The Life of Samuel Johnson

by James Boswell

  MELIBÆUS.

  My admiration only I exprest,

  (No spark of envy harbours in my breast)

  That, when confusion o’er the country reigns,

  To you alone this happy state remains.

  Here I, though faint myself, must drive my goats,

  Far from their antient fields and humble cots.

  This scarce I lead, who left on yonder rock

  Two tender kids, the hopes of all the flock.

  Had we not been perverse and careless grown,

  This dire event by omens was foreshown;

  TRANSLATION OF HORACE. BOOK I. ODE xxii.

  The man, my friend, whose conscious heart

  With virtue’s sacred ardour glows,

  Nor taints with death the envenom’d dart,

  Nor needs the guard of Moorish bows:

  Though Scythia’s icy cliffs he treads,

  Or horrid Africk’s faithless sands;

  Or where the fam’d Hydaspes spreads

  His liquid wealth o’er barbarous lands.

  For while by Chloe’s image charm’d,

  Too far in Sabine woods I stray’d;

  Me singing, careless and unarm’d,

  A grizly wolf surprised, and fled.

  No savage more portentous stain’d

  Apulia’s spacious wilds with gore;

  None fiercer Juba’s thirsty land,

  Dire nurse of raging lions, bore.

  Place me where no soft summer gale

  Among the quivering branches sighs;

  Where clouds condens’d for ever veil

  With horrid gloom the frowning skies:

  Place me beneath the burning line,

  A clime deny’d to human race;

  I’ll sing of Chloe’s charms divine,

  Her heav’nly voice, and beauteous face.

  Translation of HORACE. BOOK II. Ode ix.

  CLOUDS do not always veil the skies,

  Nor showers immerse the verdant plain

  Nor do the billows always rise,

  Or storms afflict the ruffled main.

  Nor, Valgius, on th’ Armenian shores

  Do the chain’d waters always freeze;

  Not always furious Boreas roars,

  Or bends with violent force the trees.

  But you are ever drown’d in tears,

  For Mystes dead you ever mourn;

  No setting Sol can ease your cares,

  But finds you sad at his return.

  The wise experienc’d Grecian sage

  Mourn’d not Antilochus so long;

  Nor did King Priam’s hoary age

  So much lament his slaughter’d son.

  Leave off, at length, these woman’s sighs,

  Augustus’ numerous trophies sing;

  Repeat that prince’s victories,

  To whom all nations tribute bring.

  Niphates rolls an humbler wave,

  At length the undaunted Scythian yields,

  Content to live the Roman’s slave,

  And scarce forsakes his native fields.

  Translation of part of the Dialogue between HECTOR and ANDROMACHE; from the Sixth Book of HOMER’S ILIAD.

  SHE ceas’d: then godlike Hector answer’d kind,

  (His various plumage sporting in the wind)

  That post, and all the rest, shall be my care;

  But shall I, then, forsake the unfinished war?

  How would the Trojans brand great Hector’s name!

  And one base action sully all my fame,

  Acquired by wounds and battles bravely fought!

  Oh! how my soul abhors so mean a thought.

  Long since I learn’d to slight this fleeting breath,

  And view with cheerful eyes approaching death

  The inexorable sisters have decreed

  That Priam’s house, and Priam’s self shall bleed:

  The day will come, in which proud Troy shall yield,

  And spread its smoking ruins o’er the field.

  Yet Hecuba’s, nor Priam’s hoary age,

  Whose blood shall quench some Grecian’s thirsty rage,

  Nor my brave brothers, that have bit the ground,

  Their souls dismiss’d through many a ghastly wound,

  Can in my bosom half that grief create,

  As the sad thought of your impending fate:

  When some proud Grecian dame shall tasks impose,

  Mimick your tears, and ridicule your woes;

  Beneath Hyperia’s waters shall you sweat,

  And, fainting, scarce support the liquid weight:

  Then shall some Argive loud insulting cry,

  Behold the wife of Hector, guard of Troy!

  Tears, at my name, shall drown those beauteous eyes,

  And that fair bosom heave with rising sighs!

  Before that day, by some brave hero’s hand

  May I lie slain, and spurn the bloody sand.

  To a Young Lady on her BIRTH-DAY.a

  THIS tributary verse receive my fair,

  Warm with an ardent lover’s fondest pray’r.

  May this returning day for ever find

  Thy form more lovely, more adorn’d thy mind;

  All pains, all cares, may favouring heav’n remove,

  All but the sweet solicitudes of love!

  May powerful nature join with grateful art,

  To point each glance, and force it to the heart!

  O then, when conquered crouds confess thy sway,

  When ev’n proud wealth and prouder wit obey,

  My fair, be mindful of the mighty trust,

  Alas! ’tis hard for beauty to be just.

  Those sovereign charms with strictest care employ;

  Nor give the generous pain, the worthless joy:

  With his own form acquaint the forward fool,

  Shewn in the faithful glass of ridicule;

  The Young Authour.a

  WHEN first the peasant, long inclin’d to roam,

  Forsakes his rural sports and peaceful home,

  Pleas’d with the scene the smiling ocean yields,

  He scorns the verdant meads and flow’ry fields;

  Then dances jocund o’er the watery way,

  While the breeze whispers, and the streamers play:

  Unbounded prospects in his bosom roll,

  And future millions lift his rising soul;

  In blissful dreams he digs the golden mine,

  And raptur’d sees the new-found ruby shine.

  Joys insincere! thick clouds invade the skies,

  Loud roar the billows, high the waves arise;

  Sick’ning with fear, he longs to view the shore,

  And vows to trust the faithless deep no more.

  So the young Authour, panting after fame,

  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 counsel 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.b

  Ye bl
ooming 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;

  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.26

  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 sake, though he wanted not a tutor, he was put under the tuition of Dr. John Bancroft, afterwards Bishop of Oxon.’a

  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 nowb 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.’c

  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, tha
t he obtained great applause from it, which ever after kept him high in the estimation of his College, and, indeed, of all the University.