Complete Works of Samuel Johnson

by Samuel Johnson

  As fancy frames for fancy to subdue;

  But, when ourselves to action we betake,

  It shuns the mint like gold that chymists make:

  How hard was then his task, at once to be

  What in the body natural we see!

  Man’s architect distinctly did ordain

  The charge of muscles, nerves, and of the brain,

  Through viewless conduits spirits to dispense

  The springs of motion from the seat of sense:

  ’Twas not the hasty product of a day,

  But the well-ripen’d fruit of wise delay.

  He, like a patient angler, ere he strook,

  Would let them play awhile upon the hook.

  Our healthful food the stomach labours thus,

  At first embracing what it straight doth crush.

  Wise leeches will not vain receipts obtrude,

  While growing pains pronounce the humours crude;

  Deaf to complaints, they wait upon the ill,

  Till some safe crisis authorize their skill.

  He had not yet learned, indeed he never learned well, to forbear the improper use of mythology. After having rewarded the heathen deities for their care,

  With Alga who the sacred altar strows?

  To all the seagods Charles an offering owes;

  A bull to thee, Portunus, shall be slain;

  A ram to you, ye tempests of the main.

  He tells us, in the language of religion,

  Pray’r storm’d the skies, and ravish’d Charles from thence,

  As heav’n itself is took by violence.

  And afterwards mentions one of the most awful passages of sacred history.

  Other conceits there are, too curious to be quite omitted; as,

  For by example most we sinn’d before,

  And, glass-like, clearness mix’d with frailty bore.

  How far he was yet from thinking it necessary to found his sentiments on

  nature, appears from the extravagance of his fictions and hyperboles:

  The winds, that never moderation knew,

  Afraid to blow too much, too faintly blew;

  Or, out of breath with joy, could not enlarge

  Their straiten’d lungs.

  It is no longer motion cheats your view;

  As you meet it, the land approacheth you;

  The land returns, and in the white it wears

  The marks of penitence and sorrow bears.

  I know not whether this fancy, however little be its value, was not borrowed. A French poet read to Malherbe some verses, in which he represents France as moving out of its place to receive the king: “Though this,” said Malherbe, “was in my time, I do not remember it.”

  His poem on the Coronation has a more even tenour of thought. Some lines deserve to be quoted:

  You have already quench’d sedition’s brand;

  And zeal, that burnt it, only warms the land;

  The jealous sects that durst not trust their cause

  So far from their own will as to the laws,

  Him for their umpire and their synod take,

  And their appeal alone to Caesar make.

  Here may be found one particle of that old versification, of which, I believe, in all his works, there is not another:

  Nor is it duty, or our hope alone,

  Creates that joy, but full fruition.

  In the verses to the lord chancellor Clarendon, two years afterwards, is a conceit so hopeless at the first view, that few would have attempted it; and so successfully laboured, that though, at last, it gives the reader more perplexity than pleasure, and seems hardly worth the study that it costs, yet it must be valued as a proof of a mind at once subtile and comprehensive:

  In open prospect nothing bounds our eye,

  Until the earth seems join’d unto the sky;

  So in this hemisphere our utmost view

  Is only bounded by our king and you:

  Our sight is limited where you are join’d,

  And beyond that no farther heaven can find.

  So well your virtues do with his agree,

  That, though your orbs of different greatness be,

  Yet both are for each other’s use dispos’d,

  His to enclose, and yours to be enclos’d.

  Nor could another in your room have been,

  Except an emptiness had come between.

  The comparison of the chancellor to the Indies leaves all resemblance too far behind it:

  And as the Indies were not found before

  Those rich perfumes which from the happy shore

  The winds upon their balmy wings convey’d,

  Whose guilty sweetness first their world betray’d;

  So by your counsels we are brought to view

  A new and undiscover’d world in you.

  There is another comparison, for there is little else in the poem, of which, though, perhaps, it cannot be explained into plain prosaick meaning, the mind perceives enough to be delighted, and readily forgives its obscurity, for its magnificence:

  How strangely active are the arts of peace,

  Whose restless motions less than wars do cease:

  Peace is not freed from labour, but from noise;

  And war more force, but not more pains employs.

  Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind,

  That, like the earth’s, it leaves our sense behind,

  While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere,

  That rapid motion does but rest appear.

  For as in nature’s swiftness, with the throng

  Of flying orbs while ours is borne along,

  All seems at rest to the deluded eye,

  Mov’d by the soul of the same harmony:

  So, carry’d on by your unwearied care,

  We rest in peace, and yet in motion share.

  To this succeed four lines, which, perhaps, afford Dryden’s first attempt at those penetrating remarks on human nature, for which he seems to have been peculiarly formed:

  Let envy then those crimes within you see,

  From which the happy never must be free;

  Envy that does with misery reside,

  The joy and the revenge of ruin’d pride.

