Selected Essays (Penguin Classics)
Page 68
4. the cool, the silent: Milton, Paradise Lost, v. 38–9.
5. the face of things: Milton, Paradise Lost, v. 43.
6. RAMAZZINI: Bernardino Ramazzini (1633–1714), Italian physician.
7. without Sleep: Plutarch, Lives, ‘Alexander’, xxii.
8. CLELIA: The romance by Madeleine de Scudéry, Clélie (1654–61).
9. cursed with immortality: A reference to the Struldbrugs, in book three of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726).
10. Phæacia: Cf. the motto for this paper.
11. BARRETIER: Perhaps Barezzi (fl. early seventeenth century), Italian printer and savant.
12. slow length along: Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1. 357.
13. waking nights: Publius Papinius Statius (c. 40–96 AD), Roman epic and miscellaneous poet. Sylvae, v. 4.
14. COWLEY: Abraham Cowley, Sex Libri Plantarum, iv. 49–60.
15. C. B.: It is not known whose initials these were.
16. without my prayers: Sir Thomas Browne (1605–82), doctor and prose writer, author of Religio Medici (1643). Religio Medici, ii. 12.
No. 45. Tuesday, 10 April 1753.
1. LUCAN: Lucan, Pharsalia, i. 92–3.
2. ungula campum: Statius, Thebaid, vi. 400–401.
3. POPE: Pope, Windsor Forest, 11. 153–4.
4. could not stand before them: Johnson here is misremembering the comment Swift made in a letter to Pope of 20 September 1723: 'i have often endeavoured to establish a friendship among all men of genius, and would fain have it done. They are seldom above three or four contemporaries, and if they could be united, would drive the world before them’ (The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. F. Elrington Ball, 6 vols. (London: Bell and Sons, 1910–14), iii, p. 175).
No. 50. Saturday, 28 April 1753.
1. PHÆD: Phaedrus, Fabulae Aesopiae, I. x. 1–2.
2. tell the truth: Diogenes Laertius, Lives, ‘Aristotle’, xi.
3. subsist without it: For Browne, see Adventurer No. 39, note 16. Pseudodoxia Epidemica, I. xi. 16.
4. they have not seen: Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–65), author, sailor and diplomat. Quotation untraced.
No. 67. Tuesday, 26 June 1753.
1. VIRG: Virgil, Æneid, vi. 663.
2. that I do not want: Diogenes Laertius, Lives, ‘Socrates’, ix.
No. 69. Tuesday, 3 July 1753.
1. CÆSAR: Caesar, Gallic War, iii. 18.
2. for another year: I.e. Cicero, De Senectute, vii. 24.
3. floats lazily down the stream: Cf. 11. 345–6 of Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes for another, although slightly differing, use of this metaphor: ‘Must helpless Man, in Ignorance sedate, / Roll darkling down the Torrent of his Fate?’
No. 84. Saturday, 25 August 1753.
1. HOR: Horace, Satires, II. vii. 73–4.
2. the rest of the world: Sir William Temple, ‘Of Poetry’, in his Works (1757), iii. 425.
3. DON QUIXOTE’S inn: Cervantes, Don Quixote, pt. 1, chs. 32–47.
4. surtout: An overcoat or greatcoat.
5. VIATOR: I.e. traveller.
No. 85. Tuesday, 28 August 1753.
1. HOR: Horace, Ars Poetica, 11. 412–13.
2. observed by BACON: ‘Of Studies’, in Francis Bacon, The Essays, ed. J. Pitcher (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985), p. 209; cf. n. 4 to The Rambler No. 137 above for another reference by Johnson to this essay.
3. opinion has of late been: Johnson here caricatures and attacks some of the attitudes associated most notoriously with French philosophers such as D’Alembert, who in the ‘Discours Préliminaire’ to the Encyclo-pédie had recently disparaged scholarship.
4. to possess it: Persius, i. 27.
5. as POPE expresses it: Pope, Dunciad, iii. 182.
6. BOERHAAVE complains: Cf. above, Rambler No. 114, note 3. Elementa Chemiæ (1733), i, ‘Propositum’.
No. 95. Tuesday, 2 October 1753.
1. OVID: Ovid, Metamorphoses, iv. 284.
2. equal readiness: Cf. Johnson’s comment about his own Rasselas and Voltaire’s Candide, ‘that if they had not been published so closely one after the other that there was not time for imitation, it would have been in vain to deny that the scheme of that which came latest was taken from the other’ (James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman, corr. J. D. Fleeman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 241).
