrs. Lennox. A woman whose literary efforts Johnson encouraged so much as he did Mrs. Lennox's is certainly worth looking up in the index to Boswell's Johnson.—Mrs. Sheridan, the dramatist's mother, gave Johnson many an entertaining evening in her home. She and her son entered heartily into the lively, stimulating conversations he loved.

23 25. Hector … Aristotle. The sacking of Troy is generally assigned to the twelfth century B.C. Aristotle lived eight centuries later.—Julio Romano. An Italian painter of the fifteenth century.

24 5. the Lord Privy Seal. Some documents require only the privy seal; others must have the great seal too. For Johnson's admission that the printer was wise in striking out the reference alluded to, see the index to Boswell's Johnson, under Gower.

24 14. Oxford. By recalling what Macaulay said in the early part of the essay (10 26, 27) about Oxford, and by bearing in mind what House [of Stuart? of Hanover?] George the Third belonged to, one sees point to "was becoming loyal."

24 14–18. Study these four short sentences in connection with the preceding sentence beginning "George the Third." To what extent are they a repetition? To what extent an explanation?

24 22. accepted. When, in answer to Johnson's question to Lord Bute, "Pray, my Lord, what am I expected to do for this pension?" he received the ready reply, "It is not given you for anything you are to do, but for what you have done," he hesitated no longer.

Three hundred a year was a large sum in Johnson's eyes at that time. Whether he wrote less than he would have written without it may be questioned, says Mr. Hill, but he adds that probably "without the pension he would not have lived to write the second greatest of his works—the Lives of the Poets."

25 19. a ghost … Cock Lane. If you will read Boswell's account of the affair, you will probably conclude that Johnson was not quite so "weak" as Macaulay implies.

25 26. Churchill. One of the reigning wits of the day, Boswell says.

26 3. The preface. Other critics speak with more enthusiasm of the good sense and the clear expression of the preface, and find that these qualities are not altogether lacking in the notes.

26 8. Wilhelm Meister. The hero of Goethe's novel of the same name. You may have read this passage on Hamlet in Rolfe's edition (p. 14), quoted from Furness's Hamlet, Vol. II, pp. 272 ff. Sprague also quotes it in his edition, p. 13.

26 26. Ben. The eighteenth-century Johnson has been followed by the nineteenth-century critics in putting a high estimate on the Jonson who wrote Every Man in His Humor. We are told that Shakspere took one of the parts in this play, acted in 1598. If you are not satisfied with the account in The Century Dictionary, or with any encyclopædia article, see The English Poets, edited by T. H. Ward, Vol. II (The Macmillan Company).

26 33–34. Æschylus, Euripides, Sophocles. Three great contemporary Greek tragedians.

27 3. Fletcher. Point out why an editor of Shakspere's plays should be familiar with the work of this group of Elizabethan dramatists.

27 11. Royal Academy. "His Majesty having the preceding year [1768] instituted the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Johnson had won the honour of being appointed Professor in Ancient Literature."—Boswell. Goldsmith was Professor in Ancient History in the same institution, and Boswell was Secretary for Foreign Correspondence. Look in The Century Dictionary under academy, the third meaning, and recall whatever you may have heard or read about the French Academy.

27 12. the King. "His Majesty expressed a desire to have the literary biography of this country ably executed, and proposed to Dr. Johnson to undertake it."—Boswell. Read Boswell's account of the interview. In consulting the index look under George III.

27 22. colloquial talents. Madame d'Arblay once said that Johnson had about him more "fun, and comical humour, and love of nonsense" than almost anybody else she ever saw.

28 23. Goldsmith. Macaulay's article on Goldsmith in The Encyclopædia Britannica is short, and so thoroughly readable that there is no excuse for not being familiar with it. Boswell is continually giving interesting glimpses of Dr. Oliver Goldsmith, and by taking advantage of the index in the Life of Johnson one may in half an hour learn a great deal about this remarkable man. According to Boswell, "he had sagacity enough to cultivate assiduously the acquaintance of Johnson, and his faculties were gradually enlarged by the contemplation of such a model."