  Into this poem he seems to have collected all his powers; and after this he did not often bring upon his anvil such stubborn and unmalleable thoughts; but, as a specimen of his abilities to unite the most unsociable matter, he has concluded with lines, of which I think not myself obliged to tell the meaning:

  Yet unimpair’d with labours, or with time,

  Your age but seems to a new youth to climb.

  Thus heav’nly bodies do our time beget,

  And measure change, but share no part of it:

  And still it shall without a weight increase,

  Like this new year, whose motions never cease.

  For since the glorious course you have begun

  Is led by Charles, as that is by the sun,

  It must both weightless and immortal prove,

  Because the centre of it is above.

  In the Annus Mirabilis he returned to the quatrain, which from that time he totally quitted, perhaps from experience of its inconvenience, for he complains of its difficulty. This is one of his greatest attempts. He had subjects equal to his abilities, a great naval war, and the fire of London. Battles have always been described in heroick poetry; but a seafight and artillery had yet something of novelty. New arts are long in the world before poets describe them; for they borrow every thing from their predecessors, and commonly derive very little from nature, or from life. Boileau was the first French writer that had ever hazarded in verse the mention of modern war, or the effects of gunpowder. We, who are less afraid of novelty, had already possession of those dreadful images: Waller had described a seafight. Milton had not yet transferred the invention of firearms to the rebellious angels.

  This poem is written with great diligence, yet does not fully answer the expec
tation raised by such subjects and such a writer. With the stanza of Davenant, he has sometimes his vein of parenthesis, and incidental disquisition, and stops his narrative for a wise remark.

  The general fault is, that he affords more sentiment than description, and does not so much impress scenes upon the fancy, as deduce consequences and make comparisons.

  The initial stanzas have rather too much resemblance to the first lines of Waller’s poem on the War with Spain; perhaps such a beginning is natural, and could not be avoided without affectation. Both Waller and Dryden might take their hint from the poem on the civil war of Rome: “Orbem jam totum,” &c.

  Of the king collecting his navy, he says,

  It seems, as ev’ry ship their sov’reign knows,

  His awful summons they so soon obey:

  So hear the scaly herds when Proteus blows,

  And so to pasture follow through the sea.

  It would not be hard to believe that Dryden had written the two first lines seriously, and that some wag had added the two latter in burlesque. Who would expect the lines that immediately follow, which are, indeed, perhaps indecently hyperbolical, but certainly in a mode totally different:

  To see this fleet upon the ocean move,

  Angels drew wide the curtains of the skies;

  And heav’n, as if there wanted lights above,

  For tapers made two glaring comets rise.

  The description of the attempt at Bergen will afford a very complete specimen of the descriptions in this poem:

  And now approach’d their fleet from India, fraught

  With all the riches of the rising sun:

  And precious sand from southern climates brought,

  The fatal regions where the war begun.

  Like hunted castors, conscious of their store,

  Their waylaid wealth to Norway’s coast they bring:

  Then first the north’s cold bosom spices bore,

  And winter brooded on the eastern spring.

  By the rich scent we found our perfum’d prey,

  Which, flank’d with rocks, did close in covert lie;

  And round about their murd’ring cannon lay,

  At once to threaten and invite the eye.

  Fiercer than cannon, and than rocks more hard,

  The English undertake th’ unequal war;

  Sev’n ships alone, by which the port is barr’d,

  Besiege the Indies, and all Denmark dare.

  These fight like husbands, but like lovers those;

  These fain would keep, and those more fain enjoy;

  And to such height their frantick passion grows,

  That what both love, both hazard to destroy:

  Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball,

  And now their odours arm’d against them fly:

  Some preciously by shatter’d porc’lain fall,

  And some by aromatick splinters die.

  And though by tempests of the prize bereft,

  In heav’n’s inclemency some ease we find;

  Our foes we vanquish’d by our valour left,

  And only yielded to the seas and wind.

  In this manner is the sublime too often mingled with the ridiculous. The Dutch seek a shelter for a wealthy fleet: this, surely, needed no illustration; yet they must fly, not like all the rest of mankind on the same occasion, but “like hunted castors;” and they might with strict propriety be hunted; for we winded them by our noses — their perfumes betrayed them. The husband and the lover, though of more dignity than the castor, are images too domestick to mingle properly with the horrours of war. The two quatrains that follow are worthy of the author. The account of the different sensations with which the two fleets retired, when the night parted them, is one of the fairest flowers of English poetry:

  The night comes on, we eager to pursue

  The combat still, and they asham’d to leave:

  Till the last streaks of dying day withdrew,

  And doubtful moonlight did our rage deceive.

  In th’ English fleet each ship resounds with joy,

  And loud applause of their great leader’s fame:

  In fiery dreams the Dutch they still destroy,

  And, slumb’ring, smile at the imagin’d flame.

  Not so the Holland fleet, who, tir’d and done,

  Stretch’d on their decks like weary oxen lie;

  Faint sweats all down their mighty members run,

  (Vast bulks, which little souls but ill supply.)