3. by Sir ISAAC NEWTON: Newton’s work on colour, including the demonstration of the seven spectral colours, was the subject of experiments he performed in 1665 and 1666. These experiments later formed the basis of a paper he delivered at the Royal Society in 1672 (subsequently published in the Philosophical Transactions for that year), and for the first book of his Opticks (1704).
No. 99. Tuesday, 16 October 1753.
1. OVID: Ovid, Metamorphoses, ii. 328.
2. not only be virtuous but fortunate: Sir William Temple, ‘Of Heroick Virtue’, in his Works (1757), iii. 306, where Temple in fact says that the ‘excellency of genius’ necessary for heroic virtue ‘must be assisted by fortune, to preserve it to maturity’.
3. than he could think: Shakespeare, Coriolanus, IV. v. 167–8.
4. traitorrs and incendiaries: Machiavelli, Discorsi, I, x.
5. ALEXANDER the GREAT: Cf. Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes, 1. 179. For another instance of contemporary disparagement of Alexander the Great, see Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, iv. 217–20.
6. Pultowa: Battle fought between the Russians under Peter the Great and the Swedish forces under Charles XII on 8 July 1709.
7. the art of war: Cf. Vanity of Human Wishes, 1. 210.
8. PETER: Peter I, or the Great (1672–1725), Tsar of Russia.
9. the Orrery: A clockwork mechanism designed to show the movement of the planets around the sun. The actual inventor was George Graham (1673–1711), John Rowley being the instrument-maker who realized his design.
10. BOYLE: Robert Boyle (1627–91), experimental scientist, founder of the Boyle Lectures, of which the purpose was to demonstrate the congruence of natural and revealed religion.
11. alta semper cupiebat: ‘His soul craved the excessive, the incredible, the gigantic’; Sallust, Catiline, v. 5.
12. union of the Thames and Severn by a canal: Such a canal was in fact constructed and opened in 1789.
13. turning the Nile into the Red Sea: In 1513 Afonso de Albuquerque (1453–1515), the Portuguese viceroy, proposed such a scheme for the reduction of Egypt.
No. 102. Saturday, 27 October 1753.
1. JUV: Juvenal, x. 5–6.
2. fining for Sheriff: That is, paying a fine in lieu of shouldering the office.
3. how I hate his beams: Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 37.
4. corruption of his countrymen: Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC) and Demosthenes (383–322 BC), both great orators of respectively republican Rome and ancient Athens; Hannibal (247–182 BC), supreme military commander of the Carthaginians, whose audacious invasion of Italy during the Second Punic War ended in retreat, attributed by some to Hannibal’s own reluctance to pursue an advantage, by others to the enervating effects of Italian luxury on the morale of his troops.
5. cit: Short for ‘citizen’ and defined by Johnson as ‘A pert low townsman; A pragmatical trader’.
6. MERCATOR: I.e. merchant.
No. 107. Tuesday, 13 November 1753.
1. HOR: Horace, Ars Poetica, 1. 78.
2. nor fit for tillage: For Sir Kenelm Digby, see above, Adventurer No. 50, note 4. Johnson is here paraphrasing the end of his Observations upon Religio Medici (1643).
3. or immediately to lose it: Greek Anthology, ix. epigr. 359.
4. has its felicity: Greek Anthology, ix. epigr. 360.
No. 111. Tuesday, 27 November 1753.
1. OVID: Ovid, Metamorphoses, xiii. 140–41.
2. a tragic poet: Seneca, Troades, 1. 1023.
3. not of themselves: Martial, X. xlvii. 3.
4. says SOUTH: Robert South (1634–1716), court preacher
favoured by Charles II, who specialized in attacking Dissenters. The reference is to South’s sermon on Proverbs 3:17, ‘Her Wayes are Wayes of Pleasantness’, in which however Johnson has substituted idleness for South’s pleasure as the thing men eventually shun: ‘The most Voluptuous, and loose person breathing, were he but tyed to follow his Hawks, and his Hounds, his Dice, and his Courtships every day, would find it the greatest Torment, and Calamity that could befal him; he would flie to the Mines and the Gallyes for his Recreation, and to the Spade and the Mattock for a Diversion from the misery of a Continuall un-intermitted Pleasure’ (Robert South, Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions (Oxford, 1679), p. 190).
