Complete Works of Samuel Johnson

by Samuel Johnson

  Ingenium ingens

  Inculto latet hoc sub corpore.

  Langton, who bought the portrait, had the inscription removed. “It was kind in you to take it off,” said Johnson; and, after a short pause, “not unkind in him to put it on.”

  Early in their acquaintance, the two young men, Beau and Lanky, as Johnson called them, had sat up one night at a tavern till three in the morning. The courageous thought struck them that they would knock up the old philosopher. He came to the door of his chambers, poker in hand, with an old wig for a nightcap. On hearing their errand, the sage exclaimed, “What! is it you, you dogs? I’ll have a frisk with you.” And so Johnson with the two youths, his juniors by about thirty years, proceeded to make a night of it. They amazed the fruiterers in Covent Garden; they brewed a bowl of bishop in a tavern, while Johnson quoted the poet’s address to Sleep, —

  ”Short, O short, be then thy reign,

  And give us to the world again!”

  They took a boat to Billingsgate, and Johnson, with Beauclerk, kept up their amusement for the following day, when Langton deserted them to go to breakfast with some young ladies, and Johnson scolded him for leaving his friends “to go and sit with a parcel of wretched unidea’d girls.” “I shall have my old friend to bail out of the round-house,” said Garrick when he heard of this queer alliance; and he told Johnson that he would be in the Chronicle for his frolic. “He durst not do such a thing. His wife would not let him,” was the moralist’s retort.

  Some friends, known to fame by other titles than their connexion with Johnson, had by this time gathered round them. Among them was one, whose art he was unable to appreciate, but whose fine social qualities and dignified equability of temper made him a valued and respected companion. Reynolds had settled in London at the end of 1752. Johnson met him at the house of Miss Cotterell. Reynolds had specially admired Johnson’s Life of Savage, and, on their first meeting, happened to make a remark which delighted Johnson. The ladies were regretting the loss of a friend to whom they were under obligations. “You have, however,” said Reynolds, “the comfort of being relieved from a burden of gratitude.” The saying is a little too much like Rochefoucauld, and too true to be pleasant; but it was one of those keen remarks which Johnson appreciated because they prick a bubble of commonplace moralizing without demanding too literal an acceptation. He went home to sup with Reynolds and became his intimate friend. On another occasion, Johnson was offended by two ladies of rank at the same house, and by way of taking down their pride, asked Reynolds in a loud voice, “How much do you think you and I could get in a week, if we both worked as hard as we could?” “His appearance,” says Sir Joshua’s sister, Miss Reynolds, “might suggest the poor author: as he was not likely in that place to be a blacksmith or a porter.” Poor Miss Reynolds, who tells this story, was another attraction to Reynolds’ house. She was a shy, retiring maiden lady, who vexed her famous brother by following in his steps without his talents, and was deeply hurt by his annoyance at the unintentional mockery. Johnson was through life a kind and judicious friend to her; and had attracted her on their first meeting by a significant indication of his character. He said that when going home to his lodgings at one or two in the morning, he often saw poor children asleep on thresholds and stalls — the wretched “street Arabs” of the day — and that he used to put pennies into their hands that they might buy a breakfast.

  Two friends, who deserve to be placed beside Reynolds, came from Ireland to seek their fortunes in London. Edmund Burke, incomparably the greatest writer upon political philosophy in English literature, the master of a style unrivalled for richness, flexibility, and vigour, was radically opposed to Johnson on party questions, though his language upon the French Revolution, after Johnson’s death, would have satisfied even the strongest prejudices of his old friend. But he had qualities which commended him even to the man who called him a “bottomless Whig,” and who generally spoke of Whigs as rascals, and maintained that the first Whig was the devil. If his intellect was wider, his heart was as warm as Johnson’s, and in conversation he merited the generous applause and warm emulation of his friends. Johnson was never tired of praising the extraordinary readiness and spontaneity of Burke’s conversation. “If a man,” he said, “went under a shed at the same time with Burke to avoid a shower, he would say, ‘This is an extraordinary man.’ Or if Burke went into a stable to see his horse dressed, the ostler would say, ‘We have had an extraordinary man here.’” When Burke was first going into Parliament, Johnson said in answer to Hawkins, who wondered that such a man should get a seat, “We who know Mr. Burke, know that he will be one of the first men in the country.” Speaking of certain other members of Parliament, more after the heart of Sir John Hawkins, he said that he grudged success to a man who made a figure by a knowledge of a few forms, though his mind was “as narrow as the neck of a vinegar cruet;” but then he did not grudge Burke’s being the first man in the House of Commons, for he would be the first man everywhere. And Burke equally admitted Johnson’s supremacy in conversation. “It is enough for me,” he said to some one who regretted Johnson’s monopoly of the talk on a particular occasion, “to have rung the bell for him.”

