Complete Works of Samuel Johnson

by Samuel Johnson

  Of those whom Providence has qualified to make any additions to human knowledge, the number is extremely small; and what can be added by each single mind, even of this superior class, is very little: the greatest part of mankind must owe all their knowledge, and all must owe far the larger part of it, to the information of others. To understand the works of celebrated authors, to comprehend their systems, and retain their reasonings, is a task more than equal to common intellects; and he is by no means to be accounted useless or idle, who has stored his mind with acquired knowledge, and can detail it occasionally to others who have less leisure or weaker abilities.

  Persius has justly observed, that knowledge is nothing to him who is not known by others to possess it: to the scholar himself it is nothing with respect either to honour or advantage, for the world cannot reward those qualities which are concealed from it; with respect to others it is nothing, because it affords no help to ignorance or errour.

  It is with justice, therefore, that in an accomplished character, Horace unites just sentiments with the power of expressing them; and he that has once accumulated learning, is next to consider, how he shall most widely diffuse and most agreeably impart it.

  A ready man is made by conversation. He that buries himself among his manuscripts, “besprent,” as Pope expresses it, “with learned dust,” and wears out his days and nights in perpetual research and solitary meditation, is too apt to lose in his elocution what he adds to his wisdom; and when he comes into the world, to appear overloaded with his own notions, like a man armed with weapons which he cannot wield. He has no facility of inculcating his speculations, of adapting himself to the various degrees of intellect which the accidents of conversation will present; but will talk to most unintelligibly, and to all unpleasantly.

  I was once present at the lectures of a profound philosopher, a man really skilled in the science which he professed, who having occasion to explain the terms opacum and pellucidum, told us, after some hesitation, that opacum was, as one might say, opake, and that pellucidum signified pellucid. Such was the dexterity with which this learned reader facilitated to his auditors the intricacies of science; and so true is it, that a man may know what he cannot teach.

  Boerhaave complains, that the writers who have treated of chymistry before him, are useless to the greater part of students, because they presuppose their readers to have such degrees of skill as are not often to be found. Into the same errour are all men apt to fall, who have familiarized any subject to themselves in solitude: they discourse, as if they thought every other man had been employed in the same inquiries; and expect that short hints and obscure allusions will produce in others the same train of ideas which they excite in themselves.

  Nor is this the only inconvenience which the man of study suffers from a recluse life. When he meets with an opinion that pleases him, he catches it up with eagerness; looks only after such arguments as tend to his confirmation; or spares himself the trouble of discussion, and adopts it with very little proof; indulges it long without suspicion, and in time unites it to the general body of his knowledge, and treasures it up among incontestable truths: but when he comes into the world among men who, arguing upon dissimilar principles, have been led to different conclusions, and being placed in various situations, view the same object on many sides; he finds his darling position attacked, and himself in no condition to defend it: having thought always in one train, he is in the state of a man who having fenced always with the same master, is perplexed and amazed by a new posture of his antagonist; he is entangled in unexpected difficulties, he is harassed by sudden objections, he is unprovided with solutions or replies; his surprise impedes his natural powers of reasoning, his thoughts are scattered and confounded, and he gratifies the pride of airy petulance with an easy victory.

  It is difficult to imagine, with what obstinacy truths which one mind perceives almost by intuition, will be rejected by another; and how many artifices must be practised, to procure admission for the most evident propositions into understandings frighted by their novelty, or hardened against them by accidental prejudice; it can scarcely be conceived, how frequently, in these extemporaneous controversies, the dull will be subtle, and the acute absurd; how often stupidity will elude the force of argument, by involving itself in its own gloom; and mistaken ingenuity will weave artful fallacies, which reason can scarcely find means to disentangle.

  In these encounters the learning of the recluse usually fails him: nothing but long habit and frequent experiments can confer the power of changing a position into various forms, presenting it in different points of view, connecting it with known and granted truths, fortifying it with intelligible arguments, and illustrating it by apt similitudes; and he, therefore, that has collected his knowledge in solitude, must learn its application by mixing with mankind.

  But while the various opportunities of conversation invite us to try every mode of argument, and every art of recommending our sentiments, we are frequently betrayed to the use of such as are not in themselves strictly defensible: a man heated in talk, and eager of victory, takes advantage of the mistakes or ignorance of his adversary, lays hold of concessions to which he knows he has no right, and urges proofs likely to prevail on his opponent, though he knows himself that they have no force: thus the severity of reason is relaxed, many topicks are accumulated, but without just arrangement or distinction; we learn to satisfy ourselves with such ratiocination as silences others; and seldom recall to a close examination, that discourse which has gratified our vanity with victory and applause.

  Some caution, therefore, must be used lest copiousness and facility be made less valuable by inaccuracy and confusion. To fix the thoughts by writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practises on others: in conversation we naturally diffuse our thoughts, and in writing we contract them; method is the excellence of writing, and unconstraint the grace of conversation.