5. homo quam sibi: Juvenal, x. 347–48, 350.
No. 119. Tuesday, 25 December 1753.
1. HOR: Horace, Odes, II. ii. 9–12.
2. the fewest things: Diogenes Laertius, Lives, ‘Socrates’, xi.
3. to be DIOGENES: Plutarch, Lives, ‘Alexander’, xiv.
4. virtuosos: A connoisseur or savant in the realm of the fine arts, antiquities or natural curiosities, but with overtones of dilettantism and shallowness.
5. tears on other occasions: Related of M. L. Crassus by Plutarch (Moralia, 89, 811 and 976), and of Hortensius by Pliny (Natural History, ix. 172).
6. the blood of a man: Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras, xxx.
7. which I do not want: Diogenes Laertius, Lives, ‘Socrates’, ix.
No. 126. Saturday, 19 January 1754.
1. LUCAN: Lucan, Pharsalia, ix. 576–7.
2. when he conferred with EGERIA: Plutarch, Lives, ‘Numa’, IV.
3. the things eternal: Cf. 2 Corinthians 4:18.
No. 137. Tuesday, 26 February 1754.
1. PYTH: Pythagoras, Aurea Carmina, xlii.
2. shackle the torrent: Xerxes, when a bridge of ships thrown across the Hellespont to enable him to invade Greece had been destroyed by a storm, had chains thrown over the sea, as a token of his mastery; cf. Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes, 1. 232.
3. the rearward of the fashion: Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV, III. ii. 339.
No. 138. Saturday, 2 March 1754.
1. HOR: Horace, Epistles, I. xviii. 102–3.
2. by HORACE: ‘Cui lecta potenter erit res, / nec facundia deseret hunc nec lucidus ordo’; Horace, Ars Poetica, 11. 40–41.
THE IDLER
Johnson wrote The Idler between 1758 and 1760. Lighter in tone and shorter in length than both The Rambler and The Adventurer, these essays were published as leading articles in the Universal Chronicle, a new weekly newspaper. Johnson, then occupied with his edition of Shakespeare, had been induced to contribute to the newspaper by the promise of a share in the profits. The text for this edition has been taken from the second edition of 1761 (with the exception of the original No. 22).
No. 1. Saturday, 15 April 1758.
1. HOR: Horace, Odes, I. xxxii. 1–2. Epigraph translates: ‘we idly play, beneath the shade’.
2. to beg a Name: Johnson refers to the Universal Spectator (1728-46), the Female Spectator (1744–6), the Spectator (1753–4), and the Tatler Revived (1750).
No. 5. Saturday, 13 May 1758.
1. ANAC: Anacreon, Carmina Anacreontea, xxiv. 9–11. The whole of the short lyric from which Johnson quotes the penultimate sentence may be translated as follows: ‘Nature gave horns to bulls, hooves to horses, swiftness to hares, a wide mouth full of teeth to lions, the power of swimming to fish, flight to birds, wisdom to men. But for women she had nothing left. And so? She gives them beauty, strong as any shield, strong as any sword. A beautiful woman prevails over even steel or flame.’
2. vendible: Saleable or marketable.
3. the Salic law: The alleged fundamental law of the French monarchy, which excluded females from the succession; cf. Shakespeare, Henry V, I. ii. 33–95.
4. defeated by women: On 9 July 1755, at Fort Duquesne.
5. Minorca: Surrendered to the French on 28 June 1756.
6. return in safety: The expedition against Rochefort had been launched in September 1756, and had been a fiasco.
No. 10. Saturday, 17 June 1758.
1. whom they profess to follow: For a different view of political association, consider this passage from Burke’s Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770): ‘How men can proceed without any connexion at all, is to me utterly incomprehensible. Of what sort of materials must that man be made, how must he be tempered and put together, who can sit whole years in Parliament, with five hundred and fifty of his fellow citizens, amidst the storm of such tempestuous passions, in the sharp conflict of so many wits, and tempers, and characters, in the agitation of such mighty questions, in the discussion of such vast and ponderous interests, without seeing any one sort of men, whose character, conduct, or disposition, would lead him to associate himself with them, to aid and be aided in any one system of public utility’ (Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. David Womersley (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1998), p. 274).
2. Cartesian: That is, a follower of René Descartes (1596–1650), French philosopher and mathematician, whose dualistic philosophy in which mind and body were rigidly separated enabled the denial of finer sensations to animals.