  The other Irish adventurer, whose career was more nearly moulded upon that of Johnson, came to London in 1756, and made Johnson’s acquaintance. Some time afterwards (in or before 1761) Goldsmith, like Johnson, had tasted the bitterness of an usher’s life, and escaped into the scarcely more tolerable regions of Grub Street. After some years of trial, he was becoming known to the booksellers as a serviceable hand, and had two works in his desk destined to lasting celebrity. His landlady (apparently 1764) one day arrested him for debt. Johnson, summoned to his assistance, sent him a guinea and speedily followed. The guinea had already been changed, and Goldsmith was consoling himself with a bottle of Madeira. Johnson corked the bottle, and a discussion of ways and means brought out the manuscript of the Vicar of Wakefield. Johnson looked into it, took it to a bookseller, got sixty pounds for it, and returned to Goldsmith, who paid his rent and administered a sound rating to his landlady.

  The relation thus indicated is characteristic; Johnson was as a rough but helpful elder brother to poor Goldsmith, gave him advice, sympathy, and applause, and at times criticised him pretty sharply, or brought down his conversational bludgeon upon his sensitive friend. “He has nothing of the bear but his skin,” was Goldsmith’s comment upon his clumsy friend, and the two men appreciated each other at bottom. Some of their readers may be inclined to resent Johnson’s attitude of superiority. The admirably pure and tender heart, and the exquisite intellectual refinement implied in the Vicar and the Traveller, force us to love Goldsmith in spite of superficial foibles, and when Johnson prunes or interpolates lines in the Traveller, we feel as though a woodman’s axe was hacking at a most delicate piece of carving. The evidence of contemporary observers, however, must force impartial readers to admit that poor Goldsmith’s foibles were real, however amply compensated by rare and admirable qualities. Garrick’s assertion, that he “wrote like an angel but talked like poor Poll,” expresses the unanimous opinion of all who had actually seen him. Undoubtedly some of the stories of his childlike vanity, his frankly expressed envy, and his general capacity for blundering, owe something to Boswell’s feeling that he was a rival near the throne, and sometimes poor Goldsmith’s humorous self-assertion may have been taken too seriously by blunt English wits. One may doubt, for example, whether he was really jealous of a puppet tossing a pike, and unconscious of his absurdity in saying “Pshaw! I could do it better myself!” Boswell, however, was too good an observer to misrepresent at random, and he has, in fact, explained very well the true meaning of his remarks. Goldsmith was an excitable Irishman of genius, who tumbled out whatever came uppermost, and revealed the feelings of the moment with utter want of reserve. His self-controlled companions wondered, ridiculed, misinterpreted, and made fewer hits as well as fewer misses. His anxiety to “get in and share,” made
him, according to Johnson, an “unsocial” companion. “Goldsmith,” he said, “had not temper enough for the game he played. He staked too much. A man might always get a fall from his inferior in the chances of talk, and Goldsmith felt his falls too keenly.” He had certainly some trials of temper in Johnson’s company. “Stay, stay,” said a German, stopping him in the full flow of his eloquence, “Toctor Johnson is going to say something.” An Eton Master called Graham, who was supping with the two doctors, and had got to the pitch of looking at one person, and talking to another, said, “Doctor, I shall be glad to see you at Eton.” “I shall be glad to wait on you,” said Goldsmith. “No,” replied Graham, “’tis not you I mean, Doctor Minor; ’tis Doctor Major there.” Poor Goldsmith said afterwards, “Graham is a fellow to make one commit suicide.”

  Boswell who attributes some of Goldsmith’s sayings about Johnson to envy, said with probable truth that Goldsmith had not more envy than others, but only spoke of it more freely. Johnson argued that we must be angry with a man who had so much of an odious quality that he could not keep it to himself, but let it “boil over.” The feeling, at any rate, was momentary and totally free from malice; and Goldsmith’s criticisms upon Johnson and his idolators seem to have been fair enough. His objection to Boswell’s substituting a monarchy for a republic has already been mentioned. At another time he checked Boswell’s flow of panegyric by asking, “Is he like Burke, who winds into a subject like a serpent?” To which Boswell replied with charming irrelevance, “Johnson is the Hercules who strangled serpents in his cradle.” The last of Goldsmith’s hits was suggested by Johnson’s shaking his sides with laughter because Goldsmith admired the skill with which the little fishes in the fable were made to talk in character. “Why, Dr. Johnson, this is not so easy as you seem to think,” was the retort, “for if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales.”