28 24. Reynolds. We can learn from short articles about Sir Joshua's career, but the index to Boswell's Johnson will introduce us to the good times the great portrait painter had with the great conversationalist whom we are studying. Reynolds was the first proposer of the Club, and "there seems to have been hardly a day," says Robina Napier, "when these friends did not meet in the painting room or in general society." Ruskin says, "Titian paints nobler pictures and Vandyke had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of human heart and temper." The business of his art "was not to criticise, but to observe," and for this purpose the hours he spent at the Club might be as profitable as those spent in his painting room. It will be interesting to make a list of some of the most notable "subjects" Reynolds painted.—Burke. Be sure to read Boswell's account of the famous Round Robin. It will make you feel better acquainted with Burke, Johnson, Reynolds, and Goldsmith. The student will find valuable material in Professor Lamont's edition of Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America, published by Ginn & Company.

28 25. Gibbon. You noticed on the Round Robin the autograph of the author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?

28 26. Jones. Sir William Henry Rich Jones was "the first English scholar to master Sanskrit, and to recognize its importance for comparative philology," says The Century Dictionary.

29 9. Johnson's Club. The Club still flourishes. Both Scott and Macaulay belonged to it.

29 14. James Boswell. "Out of the fifteen millions that then lived, and had bed and board, in the British Islands, this man has provided us a greater pleasure than any other individual, at whose cost we now enjoy ourselves; perhaps has done us a greater service than can be specially attributed to more than two or three: yet, ungrateful that we are, no written or spoken eulogy of James Boswell anywhere exists; his recompense in solid pudding (so far as copyright went) was not excessive; and as for the empty praise, it has altogether been denied him. Men are unwiser than children; they do not know the hand that feeds."

So Carlyle writes of the man; the book, he says, is "beyond any other product of the eighteenth century"; it draws aside the curtains of the Past and gives us a picture which changeful Time cannot harm or hide. The picture charms generation after generation because it is true. "It is not speaking with exaggeration, but with strict measured sobriety, to say that this Book of Boswell's will give us more real insight into the History of England during those days than twenty other Books, falsely entitled 'Histories,' which take to themselves that special aim.... The thing I want to see is not Redbook Lists, and Court Calendars, and Parliamentary Registers, but the Life of Man in England: what men did, thought, suffered, enjoyed; the form, especially the spirit, of their terrestrial existence, its outward environment, its inward principle; how and what it was; whence it proceeded, whither it was tending....

"Hence, indeed, comes it that History, which should be 'the essence of innumerable Biographies,' will tell us, question it as we like, less than one genuine Biography may do, pleasantly and of its own accord!"

Mr. Leslie Stephen says that "Macaulay's graphic description of his absurdities, and Carlyle's more penetrating appreciation of his higher qualities, contain all that can be said"; but the more recent testimony of Dr. George B. Hill, in Dr. Johnson, His Friends and His Critics, should count for something. Dr. Hill points out that while Macaulay grants Boswell immortality he refuses him greatness, and calls attention to what he considers elements of greatness. In regard to the accuracy of a biographer who would "run half over London, in order to fix a date correctly," he says: "That love, I might almost say that passion for accuracy, that distinguished Boswell in so high a degree does not belong to a mind that is either mean or feeble. Mean minds are indifferent to truth, and feeble minds can see no importance in a date."

29 27. Wilkes. John Wilkes, a notorious politician, was imprisoned for writing an article in which he attacked George the Third. The liberty of the press was involved and Wilkes was released, much to the delight of the people. For a brief summary of the Bill of Rights, see Brewer's Historic Note-book or A Handbook of English Political History, by Acland and Ransome.

29 29. Whitfield. Macaulay's short sentence implies, does it not, that Whitfield (or Whitefield) was a noisy, open-air preacher among the Calvinistic Methodists? In testing the accuracy of this inference in The Encyclopædia Britannica or in Franklin's Autobiography, note in what countries Whitefield preached, and where he died. Boswell quotes Johnson's opinion of Whitefield in two places.