  In dreams they fearful precipices tread,

  Or, shipwreck’d, labour to some distant shore;

  Or, in dark churches, walk among the dead:

  They wake with horrour, and dare sleep no more.

  It is a general rule in poetry, that all appropriated terms of art should be sunk in general expressions, because poetry is to speak an universal language. This rule is still stronger with regard to arts not liberal, or confined to few, and, therefore, far removed from common knowledge; and of this kind, certainly, is technical navigation. Yet Dryden was of opinion, that a seafight ought to be described in the nautical language; “and certainly,” says he, “as those, who in a logical disputation keep to general terms, would hide a fallacy, so those who do it in any poetical description would veil their ignorance.”

  Let us then appeal to experience; for by experience, at last, we learn as well what will please as what will profit. In the battle, his terms seem to have been blown away; but he deals them liberally in the dock:

  So here some pick out bullets from the side,

  Some drive old okum through each seam and rift;

  Their left hand does the calking-iron guide,

  The rattling mallet with the right they lift.

  With boiling pitch another near at hand

  (From friendly Sweden brought) the seams in-slops:

  Which, well-laid o’er, the salt sea-waves withstand,

  And shake them from the rising beak in drops.

  Some the gall’d ropes with dauby marling bind,

  Or sear-cloth masts with strong tarpawling coats;

  To try new shrouds one mounts into the wind,

  And one below, their ease or stiffness notes.

  I suppose there is not one term which every reader does not wish away.

  His digression to the original and progress of navigation, with his prospect of the advancement which it shall receive from the Royal Society, then newly instituted, may be considered as an example seldom equalled of seasonable excursion and artful return.

  One line, however, leaves me discontented; he says, that, by the help of the philosophers,

  Instructed ships shall sail to quick commerce,

  By which remotest regions are allied.

  Which he is constrained to explain in a note “by a more exact measure of longitude.” It had better become Dryden’s learning and genius to have laboured science into poetry, and have shown, by explaining longitude, that verse did not refuse the ideas of philosophy.

  His description of the Fire is painted by resolute meditation, out of a mind better formed to reason than to feel. The conflagration of a city, with all its tumults of concomitant distress, is one of the most dreadful spectacles which this world can offer to human eyes; yet it seems to raise little emotion in the breast of the poet; he watches the flame coolly from street to street, with now a reflection, and now a simile, till at last he meets the king, for whom he makes a speech, rather tedious in a time so busy; and then follows again the progress of the fire.

  There are, however, in this part some passages that deserve attention; as in the beginning:

  The diligence of trades and noiseful gain,

  And luxury, more late, asleep were laid;

  All was the night’s, and in her silent reign

  No sound the rest of nature did invade

  In this deep quiet ——

  The expression, “all was the night’s,” is taken from Seneca, who remarks on Virgil’s line,

&n
bsp; Omnia noctis erant, placida composta quiete,

  that he might have concluded better,

  Omnia noctis erant.

  The following quatrain is vigorous and animated:

  The ghosts of traitors from the bridge descend,

  With hold fanatick spectres to rejoice;

  About the fire into a dance they bend,

  And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice.

  His prediction of the improvements which shall be made in the new city is elegant and poetical, and, with an event which poets cannot always boast, has been happily verified. The poem concludes with a simile that might have better been omitted.

  Dryden, when he wrote this poem, seems not yet fully to have formed his versification, or settled his system of propriety.

  From this time he addicted himself almost wholly to the stage, “to which,” says he, “my genius never much inclined me,” merely as the most profitable market for poetry. By writing tragedies in rhyme, he continued to improve his diction and his numbers. According to the opinion of Harte, who had studied his works with great attention, he settled his principles of versification in 1676, when he produced the play of Aureng Zebe; and, according to his own account of the short time in which he wrote Tyrannick Love, and the State of Innocence, he soon obtained the full effect of diligence, and added facility to exactness.

  Rhyme has been so long banished from the theatre, that we know not its effect upon the passions of an audience; but it has this convenience, that sentences stand more independent on each other, and striking passages are, therefore, easily selected and retained. Thus the description of night in the Indian Emperor, and the rise and fall of empire in the Conquest of Granada, are more frequently repeated than any lines in All for Love, or Don Sebastian.

  To search his plays for vigorous sallies and sententious elegancies, or to fix the dates of any little pieces which he wrote by chance, or by solicitation, were labour too tedious and minute.

  His dramatick labours did not so wholly absorb his thoughts, but that he promulgated the laws of translation in a preface to the English Epistles of Ovid; one of which he translated himself, and another in conjunction with the earl of Mulgrave.

  Absalom and Achitophel is a work so well known, that particular criticism is superfluous. If it be considered as a poem political and controversial, it will be found to comprise all the excellencies of which the subject is susceptible; acrimony of censure, elegance of praise, artful delineation of characters, variety and vigour of sentiment, happy turns of language, and pleasing harmony of numbers; and all these raised to such a height as can scarcely be found in any other English composition.