3. Disciple of Malbranche: Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715), French theologian and philosopher, who expounded the doctrine of Cartesian dualism.
4. Follower of Berkley: George Berkeley (1685–1753), notorious, because much misunderstood, immaterialist philosopher. Boswell records a famous incident when Johnson, challenged to refute Berkeley’s philosophy, ‘answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, “I refute it thus” ’ (James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman, corr. J. D. Fleeman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 333).
5. Tillotson: John Tillotson (1630–94), archbishop of Canterbury, whose pronounced latitudinarian beliefs exposed him to the suspicion of deism and even atheism, at least in the minds of Jacobites and Tories.
6. Dettingen: A battle fought in 1743 between Allied and French forces as part of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48); now chiefly remembered for the fact that George II led his troops into action.
7. Fontenoy: A battle of the War of the Austrian Succession, fought on 11 May 1745 between French and Allied troops and resulting in a victory for the maréchal de Saxe.
8. Cornhill: The allusion is to a serious fire in London in 1758, which destroyed houses in and around Change Alley in Cornhill.
9. the ruin of England: Tom Tempest interprets recent English history as a conspiracy carried on by the Hanoverians and their adherents against the Stuarts. His beliefs comprise a caricatured Jacobite creed.
10. Utrecht: The Peace of Utrecht (1713) brought to a close the War of the Spanish Succession; it was hailed by the Tories as a triumph of diplomacy, and deplored by the Whigs as a blunder.
11. South Sea: The South Sea Company was formed in 1711, and in 1720 its shares rose very rapidly in value, before collapsing in a classic stock-market bubble. For Tories, the South Sea Bubble embodied all that was suspicious in the financial innovations associated with the Whigs; hence Jack’s willingness to attribute the failure of the company to the malign influence of the Whigs’ favourite villain, France.
12. Electoral Dominions: Hanover.
13. never be a Papist: Jack Sneaker is simply the obverse of Tom Tempest, and therefore subscribes to a caricatured Whig creed.
No. 17. Saturday, 5 August 1758.
1. Leeuwenhoeck: Antoine van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), Dutch microscopist; the first man to observe bacteria.
2. would pass for a Philosopher: Richard Mead, Of the Small-Pox and Measles (1747), ‘Preface’, pp. v–vi. Mead is discussing ‘a malevolent sort of men, who endeavour all they can to villify and depreciate other people’s works, as if they added to their own reputation in proportion as they detracted from others’ (p. v), and for Mead the ‘chief among them was John Woodward, Gresham professor, who s
erv’d an apprenticeship to a Linnen Draper, and afterwards from having got together an heap of shells, pebbles, and such like fossells, would pass for a Philosopher…’ (p. vi).
No. [22]. Saturday, 9 September 1758.
1. 9 September 1758: This essay was not included by Johnson in the collected edition of The Idler, presumably on account of the sombreness of its vision.
No. 27. Saturday, 21 October 1758.
1. acquainted with himself: The need for self-knowledge is an emphasis so frequent in Johnson’s writings that it was a natural choice of theme when Bonnell Thornton chose to parody Johnson’s style; see Appendix III, and also note 2 to The Rambler No. 24 (9 June 1750).
2. but slow advances.: Francis Bacon,Essays, ‘Of Nature in Men’, where however the text reads: ‘He that seeketh victory over his nature, let him not set himself too great nor too small tasks: for the first will make him dejected by often failings, and the second will make him a small proceeder, though by often prevailings’ (Bacon, Essays, ed. J. Pitcher (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985), p. 177).
3. œthera virtus: Virgil, Æneid, vi. 129–30.
No. 30. Saturday, 11 November 1758.
1. keep it in motion.: Cf. note 3 to The Rambler No. 2 (24 March 1750).
2. Sir Henry Wotton’s: Sir Henry Wotton (1568–1639), Provost of Eton, 1624–39, diplomat and man of letters. The definition was written by Wotton in the commonplace book of a friend; cf. Logan Pearsall Smith, Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton (1907), ii. 9–11.
No. 31. Saturday, 18 November 1758.
1. lustre and its shade: A slight misquotation of Samuel Butler, Hudibras, II. i. 905–8.
2. calls himself the Proud: Edward Young, Busiris, King of Egypt. A Tragedy (1719), I. i. 13, p. 2, where Syphaces says of Busiris: ‘He calls himself the Proud, and Glories in it.’