  In spite of sundry little sparrings, Johnson fully appreciated Goldsmith’s genius. Possibly his authority hastened the spread of public appreciation, as he seemed to claim, whilst repudiating Boswell’s too flattering theory that it had materially raised Goldsmith’s position. When Reynolds quoted the authority of Fox in favour of the Traveller, saying that his friends might suspect that they had been too partial, Johnson replied very truly that the Traveller was beyond the need of Fox’s praise, and that the partiality of Goldsmith’s friends had always been against him. They would hardly give him a hearing. “Goldsmith,” he added, “was a man who, whatever he wrote, always did it better than any other man could do.” Johnson’s settled opinion in fact was that embodied in the famous epitaph with its “nihil tetigit quod non ornavit,” and, though dedications are perhaps the only literary product more generally insincere than epitaphs, we may believe that Goldsmith too meant what he said in the dedication of She Stoops to Conquer. “It may do me some honour to inform the public that I have lived many years in intimacy with you. It may serve the interests of mankind also to inform them that the greatest wit may be found in a character, without impairing the most unaffected piety.”

  Though Johnson was thus rich in friendship, two connexions have still to be noticed which had an exceptional bearing upon his fame and happiness. In January, 1765, he made the acquaintance of the Thrales. Mr. Thrale was the proprietor of the brewery which afterwards became that of Barclay and Perkins. He was married in 1763 to a Miss Hester Lynch Salisbury, who has become celebrated from her friendship with Johnson. She was a woman of great vivacity and independence of character. She had a sensitive and passionate, if not a very tender nature, and enough literary culture to appreciate Johnson’s intellectual power, and on occasion to play a very respectable part in conversation. She had far more Latin and English scholarship than fell to the lot of most ladies of her day, and wit enough to preserve her from degenerating like some of the “blues,” into that most offensive of beings — a feminine prig. Her marriage had been one of convenience, and her husband’s want of sympathy, and jealousy of any interference in business matters, forced her, she says, to take to literature as her sole resource. “No wonder,” she adds, “if I loved my books and children.” It is, perhaps, more to be wondered at that her children seem to have had a rather subordinate place in her affections. The marriage, however, though not of the happiest, was perfectly decorous. Mrs. Thrale discharged her domestic duties irreproachably, even when she seems to have had some real cause of complaint. To the world she eclipsed her husband, a solid respectable man, whose mind, according to Johnson, struck the hours very regularly, though it did not mark the minutes.

  [Footnote 1: Mrs. Thrale was born in 1740 or 1741, probably the latter.

  Thrale was born in 1724.]

  The Thrales were introduced to Johnson by their common friend, Arthur Murphy, an actor and dramatist, who afterwards became the editor of Johnson’s works. One day, when calling upon Johnson, they found him in such a fit of despair that Thrale tried to stop his mouth by placing his hand before it. The pair then joined in begging Johnson to leave his solitary abode, and come to them at their country-house at Streatham. He complied, and for the next sixteen years a room was set apart for him, both at Streatham and in their house in Southwark. He passed a large part of his time with them, and derived from the intimacy most of the comfort of his later years. He treated Mrs. Thrale with a kind of paternal gallantry, her age at the time of their acquaintance being about twenty-four, and his fifty-five. He generally called her by the playful name of “my mistress,” addressed little poems to her, gave her solid advice, and gradually came to confide to her his miseries and ailments with rather surprising frankness. She flattered and amused him, and soothed his sufferings and did something towards humanizing his rugged exterior. There was one little grievance between them which requires notice. Johnson’s pet virtue in private life was a rigid regard for truth. He spoke, it was said of him, as if he was always on oath. He would not, for example, allow his servant to use the phrase “not at home,” and even in the heat of conversation resisted the temptation to give point to an anecdote. The lively Mrs. Thrale rather fretted against the restraint, and Johnson admonished her in vain. He complained to Boswell that she was willing to have that said of her, which the best of mankind had died rather than have said of them. Boswell, the faithful imitator of his master in this respect, delighted in taking up the parable. “Now, madam, give me leave to catch you in the fact,” he said on one occasion; “it was not an old woman, but an old man whom I mentioned, as having told me this,” and he recounts his check to the “lively lady” with intense complacency. As may be imagined, Boswell and Mrs. Thrale did not love each other, in spite of the well-meant efforts of the sage to bring about a friendly feeling between his disciples.

  It is time to close this list of friends with the inimitable Boswell. James Boswell, born in 1740, was the eldest son of a Whig laird and lord of sessions. He had acquired some English friends at the Scotch universities, among whom must be mentioned Mr. Temple, an English clergyman. Boswell’s correspondence with Temple, discovered years after his death by a singular chance, and published in 1857, is, after the Life of Johnson, one of the most curious exhibitions of character in the language. Boswell was intended for the Scotch bar, and studied civil law at Utrecht in the winter of 1762. It was in the following summer that he made Johnson’s acquaintance.

  Perhaps the fundamental quality in Boswell’s character was his intense capacity for enjoyment. He was, as Mr. Carlyle puts it, “gluttonously fond of whatever would yield him a little solacement, were it only of a stomachic character.” His love of good living and good drink would have made him a hearty admirer of his countryman, Burns, had Burns been famous in Boswell’s youth. Nobody could have joined with more thorough abandonment in the chorus to the poet’s liveliest songs in praise of love and wine. He would have made an excellent fourth when “Willie brewed a peck of malt, and Rab and Allan came to see,” and the drinking contest for the Whistle commemorated in another lyric would have excited his keenest inte
rest. He was always delighted when he could get Johnson to discuss the ethics and statistics of drinking. “I am myself,” he says, “a lover of wine, and therefore curious to hear whatever is remarkable concerning drinking.” The remark is à propos to a story of Dr. Campbell drinking thirteen bottles of port at a sitting. Lest this should seem incredible, he quotes Johnson’s dictum. “Sir, if a man drinks very slowly and lets one glass evaporate before he takes another, I know not how long he may drink.” Boswell’s faculty for making love was as great as his power of drinking. His letters to Temple record with amusing frankness the vicissitudes of some of his courtships and the versatility of his passions.

  Boswell’s tastes, however, were by no means limited to sensual or frivolous enjoyments. His appreciation of the bottle was combined with an equally hearty sensibility to more intellectual pleasures. He had not a spark of philosophic or poetic power, but within the ordinary range of such topics as can be discussed at a dinner-party, he had an abundant share of liveliness and intelligence. His palate was as keen for good talk as for good wine. He was an admirable recipient, if not an originator, of shrewd or humorous remarks upon life and manners. What in regard to sensual enjoyment was mere gluttony, appeared in higher matters as an insatiable curiosity. At times this faculty became intolerable to his neighbours. “I will not be baited with what and why,” said poor Johnson, one day in desperation. “Why is a cow’s tail long? Why is a fox’s tail bushy?” “Sir,” said Johnson on another occasion, when Boswell was cross-examining a third person about him in his presence. “You have but two subjects, yourself and me. I am sick of both.” Boswell, however, was not to be repelled by such a retort as this, or even by ruder rebuffs. Once when discussing the means of getting a friend to leave London, Johnson said in revenge for a previous offence, “Nay, sir, we’ll send you to him. If your presence doesn’t drive a man out of his house, nothing will.” Boswell was “horribly shocked,” but he still stuck to his victim like a leech, and pried into the minutest details of his life and manners. He observed with conscientious accuracy that though Johnson abstained from milk one fast-day, he did not reject it when put in his cup. He notes the whistlings and puffings, the trick of saying “too-too-too” of his idol: and it was a proud day when he won a bet by venturing to ask Johnson what he did with certain scraped bits of orange-peel. His curiosity was not satisfied on this occasion; but it would have made him the prince of interviewers in these days. Nothing delighted him so much as rubbing shoulders with any famous or notorious person. He scraped acquaintance with Voltaire, Wesley, Rousseau, and Paoli, as well as with Mrs. Rudd, a forgotten heroine of the Newgate Calendar. He was as eager to talk to Hume the sceptic, or Wilkes the demagogue, as to the orthodox Tory, Johnson; and, if repelled, it was from no deficiency in daring. In 1767, he took advantage of his travels in Corsica to introduce himself to Lord Chatham, then Prime Minister. The letter moderately ends by asking, “Could your lordship find time to honour me now and then with a letter? I have been told how favourably your lordship has spoken of me. To correspond with a Paoli and with a Chatham is enough to keep a young man ever ardent in the pursuit of virtuous fame.” No other young man of the day, we may be sure, would have dared to make such a proposal to the majestic orator.