Selected Essays (Penguin Classics)
Page 66
6. takes away: Job 1:21.
No. 33. Tuesday, 10 July 1750.
1. OVID: Ovid, Heroides, iv. 89.
No. 36. Saturday, 21 July 1750.
1. HOMER: Homer, Iliad, xviii. 525–6.
2. Maker: Milton, Paradise Lost, v. 153–208.
3. without number: Milton, Paradise Lost, iii. 346.
4. Sannazarius: Jacopo Sannazzaro (1458–1530), Neapolitan poet and celebrant of rustic life, author of a series of verse eclogues published in 1504 as Arcadia, and of piscatory eclogues.
5. metrical geography of Dionysius: The Periegesis of Dionysius.
No. 37. Tuesday, 24 July 1750.
1. VIRG: Virgil, Eclogues, ii. 23–4.
2. Theocritus: Theocritus (fl. c. 270 BC), Doric poet, considered to be the father of pastoral.
3.apprehension: Anaximander of Miletus (fl. early sixth century BC), scientist, philosopher, constructor of the sun dial, and alleged to have compiled a map of the world. He was said to be the first writer of Greek prose; cf. Eclogues, iii. 40–1. Pope, Pastorals, ‘Spring’, 1. 38 and note, where Pope claims that ‘the Shepherd’s hesitation at the name of the Zodiac, imitates that in Virgil’.
4. wretched wight: Edmund Spenser, Shepheardes Calendar, ‘September’,11. 1–4.
5. edunt: Virgil, Eclogues, viii. 43–5.
6. born!: Pope, ‘Autumn’, 11. 89–92.
7. Pollio: Gaius Asinius Pollio (76 BC – AD 5), an associate of Catullus, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony and consul in 40 BC. Pollio was the first to recognize the genius of Virgil, and gave practical assistance to the poet when his farm near Mantua was seized as war booty after Philippi. Virgil celebrates Pollio in the eighth and fourth eclogues; Johnson here refers to the fourth. Because this poem is a vision of a golden age inaugurated by the birth of a child, it was for many years given a Christian interpretation, although it is more likely that Virgil refers to the son of Pollio himself, who was born in the year of his father’s consulship.
8. Silenus: Silenus was a satyr, sometimes said to be the son of Pan, and a companion of Dionysus; he was frequently depicted as elderly and drunken, and there are often said to be many Sileni, not just one Silenus. Johnson refers to the tenth eclogue of Virgil.
9. Gallus: Gaius Cornelius Gallus (69–26 BC), poet and soldier, first prefect of Egypt under Augustus. He eventually committed suicide, having fallen from favour; he was praised by Virgil in the sixth and tenth eclogues, see especially Eclogues, x. 2–3 and 72–3.
10. harvests: ‘Frugibus alternis, non consule computat annum: / autumnum pomis, ver sibi flore notat’; ‘For him the returning seasons, not the consuls, mark the year: he knows autumn by her fruits, spring by her flowers’ (Claudian, ‘Felix, qui propriis aevum transegit in arvis’).
No. 39. Tuesday, 31 July 1750.
1. AUSONIUS: Untraced.
No. 41. Tuesday, 7 August 1750.
1. MART: Martial, X. xxiii. 5–8.
2. pedant’s pride: Matthew Prior, Solomon on the Vanity of the World, i. 236.
3. rasure: Erasure.
4. treasure of the past: Apparently a misremembering of Dryden’s Hind and the Panther, i. 258.
5. vexit: Horace, Odes, III. xxix. 45–8.
6. longam: Horace, Odes, I. iv. 15.
7. canis: Persius, Satires, v. 64–5.
No. 45. Tuesday, 21 August 1750.
1. EURIP: Euripides, Medea, 11. 14–16.
2. dissertations: Earlier Ramblers on the subject of marriage are Nos 18, 35 and 39.
3. crouds: Horace, Satires, I. i. 4–12.
No. 47. Tuesday, 28 August 1750.
1. PLIN: Pliny, Epistles, viii. 16. The translation is by Johnson’s friend John Boyle, Earl of Orrery (1707–62), who in 1751 had published his Letters of Pliny the Younger; this text (of which the punctuation has been slightly changed) may be found at ii. 231.
2. devotion: Plutarch, Lives, ‘Pyrrhus’, xiv.
3. vulnerary herbs: Herbs said to possess the power to heal wounds, typically, arnica. See Virgil, Aeneid, xii. 411 ff. and Claudius Aelianus, ,Varia Historia, i. 10: ‘The Cretans are excellent Archers; they shoot the Goats which feed on the tops of mountains, which being hurt, immediately eat of the herb Dittany, which as soon as they have tasted, the Arrow drops out’ (Claudius Aelianus his Various History, tr. Thomas Stanley (1666), p. 5).
