No. 102. SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 1751.
No. 103. TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 1751.
No. 104. SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 1751.
No. 105. TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 1751.
No. 106. SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 1751.
No. 107. TUESDAY, MARCH 26, 1751.
No. 108. SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1751.
No. 109. TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 1751.
No. 110. SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 1751
No. 111. TUESDAY, APRIL 9, 1751.
No. 112. SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1751.
No. 113. TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 1751.
No. 114. SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 1751.
No. 115. TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 1751.
No. 116. SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1751.
No. 117. TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 1751.
No. 118. SATURDAY, MAY 4, 1751.
No. 119. TUESDAY, MAY 7, 1751.
No. 120. SATURDAY, MAY 11, 1751.
No. 121. TUESDAY, MAY 14, 1751.
No. 122. SATURDAY, MAY 18, 1751.
No. 123. TUESDAY, MAY 21, 1751.
No. 124. SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1751.
No. 125. TUESDAY, MAY 28, 1751.
No. 126. SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 1751.
No. 127. TUESDAY, JUNE 4, 1751.
No. 128. SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1751.
No. 129. TUESDAY, JUNE 11. 1751.
No. 130. SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1751.
No. 131. TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 1751.
No. 132. SATURDAY, JUNE 22, 1751.
No. 133. TUESDAY, JUNE 25, 1751.
No. 134. SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 1751.
No. 135. TUESDAY, JULY 2, 1751.
No. 136. SATURDAY, JULY 6, 1751.
No. 137. TUESDAY, JULY 9, 1751.
No. 138. SATURDAY, JULY 13, 1751.
No. 139. TUESDAY, JULY 16, 1751
No. 140. SATURDAY, JULY 20, 1751.
No. 141. TUESDAY, JULY 23, 1751.
No. 142. SATURDAY, JULY 27, 1751.
No. 143. TUESDAY, JULY 30, 1751.
No. 144. SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 1751.
No. 145. TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1751.
No. 146. SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1751.
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No. 148. SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 1751.
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No. 150. SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 1751.
No. 151. TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 1751.
No. 152. SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 1751.
No. 153. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1751
No. 154. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1751.
No. 155. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1751.
No. 156. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1751.
No. 157. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1751.
No. 158. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1751.
No. 159. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1751.
No. 160. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1751
No. 161. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1751.
No. 162. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1751.
No. 163. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1751.
No. 164. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1751.
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No. 166. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1751.
No. 167. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1751.
No. 168. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1751.
No. 169. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1751.
No. 170. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1751.
No. 171. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1751.
No. 172. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1751.
No. 173. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1751.
No. 174. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1751.
No. 175. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1751.
No. 176. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1751
No. 177. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1751.
No. 178. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1751.
No. 179. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1751.
No. 180. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1751.
No. 181. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1751.
No. 182. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1751.
No. 183. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1751.
No. 184. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1751.
No. 185. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1751.
No. 186. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1751.
No. 187. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1751.
No. 188. SATURDAY, JANUARY 4, 1751.
No. 189. TUESDAY, JANUARY 7, 1752.
No. 190. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1752.
No. 191. TUESDAY, JANUARY 14, 1752.
No. 192. SATURDAY, JANUARY 18, 1752.
No. 193. TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1752.
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No. 202. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1752.
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No. 207. TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 1752.
No. 208. SATURDAY, MARCH 14, 1752.