29 30. In a happy hour. May 16, 1763. By all means read Boswell's account of the rough reception he received and the persistence necessary to secure the fastening.

31 14. pity … esteem. The Thrales were not alone in overlooking these oddities. "His tricks and contortions, a subject for pity not ridicule," says Mr. Hoste, "were ignored by the celebrated wits and beauties who visited him in his gloomy 'den,' and by the duchesses and other distinguished ladies who gathered 'four and five deep' around him at fashionable assemblies, hanging on his sentences, and contended for the nearest places to his chair."

31 15. Southwark. South of the commercial center of London and across the Thames.

31 16. Streatham. About five miles southwest of London City. The Southwark apartment was in a commercial district; the Streatham apartment in a thinly settled residential suburb.

31 34. Maccaroni. See The Century Dictionary or Brewer's Handbook of Phrase and Fable.

32 21. Levett. Of Levett, Goldsmith said to Boswell, "He is poor and honest, which is recommendation enough to Johnson."

32 30. the Mitre Tavern. "The Mitre Tavern still stands in Fleet Street: but where now is its Scot-and-lot paying, beef-and-ale loving, cock-hatted, potbellied Landlord; its rosy-faced, assiduous Landlady, with all her shining brass-pans, waxed tables, well-filled larder-shelves; her cooks, and bootjacks, and errand-boys, and watery-mouthed hangers-on? Gone! Gone! The becking waiter, that with wreathed smiles was wont to spread for Samuel and Bozzy their 'supper of the gods,' has long since pocketed his last sixpence; and vanished, six-pences and all, like a ghost at cockcrowing." Yet, Carlyle goes on to say, thanks to this book of Boswell's, "they who are gone are still here; though hidden they are revealed, though dead they yet speak."

33 27. Hebrides. Locate these picturesque islands on the map.

34 10. Lord Mansfield. William Murray, chief justice of the King's Bench from 1756 to 1788, has been called "the founder of English commercial law."

34 23. Macpherson. In 1760 James Macpherson published what purported to be fragments of Gaelic verse with translations. These were so interesting that he was sent to the Highlands to hunt for more, and within three years he published the Poems of Ossian, consisting of two epics, "Fingal" and "Temora." Their genuineness has been discussed ever since. Evidently Johnson settled the matter to his own satisfaction and to Macaulay's, and you may be interested in what Boswell has to say. At the same time it seems clear that Johnson went too far in his charge of forgery. Macpherson probably did not find a complete epic, yet he undoubtedly found some Gaelic poetry.

34 27. contemptuous terms. Boswell gives the following letter:

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 myself, the law shall do for me. I hope I shall not be deterred from detecting what I 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 imposture still. For this opinion I have given my reasons to the publick, which I here dare you to refute. Your rage I defy. Your abilities, 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 what you shall prove. You may print this if you will.

Sam. Johnson.

35 11–12. The Kenricks, Campbells, MacNicols, and Hendersons. If Johnson and Macaulay do not tell enough about these men, Boswell does.

35 30. Bentley. Richard Bentley (1662–1742), a well-known English classical scholar and critic.

36 13. Taxation no Tyranny. The rest of the title is An Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress.

37 6. Wilson. Richard Wilson was one of the greatest English landscape painters, says The Dictionary of National Biography.

37 14. Cowley. The man who wrote

 
God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.
 

37 18. Restoration. The International Dictionary offers a brief explanation in case you are not absolutely certain of the exact meaning.

37 23. Walmesley. See note to 5 32.—Button's. Button's coffeehouse flourished earlier in the century. Do you remember any other reference to it? to Will's? to Child's?—Cibber. Colley Cibber, actor and dramatist, altered and adapted some of Shakspere's plays. Both Johnson and Boswell express their opinions of him frankly enough. He was appointed poet laureate in 1730.

37 25. Orrery. Orrery did more than enjoy this privilege,—he wrote a book entitled Remarks on the Life and Writings of Jonathan Swift. Boswell records Johnson's opinion of it. What other great literary men enjoyed the society of Swift? The Century Dictionary gives a column to Swift, and Johnson has a sketch in his Lives of the Poets.