4. GROTIUS: Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), Dutch statesman and jurist. The quotation comes from his ‘Consolatoria ad Patrem’, in Poemata Collecta (1617), p. 457, where, however, the text runs: ‘Non cedit Natura morae, si tempore reddi / Pax animo tranquilla potest, tu sperne morari: / Qui sapiet, sibi tempus erit…’ It would seem that Johnson was quoting from memory.
No. 49. Tuesday, 4 September 1750.
1. HOR: Horace, Odes, III. xxx. 6–8.
2. capital of the world: Plutarch, Lives, ‘Caesar’, xi. 2.
3. adscititious: Additional or supplemental.
4. tomb: Anacreontica, iv.
5. same cause: Plutarch, Lives, ‘Themistocles’, iii. 3–4.
6. country: Plutarch, Lives, ‘Caesar’, xi. 3; cf. also Dio Cassius, XXXVII. lii. 2 and Suetonius, ‘Divo Iulio’, vii. 1.
7. ‘Ρόδιος: Greek Anthology, viii. 348.
No. 60. Saturday, 13 October 1750.
1. HOR: Horace, Epistles, I. ii. 3–4.
2. Pliny: Pliny, Epistles, III. i.
3. miraturi: Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1533–1617), French statesman and historian. The quotation comes from ‘Viri Illustris Jac. Aug. Thuani… Commentariorum de Vita Sua Libri Sex’, in Historiarum Sui Temporis (1733), VII, pt. iv, p. 3 n. Johnson slightly misquotes: in the original, the final word is ‘cognituri’, which trims the boastfulness of the sentiment.
4. again slow: ‘Citus modo modo tardus incessus’; Sallust, De Coniuratione Catilinae, xv. 5.
5. idleness of suspense: Joachim Camerarius, Vita Melancthonis (1777), ch. xvii, p. 62, where the text is: ‘Usque adeo vero indiserta, confusa, vaga, indefinita, inexplicataque auersabatur, ut, quoties cum aliquibus de tempore esset constituendum, semper momentum horae iuberet nominari.’
6. negligent of his life: Sir William Temple, ‘Essay on the Cure of the Gout by Moxa’, in Works (1757), iii. 244.
7. pulse: ‘Preface’ to the Works of Joseph Addison (1721), i, p. xvi.
8. sense of both: Honorat de Beuil, ‘Mémoires pour la vie de Malherbe’.
9. due to the country: I have not been able to find this text in Burnet’s life of Hale: but it is perhaps a recollection of the tenth item in Hale’s list of ‘Things Necessary to be Continually had in Remembrance’: ‘X. That I be not biassed with Compassion to the Poor, or favour to the Rich, in point of Justice’ (Gilbert Burnet, Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale, Kt. (1682), p. 59).
No. 63. Tuesday, 23 October 1750.
1. HOR: Horace, Satires, I. iii. 11–15.
2. deliberation: Horace, Satires, I. i. 1–3.
3. Hermetick philosophy: So-called after Hermes Trismegistus, an aspect of the Egyptian god Thoth and author of all mystical doctrines, including that of alchemy, to which Johnson here refers.
No. 64. Saturday, 27 October 1750.
1. SALUST: Sallust, De Coniuratione Catilinae, xx. 4.
2. real friends: Phaedrus, Fabulae Aesopiae, iii. 9.
3. Horace: ‘Audebit, quaecumque parum splendoris habebunt / et sine pondere erunt et honore indigna ferentur, / verba movere loco, quamvis invita rededant’; ‘he will dare to revise, no matter how reluctantly, if his words are dull, or slight, or low’ (Horace, Epistles, II. ii. 111–13).
No. 70. Saturday, 17 November 1750.
1. OVID: Ovid, Metamorphoses, i. 114–15.
2. use or value: Hesiod, Works and Days, 11. 293–7.
3. torrent of custom: Cf. ‘Must helpless Man, in Ignorance sedate, / Roll darkling down the Torrent of his Fate?’ (Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes, 11. 345–6.
No. 71. Tuesday, 20 November 1750.
1. MART: Martial,
II. xc. 3–4.
2. do not understand them: An obscure reference, but cf. Aristotle, De Anima, II. i. 412 b, 5–6.
3. dilator, spe longus: Horace, Ars Poetica, 1. 172.
4. άλλà βάτον: Greek Anthology, xi. 53. The translation is Johnson’s own: cf. Samuel Johnson: The Complete English Poems, ed. J. D. Fleeman (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971), p. 98.
5. Baxter: Richard Baxter (1615–91), Puritan divine, imprisoned 1685–6. Edmund Calamy, Abridgement of Mr. Baxter’s… Life and Times (1702), pp. 596–7.