  To read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters. For all these there is not often equal opportunity; excellence, therefore, is not often attainable; and most men fail in one or other of the ends proposed, and are full without readiness, or without exactness. Some deficiency must be forgiven all, because all are men; and more must be allowed to pass uncensured in the greater part of the world, because none can confer upon himself abilities, and few have the choice of situations proper for the improvement of those which nature has bestowed: it is, however, reasonable to have perfection in our eye; that we may always advance towards it, though we know it never can be reached.

  Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter. Sat. i. 27.

  No. 92. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1753.

  Cum tabulis animum censoris sumet honesti.HOR. Lib. ii. Ep. it. 110.

  Bold be the critick, zealous to his trust,

  Like the firm judge inexorably just.

  TO THE ADVENTURER.

  Sir,

  In the papers of criticism which you have given to the publick, I have remarked a spirit of candour and love of truth equally remote from bigotry and captiousness; a just distribution of praise amongst the ancients and the moderns: a sober deference to reputation long established, without a blind adoration of antiquity; and a willingness to favour later performances, without a light or puerile fondness for novelty.

  I shall, therefore, venture to lay before you, such observations as have risen to my mind in the consideration of Virgil’s pastorals, without any inquiry how far my sentiments deviate from established rules or common opinions.

  If we survey the ten pastorals in a general view, it will be found that Virgil can derive from them very little claim to the praise of an inventor. To search into the antiquity of this kind of poetry is not my present purpose; that it has long subsisted in the east, the Sacred Writings sufficiently inform us; and we may conjecture, with great probabili
ty, that it was sometimes the devotion, and sometimes the entertainment of the first generations of mankind. Theocritus united elegance with simplicity; and taught his shepherds to sing with so much ease and harmony, that his countrymen, despairing to excel, forbore to imitate him; and the Greeks, however vain or ambitious, left him in quiet possession of the garlands which the wood-nymphs had bestowed upon him.

  Virgil, however, taking advantage of another language, ventured to copy or to rival the Sicilian bard: he has written with greater splendour of diction, and elevation of sentiment: but as the magnificence of his performances was more, the simplicity was less; and, perhaps, where he excels Theocritus, he sometimes obtains his superiority by deviating from the pastoral character, and performing what Theocritus never attempted.

  Yet, though I would willingly pay to Theocritus the honour which is always due to an original author, I am far from intending to depreciate Virgil: of whom Horace justly declares, that the rural muses have appropriated to him their elegance and sweetness, and who, as he copied Theocritus in his design, has resembled him likewise in his success; for, if we except Calphurnius, an obscure author of the lower ages, I know not that a single pastoral was written after him by any poet, till the revival of literature.

  But though his general merit has been universally acknowledged, I am far from thinking all the productions of his rural Thalia equally excellent; there is, indeed, in all his pastorals a strain of versification which it is vain to seek in any other poet; but if we except the first and the tenth, they seem liable either wholly or in part to considerable objections.

  The second, though we should forget the great charge against it, which I am afraid can never be refuted, might, I think, have perished, without any diminution of the praise of its author; for I know not that it contains one affecting sentiment or pleasing description, or one passage that strikes the imagination or awakens the passions.

  The third contains a contest between two shepherds, begun with a quarrel of which some particulars might well be spared, carried on with sprightliness and elegance, and terminated at last in a reconciliation: but, surely, whether the invectives with which they attack each other be true or false, they are too much degraded from the dignity of pastoral innocence; and instead of rejoicing that they are both victorious, I should not have grieved could they have been both defeated.

  The poem to Pollio is, indeed, of another kind: it is filled with images at once splendid and pleasing, and is elevated with grandeur of language worthy of the first of Roman poets; but I am not able to reconcile myself to the disproportion between the performance and the occasion that produced it: that the golden age should return because Pollio had a son, appears so wild a fiction, that I am ready to suspect the poet of having written, for some other purpose, what he took this opportunity of producing to the publick.

  The fifth contains a celebration of Daphnis, which has stood to all succeeding ages as the model of pastoral elegies. To deny praise to a performance which so many thousands have laboured to imitate, would be to judge with too little deference for the opinion of mankind: yet whoever shall read it with impartiality, will find that most of the images are of the mythological kind, and therefore easily invented; and that there are few sentiments of rational praise or natural lamentation.

  In the Silenus he again rises to the dignity of philosophick sentiments, and heroick poetry. The address to Varus is eminently beautiful: but since the compliment paid to Gallus fixes the transaction to his own time, the fiction of Silenus seems injudicious: nor has any sufficient reason yet been found, to justify his choice of those fables that make the subject of the song.

  The seventh exhibits another contest of the tuneful shepherds: and, surely, it is not without some reproach to his inventive power, that of ten pastorals Virgil has written two upon the same plan. One of the shepherds now gains an acknowledged victory, but without any apparent, superiority, and the reader, when he sees the prize adjudged, is not able to discover how it was deserved.

  Of the eighth pastoral, so little is properly the work of Virgil, that he has no claim to other praise or blame, than that of a translator.

  Of the ninth, it is scarce possible to discover the design or tendency; it is said, I know not upon what authority, to have been composed from fragments of other poems; and except a few lines in which the author touches upon his own misfortunes, there is nothing that seems appropriated to any time or place, or of which any other use can be discovered than to fill up the poem.