37 26. services of no very honourable kind. By supplying Pope with private intelligence for his Dunciad he "gained the esteem of Pope and the enmity of his victims."

38 32. Malone. Edmund Malone was a friend of Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds. He wrote a supplement to Johnson's edition of Shakspere, published an edition of Reynolds's works, and after bringing out his own edition of Shakspere, left material for another edition, which was published by James Boswell the younger in 1821. Boswell's Malone, the "third variorum" edition, is generally considered the best. To Boswell the elder, an intimate friend, he was of much assistance in preparing the Life of Johnson, and he edited with valuable notes the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth reissues of the work.

40 21–22. In a solemn and tender prayer.

Almighty God, Father of all mercy, help me by thy grace, that I may, with humble and sincere thankfulness, remember the comforts and conveniences which I have enjoyed at this place; and that I may resign them with holy submission, equally trusting in thy protection when thou givest, and when thou takest away. Have mercy upon me, O Lord, have mercy upon me.

To thy fatherly protection, O Lord, I commend this family. Bless, guide, and defend them, that they may so pass through this world, as finally to enjoy in thy presence everlasting happiness, for Jesus Christ's sake, Amen.—Boswell's Johnson.

41 1. Italian fiddler. A violinist of much talent. Piozzi was the music master from Brescia who, a little over three years after Mr. Thrale's death, married the widow. After learning what you can from Boswell, you will enjoy some such account as the Encyclopædia Britannica offers. While doing your reading it may be well to keep in mind what two or three critics have said. Mr. Mowbray Morris writes: "After all the abuse showered on the unfortunate woman it is pleasant to know that the marriage proved a happy one in every respect. Piozzi, who was really a well-mannered, amiable man, took every care of his wife's fortune, and on their return to England her family and friends were soon reconciled to him." Mr. Leslie Stephen says: "Her love of Piozzi, which was both warm and permanent, is the most amiable feature of her character." Mr. Herbert Paul, after praising Macaulay's Life of Johnson, adds, "Yet, if I may say so, I can never forgive Macaulay for his cruel and unaccountable injustice to Mrs. Thrale."

41 3. the Ephesian matron. She cared so much for her husband that she went into the vault to die with him, and there, in the midst of her violent grief, fell in love with a soldier who was guarding some dead bodies near by. For the story (told by a Latin writer, Petronius), see Jeremy Taylor's The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying, Chapter V, section 8.—the two pictures. In Act III.

42 2. Burke parted from him. After twenty-seven years of uninterrupted friendship with Johnson, says Robina Napier.—Windham. The Right Hon. William Windham, a member of the Club, a friend of Malone, Burke, Fox, and Pitt; in 1794 Secretary at War (Pitt's ministry), in 1806 War and Colonial Secretary (Lord Grenville's ministry); in the words of Macaulay, "the first gentleman of his age, the ingenious, the chivalrous, the high-souled Windham." Johnson wrote him appreciative letters in August and October, 1784. See Boswell.

42 4. Frances Burney. In Macaulay's essay on Madame d'Arblay, he says: "Her appearance is an important epoch in our literary history. Evelina was the first tale written by a woman, and purporting to be a picture of life and manners, that lived or deserved to live." Read this account of the "timid and obscure girl" who suddenly "found herself on the highest pinnacle of fame," eulogized by such men as Burke, Windham, Gibbon, Reynolds, and Sheridan.

42 6. Langton. See page 30.

42 10–11. his temper. In connection with this closing sentence let us remember a paragraph from Boswell (1776):

"That he was occasionally remarkable for violence of temper may be granted: but let us ascertain the degree, and not let it be supposed that he was in a perpetual rage, and never without a club in his hand to knock down every one who approached him. On the contrary, the truth is, that by much the greatest part of his time he was civil, obliging, nay, polite in the true sense of the word; so much so, that many gentlemen who were long acquainted with him never received, or even heard a strong expression from him."