6.Hearne: Thomas Hearne (1678–1735), antiquary and non-juror. The Reliquiae Hearnianae, the most likely source for a judgement such as this, were only published from Hearne’s notebooks by Philip Bliss in 1857, and so could not have been known to Johnson. I have not been able to trace this remark in those works of Hearne’s which Johnson could have read. It may depend on oral tradition.
7. value of life: Actuarial science advanced significantly during the eighteenth century, particularly at the hands of Richard Price (1723-91), although his most influential writings on this subject were published after The Rambler.
8. into the grave: An egregious example of such miscalculation was Edward Gibbon, who relied on actuarial tables to claim for himself ‘about fifteen years’ remaining to live, less than three years before he actually died of peritonitis (The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon, ed. J. Murray (London: John Murray, 1896), p. 347).
No. 72. Saturday, 24 November 1750.
1. HOR: Horace, Epistles, I. xvii. 23–4.
2. balm of being: Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, xi. 546.
3. better man: William Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV, V. iv. 103.
No. 73. Tuesday, 27 November 1750.
1. OVID: Ovid, Tristia, III. viii. 11–12.
2. Tudors and Plantagenets: Both royal dynasties which had occupied the throne of England.
3. escutcheons and white gloves: Both tokens of aristocracy.
No. 76. Saturday, 8 December 1750.
1. HOR: Horace, Satires, II. iii. 48–51.
2. lenitive: A palliative, or soothing, medicine.
No. 77. Tuesday, 11 December 1750.
1. PRUDENT: Prudentius, Contra Symmachi Orationem, i. 635–7.
2. albus an ater: Literally, white or black.
3. for his country: ‘Catilina long a suis inter hostium cadavera repertus est, pulcherrima morte, si pro patria sic concidisset’; ‘Catiline was discovered far from his comrades amidst the corpses of his enemies – a fine death, if he had fallen for his homeland’ (Florus, Epitomae Bellorum, II. xii. 12).
4. much shall be required: Luke 12:48.
No. 79. Tuesday, 18 December 1750.
1. MART: Martial, xii. 51.
2. himself to be perjured: Antiphanes, fragment 241.
3. would live: Juvenal, viii. 84.
4. Camerarius: Joachim Camerarius (1500–74), German classical scholar and theologian, who sought to reconcile Catholics and Protestants. The anecdote, however, is not to be found in his works.
No. 85. Tuesday, 8 January 1751.
1. OVID: Ovid, Remedia Amoris, 11. 139–40.
2. mural or civick garlands: Mural honours were awarded in the Roman army to the first soldier to scale the walls of a besieged town; by extension, any military or civic honours.
3. Coronæ: Horace, Ars Poetica, ll. 379–81.
4. System of Education: John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), §§ 201–6.
5. Nero: Nero, who was Roman emperor AD 54–68, was infamous for his affectation of artistic talent, and for singing while watching Rome burn.
6. loom and the distaff: Ovid, Ars Amatoria, i. 359–60; Homer, Iliad, vi. 490–91.
7. peripatetick: The peripatetic school of philosophy was founded by Aristotle, and was so called because of his habit of teaching his students while walking through the Lyceum; hence, Aristotelian.
No. 87. Tuesday, 15 January 1751.
1. HOR: Horace, Epistles, I. i. 38–40.
2. catharticks of the soul: Cf. Joseph Addison, Spectator No. 507 (11 October 1712): ‘The Platonists have so just a Notion of the Almighty’s Aversion to every thing which is false and erroneous, that they looked upon Truth as no less necessary than Virtue, to qualifie an Human Soul for the Enjoyment of a separate State. For this Reason, as they recommended Moral Duties to qualifie and season the Will for a future Life, so they prescribed several Contemplations and Sciences to rectifie the Understanding. Thus Plato has called Mathematical Demonstrations the Catharticks or Purgatives of the Soul, as being the most proper Means to cleanse it from Error, and to give it a Relish of Truth, which is the natural Food and Nourishment of the Understanding, as Virtue is the Perfection and Happiness of the Will.’
3. per ora: Virgil, Georgics, iii. 8–9.
4. dead counsellors are safest: The saying is reported in Melchior de Santa Cruz de Dueñas, Floresta Española (1578), i. 25, sig. C5v: ‘Dezia el rey den Alonso de Aragon, que ningūo auia de to mar cōsejo cō los viuos, sino cō los muertos. Entendiendo por los libros, porque siu amore ni temor siempre dizen la verdad.’ (‘King Alonso of Aragon used to say that nobody should take advice from the living, but from the dead. By which he meant from books, because free from love or fear they always speak the truth.’) I am grateful to my colleague Dr Jonathan Thacker of Merton College, Oxford, for assistance with this translation.
5. fill up his hour: Untraced.
6. Tully: I. e. Cicero.
No. 90. Saturday, 26 January 1751.
1. VIRG: Virgil, Georgics, iv. 6.
2. membra poetæ: Horace, Satires, I. iv. 62; ‘you may find the limbs of a poet, albeit a dismembered one’.
3. free to all: Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 744 and 746–7.
4. Leucothea wak’d: Paradise Lost, xi. 130 and 131–5.
5. His trumpet: Paradise Lost, xi. 72–4.
6. sweet influence: Paradise Lost, vii. 370–5.
7. thee implores: Paradise Lost, vii. 33–8.
8. Torments him: Paradise Lost, i. 51–6.
9. train ascending: Paradise Lost, vii. 569 and 571–4.
10. With blessedness: Paradise Lost, vii. 56–9.
11. to wild: Paradise Lost, ix. 209–12.
12. Assist us: Paradise Lost, ix. 244–7.
13. him passing: Paradise Lost, x. 710–14.
14. chaos to retire: Paradise Lost, ii. 1034–8.
15. celestial song: Paradise Lost, vii. 8–12.
16. not to inquire: Paradise Lost, iii. 567–71.
17. general doom: Paradise Lost, xi. 73–6.
No. 93. Tuesday, 5 February 1751.
1. JUV: Juvenal, i. 170–1.
2. Baillet: Adrien Baillet (1649–1706), French cleric, scholar and man of letters. For Baillet’s indeed lengthy catalogue of the ‘préjugés’ which can impede the reception of criticism, see his Jugemens des Scavans (Amsterdam, 1725), I, i. 118–572.
3. reach of human abilities: Johnson may here be confusing some lines from the ‘Epilogue’ to Congreve’s The Way of the World (‘And sure he must have more than mortal skill / Who pleases anyone against his will’) with Dryden’s comment in the ‘Preface’ to Absalom and Achitophel, that ‘no man can be heartily angry with him, who pleases him against his will’.
4. Euclid or Archimedes: Euclid (fl. c. 300 BC), pre-eminent Greek mathematician and geometrician. Archimedes (c. 287–212 BC) was the most complete scientific genius of antiquity, who made enduring advances in the fields of mathematics, mechanics, physics and astronomy.
5. Sœpe et nulla: Seneca, Apocolocyntosis, xii. 21–2.
6. Langbaine, Borrichitus or Rapin: Gerard Langbaine (1656–92), dramatic critic and author of An Account of the English Dramatic Poets (Oxford, 1691) and Momus Triumphans: or, the Plagiaries of the English Stage (1688), in which prodigious reading is displayed. Olaus Borch, or Borrichius (not Borrichitus) (1626–90), Danish philologist and scientist, librarian of the University of Copenhagen. René Rapin (1621–87), French po
et, critic and theologian, influential in imparting a neo-classical and Aristotelian quality to literary criticism in France and elsewhere during the later seventeenth century.
7. in a good cause: Cf. Spectator No. 40 (16 April 1711).
8. Scaliger: Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540–1609) was the greatest literary scholar of the Renaissance. Like his father, Julius Caesar Scaliger (see above p. 542, note 3 to No. 4), he hailed from Lake Garda, and claimed descent from the noble Italian Della Scala family.
9. cannot be wounded: Cf. Virgil, Æneid, vi. 290–94.
10. beauties rather than faults: Cf. Spectator No. 291 (2 February 1712).
No. 101. Tuesday, 5 March 1751.
1. MART: Martial, XI.xlii. 3–4.
No. 106. Saturday, 23 March 1751.
1. CIC: Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II. ii. 5.
2. more conspicuous than pyramids: Horace, Odes, III. xxx. 1–2.
3. Starent superbi —.: Seneca, Troades, 11. 4–6.
4. Granvilles, Montagues, Stepneys, and Sheffields: All minor poets of the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. George Granville, Lord Lansdowne (1667–173 5), was a statesman, poet and dramatist, a suspected Jacobite, and an early patron of Pope. Charles Montagu, first earl of Halifax (1661–1715), was one of the signatories of the letter of invitation to William of Orange and the prime architect, with John Somers, of William III’s financial policy in the 1690s. He was also founder of the Bank of England. George Stepney (1663–1707) was a poet, Whig diplomat, and an associate of Halifax and Marlborough. John Sheffield, third earl of Mulgrave and later first duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1648–1721), was a patron of Dryden and friend of Pope.
5. Parnassus: A mountain north of Delphi in Greece, associated with the worship of Apollo and the muses; poetically, the home of the muses.
6. qualities of the air: Robert Boyle (1627–91) was an experimental scientist and man of letters. Assisted by Robert Hooke he performed the experiments on the qualities of air which led to the formulation of Boyle’s Law.