PREFATORY NOTICE
An attentive consideration of the period at which any work of moral instruction has appeared, and of the admonitions appropriate to the state of those times, is highly necessary for a correct estimate of the merits of the writer. For to quote the judicious remarks of one of our earlier Essayists , “there is a sort of craft attending vice and absurdity; and when hunted out of society in one shape, they seldom want address to reinsinuate themselves in another: hence the modes of licence vary almost as often as those of dress, and consequently require continual observation to detect and explode them anew.” The days in which the Rambler first undertook to reprove and admonish his country, may be said to have well required a moralist of their own. For the modes of fashionable life, and the marked distinction between the capital and the country, which drew forth the satire, and presented scope for the admonitions of the Spectator and the Tatler, were then fast giving place to other follies, and to characters that had not hitherto subsisted. The crowd of writers , whatever might be their individual merit, who offered their labours to the public, between the close of the Spectator and the appearance of the Rambler, had contributed, in a most decided manner, towards the diffusion of a taste for literary information. It was no longer a coterie of wits at Button’s, or at Will’s, who, engrossing all acquaintance with Belles Lettres, pronounced with a haughty and exclusive spirit on every production for the stage or the closet; but it was a reading public to whom writers now began to make appeal for censure or applause. That education which the present day beholds so widely spread had then commenced its progress; and perhaps it is not too bold to say, that Johnson almost foresaw the course that it would run. He saw a public already prepared for weightier discussions than could have been understood the century before. In addition to a more general education, the improved intercourse between the remotest parts of the country and the metropolis made all acquainted with the dissipation and manners, which, during the publication of the Spectator, were hardly known beyond the circle where they existed. The pages of that incomparable production were therefore perused by general readers, as well for the gratification of curiosity, as for the improvement of morals. The passing news of the day, the tattle of the auction or the Mall, the amusing extravagances of dress, and the idle fopperies of fashion, topics that excited merriment rather than detestation, were those most judiciously selected to allure a nation to read. Addison and Steele therefore in their age acted wisely; their cotemporaries would have been driven “by the sternness of the Rambler’s philosophy to more cheerful and airy companions.” The pages of the Tatler were enlivened by foreign and domestic politics, by the current scandal of the town, and by easy critiques on the last new play; by advertisements of “orangerie for beaux ,” and by prescriptions for the cure of love-sickness or the spleen. The Guardian uttered f
orth his moral lessons from the wide and voracious mouth of an imaginary lion, whose roarings were to have influence “for the purifying of behaviour and the bettering of manners.” But for Johnson was reserved a different task, and one for which his powers and the natural bent of his mind were peculiarly fitted. He disdained, as derogatory from the dignity of a teacher, to thus humour trifling minds, and to barter by idle conceits for the reception of his precepts. His aim was not to amuse but to instruct, not to ridicule the frivolities of fashion, but to lash the enormities of guilt. He resolved to write a book in which nothing should be flattered that men had agreed to flatter, and in which no tenderness should be shown to public prejudice or to private folly . In pursuance of this deep and solemn purpose we accordingly find him imploring assistance in his labours from that “Giver of all good things, without whose help all labour is ineffectual, and without whose grace all wisdom is folly .”
The Rambler was published on Tuesday March 20, 1749-50, and appeared without intermission every Tuesday and Saturday until March 14, 1752, on which day it closed . The Author was not exhausted nor weary; his latter pages do not fall off; perhaps, without partiality, we may say, that he evidently gathered strength as he proceeded in his work. But prepared as the age had been by preceding writers, it was not enlightened to an extent adequate to the universal reception of truths so abstract and so spoken out ; it could not comprehend within its reach of sight such bold and broad sketches of human nature. In the sententious and didactic papers of the Rambler, where truth appears “towering and majestic, unassisted and alone ,” lighter readers missed with regret the sportive variety of his predecessors. We can adduce perhaps no stronger proof of Johnson’s elevation above his times, than the fact that the meagre, common-place, and jejune paper of Richardson, was the only one that obtained an immediate popularity . The sale of the Rambler seldom exceeded five hundred; while it is on record that twenty thousand Spectators were sometimes sold in a day . But Johnson wrote not for his own generation alone, but for posterity, and posterity will pay him his meed of immortality.
The Rambler, with some trivial exceptions, is the work of a single and unaided author, who composed it during his performance of a task which had fatigued “united academies and long successions of learned compilers .” He wrote, as he pathetically describes himself, “under the pressure of disease, obstructed by constitutional indolence, and when much of his time was spent in provision for the day that was passing over him .” The only contributions in aid of his work, all of which he acknowledges in his concluding Rambler, were the following papers.
In Number 10, the four billets were written by Miss Mulso, daughter of Thomas Mulso, Esq. who came of an ancient family at Twywell, Northamptonshire. She is better known to the public as Mrs. Chapone. The above articles are said to have been her first literary productions .
For Number 30. Dr. Johnson was indebted to Miss Catherine Talbot, only daughter of the Rev. Edward Talbot, Archdeacon of Berks, and Preacher at the Rolls. She was provided for, by the liberal bequest of Archbishop Secker, with whom she had chiefly resided; and her composition in the Rambler, like all her other works, breathes a spirit of piety characteristic of her exemplary patron and protector.
Numbers 44 and 100 were contributed by Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, the justly celebrated translator of Epictetus, whose eminence in literature was only surpassed by her amiable deportment in the milder duties of domestic life . Richardson, the author of Clarissa, Pamela, &c. wrote Number 97, to which allusion has already been made. The second letter, signed Amicus, in Number 107, was from an unknown correspondent.
The rest of the Rambler was produced by one mind, whose resources were developed, but not exhausted, by the work. To give a history of its progress; to record the praises with which it was at once greeted by the philosophic reader ; the empty clamour which the light, the ignorant, and envious raised against it; the editions through which it has passed; the countries through which it has been circulated, and the effects which it has produced on our national style, would be among the most interesting of researches, but the detail would be incompatible with the limits of a Preface. Every little particular connected with it has been again and again canvassed with that admiration or hostility which only great works can call forth. The very title has afforded ground for censure, for licentious imitation , and for acrimonious abuse. “The Rambler,” says the sprightly Lady Montague, “is certainly a strong misnomer : he always plods in the beaten road of his predecessors, following the Spectator (with the same pace a pack-horse would do a hunter) in the style that is proper to lengthen a paper.” A formal refutation of so flippant a charge would equal in ludicrous absurdity the attack itself. The passage is merely quoted in evidence of the literature of the times. For if so lively and acute a writer could so far overlook the design and plan of the Rambler, what could be expected from his less cultivated readers? The Italians have rendered it by Il Genio errante, and most unhappily by Il Vagabondo. Its adoption was an instance of our Author’s lofty contempt of the class who could not understand his meaning. “I sat down at night,” he observed to Sir Joshua Reynolds, “upon my bed side, and resolved that I would not sleep till I had fixed its title. The Rambler seemed the best that occurred, and I took it.” He was then in no trifling mode of mind. He felt himself “a solitary wanderer in the wild of life, without any direction or fixed point of view; a gloomy gazer on a world to which he bore little relation.” This description of himself he gave under the oppressive remembrance of a particular privation: but he long before most deeply felt the “bitterness of being.” He felt his own misery, and, thoroughly convinced that man was miserable, he boldly announced his conviction.
A belief has circulated, almost as widely as Johnson’s writings, of his hurried and slovenly manner of composition. He has been represented by Boswell himself, as sending his papers to the press, and never afterwards even perusing them. With regard to the Rambler, this opinion is directly opposed to fact. The labour which he bestowed on its revision, betokened the most anxious zeal for its utility. He almost re-wrote it. A comparison of the original folio Rambler, with the copies now in circulation, would prove the nearly literal accuracy of this assertion. Mr. Chalmers, in his British Essayists, and Dr. Drake in his Essays on the Rambler, have given specimens. It may perhaps be equally satisfactory to state that the alterations exceeded six thousand. Wherever Johnson laboured, amendment and excellence must have ensued. And on the Rambler no labour was misapplied; for its usefulness is universal. There is scarcely a situation in life for the regulation of which some right rule may not thence be drawn. It does not glitter to the vulgar eye, but it is a deep mine, where, if we must labour, yet our labours are rewarded with the richest ore.
A varied knowledge of character is the first requisite for a teacher of moral prudence. This was among Johnson’s most early attainments, for his was not that mere “lip-wisdom which wants experience.” He was not the recluse scholar, unacquainted with the world and its ways, but he could from actual survey describe, with equal fidelity, those who sparkled in the highest order of society, and those who struggled with distress in the lower walks of life. His study was peculiarly man: and his comprehensive and generalizing mind led him to analyze the primary elements of human nature, rather than nicely to pourtray the shades of mixed character.
Mrs. Piozzi’s assignments have perhaps little better foundation in fact than the sage conjectures of the Rumford club, who fondly imagined themselves to be the only Ridicules in the world. “Not only every man,” observes the Rambler, “has in the mighty mass of the world great numbers in the same condition with himself, to whom his mistakes and miscarriages, escapes and expedients, would be of immediate and apparent use; but there is such an uniformity in the state of man, considered apart from adventitious and separable decorations and disguises, that there is scarce any possibility of good or ill but is common to human kind.”
Whether his view of our condition on earth was too gloomy or not, may b
e agitated as a question without any impeachment of his sincere desire to correct our faults, and to soothe our sorrows. For although other philosophers have deplored human weaknesses and errors, and other satirists have derided human follies, yet few have sympathized with the wretched and the guilty with the same warm-hearted benevolence as Johnson. He was indeed himself, as he has described another,
Officious, innocent, sincere,
Of every friendless name the friend.
His own temperament was morbidly melancholy, but his writings contain the best antidotes against that pitiable affection. He ridicules it when indulged on occasion of each chance and trivial annoyance; he scorns it as “hypocrisy of misery,” when assumed by those little-minded beings who complain for the luxury of pity: and he proposes the most salutary remedies for it, when a real and deeply-seated malady, in active and in honorable enterprise. Above all he ever presses upon his readers, from a view of the transitory nature of mortal enjoyment, the wisdom of resting their hopes on the fixed prospects of futurity.
Rousseau has been termed “the apostle of affliction.” But his conviction of the emptiness of honours and of fame, and his contempt of the accidental distinctions of riches and of rank, led him to place all man’s possible enjoyment, and to look for the only solace of his inevitable wretchedness, in the instant indulgence of appetite; while his genius unhappily enabled him to throw a seductive halo around the merest gratifications of sense.
Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau,
The apostle of affliction, he who threw
Enchantment over passion, and from woe
Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew
The breath that made him wretched; yet he knew
How to make madness beautiful, and cast
O’er erring deeds and words a heavenly hue
Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they past
The eyes which o’er them shed tears feelingly and fast.
Childe Harold, Canto 3, Stanza 77.
This description was drawn by a bard who, not prejudiced against the lover of the New Heloise, still keenly saw the practical effects which his philosophy wrought in the mass of society, and how it tended to debase our moral and intellectual natures. Byron well knew, and needed not to be told, that Rousseau’s sentimentality was but a highly polished instinct; though, like the scornful and unpitying Democritus, he would bitterly smile amidst the tombs, where man’s pride and pleasures were alike laid desolate. But Johnson sought to alleviate the woes over which he wept; and no one ever sunk in sensuality from a despondency produced by his lamentations over human misery. In none of his varied writings has he lured others from the paths of virtue, or smoothed the road of perdition, or covered with flowers the thorns of guilt, or taught temptation sweeter notes, softer blandishments, or stronger allurements. He never smiles, like Boileau, at vice, as if half pleased with the ludicrous images it impresses on his fancy; nor, with Swift, does he mangle human nature, and then scowl with a tyrant’s exultation on the wounds he has inflicted. He bemoans our miseries with the tender pity of a Cowper, who, in warning us of life’s grovelling pursuits and empty joys, seeks, by withdrawing us from their delusive dominion, to prepare us for “another and a better world.”
Complete Works of Samuel Johnson Page 20