  The first and the tenth pastorals, whatever be determined of the rest, are sufficient to place their author above the reach of rivalry. The complaint of Gallus disappointed in his love, is full of such sentiments as disappointed love naturally produces; his wishes are wild, his resentment is tender, and his purposes are inconstant. In the genuine language of despair, he soothes himself awhile with the pity that shall be paid him after his death.

  — Tamen cantabitis, Arcades, inquit,

  Montibus haec vestris: soli cantare periti

  Arcades. O mihi tum quam molliter ossa quiescant,

  Vestra meos olim si fistula dicat amores! Virg. Ec. x. 31.

  — Yet, O Arcadian swains,

  Ye best artificers of soothing strains!

  Tune your soft reeds, and teach your rocks my woes,

  So shall my shade in sweeter rest repose.

  O that your birth and business had been mine;

  To feed the flock, and prune the spreading vine! WARTON.

  Discontented with his present condition, and desirous to be any thing but what he is, he wishes himself one of the shepherds. He then catches the idea of rural tranquillity; but soon discovers how much happier he should be in these happy regions, with Lycoris at his side:

  Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata, Lycori:

  Hic nemus, hic ipso tecum consumerer aevo.

  Nunc insanus amor duri me Martis in armis

  Tela inter media atque adversos detinet hostes.

  Tu procul a patria (nec sit mihi credere) tantum

  Alpinas, ah dura, nives, et frigora Rheni

  Me sine sola vides. Ah te ne frigora laedant!

  Ah tibi ne teneras glacies secet aspera plantas! Ec. x. 42.

  Here cooling fountains roll through flow’ry meads,

  Here woods, Lycoris, lift their verdant heads;

  Here could I wear my careless life away,

  And in thy arms insensibly decay.

  Instead of that, me frantick love detains,

  ’Mid foes, and dreadful darts, and bloody plains:

  While you — and can my soul the tale believe,

  Far from your country, lonely wand’ring leave

  Me, me your lover, barbarous fugitive!

  Seek the rough Alps where snows eternal shine,

  And joyless borders of the frozen Rhine.

  Ah! may no cold e’er blast my dearest maid,

  Nor pointed ice thy tender feet invade. WARTON.

  He then turns his thoughts on every side, in quest of something that may solace or amuse him: he proposes happiness to himself, first in one scene and then in another: and at last finds that nothing will satisfy:

  Jam neque Hamadryades rursum, nec carmina nobis

  Ipsa placent: ipsae rursum concedite sylvae.

  Non illum nostri possunt mutare labores;

  Nec si frigoribus mediis Hebrumque bibamus,

  Sithoniasque nives hyemis subeamus aquosae:

  Nec si, cum moriens alta liber aret in ulmo

  Aethiopum versemus oves sub sidere Cancri.

  Omnia vincit amor; et nos cedamns amori. Ec. x. 62.

  But now again no more the woodland maids,

  Nor pastoral songs delight — Farewell, ye shades —

  No toils of ours the cruel god can change,

  Tho’ lost in frozen deserts we should range;

  Tho’ we should drink where chilling Hebrus flows,

  Endure bleak winter blasts, and Thracian snows:

  Or on hot Ind
ia’s plains our flocks should feed,

  Where the parch’d elm declines his sickening head,

  Beneath fierce-glowing Cancer’s fiery beams,

  Far from cool breezes and refreshing streams.

  Love over all maintains resistless sway,

  And let us love’s all-conquering power obey. WARTON.

  But notwithstanding the excellence of the tenth pastoral, I cannot forbear to give the preference to the first, which is equally natural and more diversified. The complaint of the shepherd, who saw his old companion at ease in the shade, while himself was driving his little flock he knew not whither, is such as, with variation of circumstances, misery always utters at the sight of prosperity:

  Nos patriae fines, et dulcia linquimus arra;

  Nos patrium fugimus: Tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra

  Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida sylvas. Ec. i. 3.

  We leave our country’s bounds, our much-lov’d plains;

  We from our country fly, unhappy swains!

  You, Tit’rus, in the groves at leisure laid,

  Teach Amaryllis’ name to every shade. WARTON.

  His account of the difficulties of his journey, gives a very tender image of pastoral distress:

  — En ipse capellas

  Protenus aeger ago: hanc etiam vix, Tityre, duco:

  Hic inter densas corylos modo namque gemellos,

  Spem gregis, ah! silice in nuda connixa reliquit. Ec. i. 12.

  And lo! sad partner of the general care,

  Weary and faint I drive my goats afar!

  While scarcely this my leading hand sustains,

  Tired with the way, and recent from her pains;

  For ‘mid yon tangled hazels as we past,

  On the bare flints her hapless twin she cast,

  The hopes and promise of my ruin’d fold! WARTON.

  The description of Virgil’s happiness in his little farm, combines almost all the images of rural pleasure; and he, therefore, that can read it with indifference, has no sense of pastoral poetry: