Complete Works of Samuel Johnson

by Samuel Johnson

  And the long honours of a lasting name,

  Entrusts his happiness to human kind,

  More false, more cruel, than the seas or wind.

  ‘Toil on, dull croud, in extacies he cries,

  For wealth or title, perishable prize;

  While I those transitory blessings scorn,

  Secure of praise from ages yet unborn.’

  This thought once form’d, all council comes too late,

  He flies to press, and hurries on his fate;

  Swiftly he sees the imagin’d laurels spread,

  And feels the unfading wreath surround his head.

  Warn’d by another’s fate, vain youth be wise,

  Those dreams were Settle’s once, and Ogilby’s:

  The pamphlet spreads, incessant hisses rise,

  To some retreat the baffled writer flies;

  Where no sour criticks snarl, no sneers molest,

  Safe from the tart lampoon, and stinging jest;

  There begs of heaven a less distinguish’d lot,

  Glad to be hid, and proud to be forgot.

  EPILOGUE, intended to have been spoken by a LADY who was to personate the Ghost of HERMIONE.

  Ye blooming train, who give despair or joy,

  Bless with a smile, or with a frown destroy;

  In whose fair cheeks destructive Cupids wait,

  And with unerring shafts distribute fate;

  Whose snowy breasts, whose animated eyes,

  Each youth admires, though each admirer dies;

  Whilst you deride their pangs in barb’rous play, }

  Unpitying see them weep, and hear them pray, }

  And unrelenting sport ten thousand lives away; }

  For you, ye fair, I quit the gloomy plains;

  Where sable night in all her horrour reigns;

  No fragrant bowers, no delightful glades,

  Receive the unhappy ghosts of scornful maids.

  For kind, for tender nymphs the myrtle blooms,

  And weaves her bending boughs in pleasing glooms:

  Perennial roses deck each purple vale,

  And scents ambrosial breathe in every gale:

  Far hence are banish’d vapours, spleen, and tears,

  Tea, scandal, ivory teeth, and languid airs:

  No pug, nor favourite Cupid there enjoys

  The balmy kiss, for which poor Thyrsis dies;

  Form’d to delight, they use no foreign arms,

  Nor torturing whalebones pinch them into charms;

  No conscious blushes there their cheeks inflame,

  For those who feel no guilt can know no shame;

  Unfaded still their former charms they shew,

  Around them pleasures wait, and joys for ever new.

  But cruel virgins meet severer fates;

  Expell’d and exil’d from the blissful seats,

  To dismal realms, and regions void of peace,

  Where furies ever howl, and serpents hiss.

  O’er the sad plains perpetual tempests sigh,

  And pois’nous vapours, black’ning all the sky,

  With livid hue the fairest face o’ercast,

  And every beauty withers at the blast:

  Where e’er they fly their lover’s ghosts pursue,

  Inflicting all those ills which once they knew;

  Vexation, Fury, Jealousy, Despair,

  Vex ev’ry eye, and every bosom tear;

  Their foul deformities by all descry’d,

  No maid to flatter, and no paint to hide.

  Then melt, ye fair, while crouds around you sigh,

  Nor let disdain sit lowring in your eye;

  With pity soften every awful grace,

  And beauty smile auspicious in each face;

  To ease their pains exert your milder power,

  So shall you guiltless reign, and all mankind adore.’

  The two years which he spent at home, after his return from Stourbridge, he passed in what he thought idleness, and was scolded by his father for his want of steady application. He had no settled plan of life, nor looked forward at all, but merely lived from day to day. Yet he read a great deal in a desultory manner, without any scheme of study, as chance threw books in his way, and inclination directed him through them. He used to mention one curious instance of his casual reading, when but a boy. Having imagined that his brother had hid some apples behind a large folio upon an upper shelf in his father’s shop, he climbed up to search for them. There were no apples; but the large folio proved to be Petrarch, whom he had seen mentioned in some preface, as one of the restorers of learning. His curiosity having been thus excited, he sat down with avidity, and read a great part of the book. What he read during these two years he told me, was not works of mere amusement, ‘not voyages and travels, but all literature, Sir, all ancient writers, all manly: though but little Greek, only some of Anacreon and Hesiod; but in this irregular manner (added he) I had looked into a great many books, which were not commonly known at the Universities, where they seldom read any books but what are put into their hands by their tutors; so that when I came to Oxford, Dr. Adams, now master of Pembroke College, told me I was the best qualified for the University that he had ever known come there.’

  In estimating the progress of his mind during these two years, as well as in future periods of his life, we must not regard his own hasty confession of idleness; for we see, when he explains himself, that he was acquiring various stores; and, indeed he himself concluded the account with saying, ‘I would not have you think I was doing nothing then.’ He might, perhaps, have studied more assiduously; but it may be doubted whether such a mind as his was not more enriched by roaming at large in the fields of literature than if it had been confined to any single spot. The analogy between body and mind is very general, and the parallel will hold as to their food, as well as any other particular. The flesh of animals who feed excursively, is allowed to have a higher flavour than that of those who are cooped up. May there not be the same difference between men who read as their taste prompts and men who are confined in cells and colleges to stated tasks?

  That a man in Mr. Michael Johnson’s circumstances should think of sending his son to the expensive University of Oxford, at his own charge, seems very improbable. The subject was too delicate to question Johnson upon. But I have been assured by Dr. Taylor that the scheme never would have taken place had not a gentleman of Shropshire, one of his schoolfellows, spontaneously undertaken to support him at Oxford, in the character of his companion; though, in fact, he never received any assistance whatever from that gentleman.

  He, however, went to Oxford, and was entered a Commoner of Pembroke College on the 31st of October, 1728, being then in his nineteenth year.

  The Reverend Dr. Adams, who afterwards presided over Pembroke College with universal esteem, told me he was present, and gave me some account of what passed on the night of Johnson’s arrival at Oxford. On that evening, his father, who had anxiously accompanied him, found means to have him introduced to Mr. Jorden, who was to be his tutor. His being put under any tutor reminds us of what Wood says of Robert Burton, authour of the ‘Anatomy of Melancholy,’ when elected student of Christ Church: ‘for form’s sake, though he wanted not a tutor, he was put under the tuition of Dr. John Bancroft, afterwards Bishop of Oxon.’

  His father seemed very full of the merits of his son, and told the company he was a good scholar, and a poet, and wrote Latin verses. His figure and manner appeared strange to them; but he behaved modestly, and sat silent, till upon something which occurred in the course of conversation, he suddenly struck in and quoted Macrobius; and thus he gave the first impression of that more extensive reading in which he had indulged himself.

  His tutor, Mr. Jorden, fellow of Pembroke, was not, it seems, a man of such abilities as we should conceive requisite for the instructor of Samuel Johnson, who gave me the following account of him. ‘He was a very worthy man, but a heavy man, and I did not profit much by his instructions. Indeed,
I did not attend him much. The first day after I came to college I waited upon him, and then staid away four. On the sixth, Mr. Jorden asked me why I had not attended. I answered I had been sliding in Christ-Church meadow. And this I said with as much nonchalance as I am now talking to you. I had no notion that I was wrong or irreverent to my tutor. BOSWELL: ‘That, Sir, was great fortitude of mind.’ JOHNSON: ‘No, Sir; stark insensibility.’

  The fifth of November was at that time kept with great solemnity at Pembroke College, and exercises upon the subject of the day were required. Johnson neglected to perform his, which is much to be regretted; for his vivacity of imagination, and force of language, would probably have produced something sublime upon the gunpowder plot. To apologise for his neglect, he gave in a short copy of verses, entitled Somnium, containing a common thought; ‘that the Muse had come to him in his sleep, and whispered, that it did not become him to write on such subjects as politicks; he should confine himself to humbler themes:’ but the versification was truly Virgilian.

  He had a love and respect for Jorden, not for his literature, but for his worth. ‘Whenever (said he) a young man becomes Jorden’s pupil, he becomes his son.’

  Having given such a specimen of his poetical powers, he was asked by Mr. Jorden, to translate Pope’s Messiah into Latin verse, as a Christmas exercise. He performed it with uncommon rapidity, and in so masterly a manner, that he obtained great applause from it, which ever after kept him high in the estimation of his College, and, indeed, of all the University.

  It is said, that Mr. Pope expressed himself concerning it in terms of strong approbation. Dr. Taylor told me, that it was first printed for old Mr. Johnson, without the knowledge of his son, who was very angry when he heard of it. A Miscellany of Poems collected by a person of the name of Husbands, was published at Oxford in 1731. In that Miscellany Johnson’s Translation of the Messiah appeared, with this modest motto from Scaliger’s Poeticks. Ex alieno ingenio Poeta, ex suo tantum versificator.

  I am not ignorant that critical objections have been made to this and other specimens of Johnson’s Latin Poetry. I acknowledge myself not competent to decide on a question of such extreme nicety. But I am satisfied with the just and discriminative eulogy pronounced upon it by my friend Mr, Courtenay.

  ‘And with like ease his vivid lines assume

  The garb and dignity of ancient Rome. —

  Let college verse-men trite conceits express,

  Trick’d out in splendid shreds of Virgil’s dress;

  From playful Ovid cull the tinsel phrase,

  And vapid notions hitch in pilfer’d lays:

  Then with mosaick art the piece combine,

  And boast the glitter of each dulcet line:

  Johnson adventur’d boldly to transfuse

  His vigorous sense into the Latian muse;

  Aspir’d to shine by unreflected light,

  And with a Roman’s ardour think and write.

  He felt the tuneful Nine his breast inspire,

  And, like a master, wak’d the soothing lyre:

  Horatian strains a grateful heart proclaim,

  While Sky’s wild rocks resound his Thralia’s name.

  Hesperia’s plant, in some less skilful hands,

  To bloom a while, factitious heat demands:

  Though glowing Maro a faint warmth supplies,

  The sickly blossom in the hot-house dies:

  By Johnson’s genial culture, art, and toil,

  Its root strikes deep, and owns the fost’ring soil;

  Imbibes our sun through all its swelling veins,

  And grows a native of Britannia’s plains.’

  The ‘morbid melancholy,’ which was lurking in his constitution, and to which we may ascribe those particularities, and that aversion to regular life, which, at a very early period, marked his character, gathered such strength in his twentieth year, as to afflict him in a dreadful manner. While he was at Lichfield, in the college vacation of the year 1729, he felt himself overwhelmed with an horrible hypochondria, with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which made existence misery. From this dismal malady he never afterwards was perfectly relieved; and all his labours, and all his enjoyments, were but temporary interruptions of its baleful influence. How wonderful, how unsearchable are the ways of GOD! Johnson, who was blest with all the powers of genius and understanding in a degree far above the ordinary state of human nature, was at the same time visited with a disorder so afflictive, that they who know it by dire experience, will not envy his exalted endowments. That it was, in some degree, occasioned by a defect in his nervous system, that inexplicable part of our frame, appears highly probable. He told Mr. Paradise that he was sometimes so languid and inefficient, that he could not distinguish the hour upon the town-clock.

  Johnson, upon the first violent attack of this disorder, strove to overcome it by forcible exertions. He frequently walked to Birmingham and back again, and tried many other expedients, but all in vain. His expression concerning it to me was ‘I did not then know how to manage it.’ His distress became so intolerable, that he applied to Dr. Swinfen, physician in Lichfield, his god-father, and put into his hands a state of his case, written in Latin. Dr. Swinfen was so much struck with the extraordinary acuteness, research, and eloquence of this paper, that in his zeal for his godson he shewed it to several people. His daughter, Mrs. Desmoulins, who was many years humanely supported in Dr. Johnson’s house in London, told me, that upon his discovering that Dr. Swinfen had communicated his case, he was so much offended, that he was never afterwards fully reconciled to him. He indeed had good reason to be offended; for though Dr. Swinfen’s motive was good, he inconsiderately betrayed a matter deeply interesting and of great delicacy, which had been entrusted to him in confidence; and exposed a complaint of his young friend and patient, which, in the superficial opinion of the generality of mankind, is attended with contempt and disgrace.

  But let not little men triumph upon knowing that Johnson was an HYPOCHONDRIACK, was subject to what the learned, philosophical, and pious Dr. Cheyne has so well treated under the title of ‘The English Malady.’ Though he suffered severely from it, he was not therefore degraded. The powers of his great mind might be troubled, and their full exercise suspended at times; but the mind itself was ever entire. As a proof of this, it is only necessary to consider, that, when he was at the very worst, he composed that state of his own case, which shewed an uncommon vigour, not only of fancy and taste, but of judgement. I am aware that he himself was too ready to call such a complaint by the name of madness; in conformity with which notion, he has traced its gradations, with exquisite nicety, in one of the chapters of his RASSELAS. But there is surely a clear distinction between a disorder which affects only the imagination and spirits, while the judgement is sound, and a disorder by which the judgement itself is impaired. This distinction was made to me by the late Professor Gaubius of Leyden, physician to the Prince of Orange, in a conversation which I had with him several years ago, and he expanded it thus: ‘If (said he) a man tells me that he is grievously disturbed, for that he imagines he sees a ruffian coming against him with a drawn sword, though at the same time he is conscious it is a delusion, I pronounce him to have a disordered imagination; but if a man tells me that he sees this, and in consternation calls to me to look at it, I pronounce him to be mad.’

  It is a common effect of low spirits or melancholy, to make those who are afflicted with it imagine that they are actually suffering those evils which happen to be most strongly presented to their minds. Some have fancied themselves to be deprived of the use of their limbs, some to labour under acute diseases, others to be in extreme poverty; when, in truth, there was not the least reality in any of the suppositions; so that when the vapours were dispelled, they were convinced of the delusion. To Johnson, whose supreme enjoyment was the exercise of his reason, the disturbance or obscuration of that faculty was the evil most to be dreaded. Insanity, there
fore, was the object of his most dismal apprehension; and he fancied himself seized by it, or approaching to it, at the very time when he was giving proofs of a more than ordinary soundness and vigour of judgement. That his own diseased imagination should have so far deceived him, is strange; but it is stranger still that some of his friends should have given credit to his groundless opinion, when they had such undoubted proofs that it was totally fallacious; though it is by no means surprising that those who wish to depreciate him, should, since his death, have laid hold of this circumstance, and insisted upon it with very unfair aggravation.

  Amidst the oppression and distraction of a disease which very few have felt in its full extent, but many have experienced in a slighter degree, Johnson, in his writings, and in his conversation, never failed to display all the varieties of intellectual excellence. In his march through this world to a better, his mind still appeared grand and brilliant, and impressed all around him with the truth of Virgil’s noble sentiment —

  ‘Igneus est ollis vigor et coelestis origo.’

  The history of his mind as to religion is an important article. I have mentioned the early impressions made upon his tender imagination by his mother, who continued her pious care with assiduity, but, in his opinion, not with judgement. ‘Sunday (said he) was a heavy day to me when I was a boy. My mother confined me on that day, and made me read “The Whole Duty of Man,” from a great part of which I could derive no instruction. When, for instance, I had read the chapter on theft, which from my infancy I had been taught was wrong, I was no more convinced that theft was wrong than before; so there was no accession of knowledge. A boy should be introduced to such books, by having his attention directed to the arrangement, to the style, and other excellencies of composition; that the mind being thus engaged by an amusing variety of objects, may not grow weary.’

  He communicated to me the following particulars upon the subject of his religious progress. ‘I fell into an inattention to religion, or an indifference about it, in my ninth year. The church at Lichfield, in which we had a seat, wanted reparation, so I was to go and find a seat in other churches; and having bad eyes, and being awkward about this, I used to go and read in the fields on Sunday. This habit continued till my fourteenth year; and still I find a great reluctance to go to church. I then became a sort of lax talker against religion, for I did not much think against it; and this lasted till I went to Oxford, where it would not be suffered. When at Oxford, I took up ‘Law’s Serious Call to a Holy Life,’ ‘expecting to find it a dull book (as such books generally are), and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law quite an overmatch for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion, after I became capable of rational inquiry.’ From this time forward religion was the predominant object of his thoughts; though, with the just sentiments of a conscientious Christian, he lamented that his practice of its duties fell far short of what it ought to be.