Chapter LXXII: Section IX: Samuel Johnson

We now come upon a strange character, the most esteemed of his time, a sort of literary dictator. Richardson was his friend, and gave him essays for his paper; Goldsmith, with an artless vanity, admires him, whilst suffering to be continually outshone by him; Miss Burney imitates his style, and reveres him as a father. Gibbon the historian, Reynolds the painter, Garrick the actor, Burke the orator, Sir William Jones the Orientalist, come to his club to converse with him. Lord Chesterfield, who had lost his favor, vainly tried to regain it, by proposing to assign to him, on every word in the language, the authority of a dictator.[832] Boswell dogs his steps, sets down his opinions, and at night fills quartos with them. His criticism becomes law; men crowd to hear him talk; he is the arbiter of style. Let us transport in imagination this ruler of mind, Dr. Samuel Johnson, into France, among the pretty drawing-rooms, full of elegant philosophers and epicurean manners; the violence of the contrast will mark better than all argument the bent and predilections of the English mind.

There appears then before us a man whose "person was large, robust, approaching to the gigantic, and grown unwieldy from corpulency,"[833] with a gloomy and unpolished air, "his countenance disfigured by the king's evil," and blinking with one of his eyes, "in a full suit of plain brown clothes," and with not overclean linen, suffering from morbid melancholy since his birth, and moreover a hypochondriac.[834] In company he would sometimes retire to a window or corner of a room, and mutter a Latin verse or a prayer.[835] At other times, in a recess, he would roll his head, sway his body backward and forward, stretch out and then convulsively draw back his leg. His biographer relates that it "was his constant anxious care to go out or in at a door or passage,... so as that either his right or his left foot should constantly make the first actual movement; ... when he had neglected or gone wrong in this sort of magical movement, I have seen him go back again, put himself in the proper posture to begin the ceremony, and having gone through it, walk briskly on and join his companion."[836] People are sitting at table, when suddenly, in a moment of abstraction, he stoops, and clenching hold of the foot of a lady, draws off her shoe.[837] Hardly is the dinner served when he darts on the food; "his looks seemed rivetted to his plate; nor would he, unless when in very high company, say one word, or even pay the least attention to what was said by others; (he) indulged with such intenseness, that, while in the act of eating, the veins of his forehead swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible."[838] If by chance the hare was high, or the pie had been made with rancid butter, he no longer ate, but devoured. When at last his appetite was satisfied, and he consented to speak, he disputed, shouted, made a sparring-match of his conversation, triumphed no matter how, laid down his opinion dogmatically, and ill-treated those whom he was refuting. "Sir, I perceive you are a vile Whig."[839] "My dear lady (to Mrs. Thrale), talk no more of this; nonsense can be defended but by nonsense."[840] "One thing I know, which you don't seem to know, that you are very uncivil."[841] In the intervals of articulating he made various sounds with his mouth, sometimes as if ruminating,... sometimes giving a half whistle, sometimes making his tongue play backwards from the roof of his mouth, as if clucking like a hen.... Generally, when he had concluded a period, in the course of a dispute,... he used to blow out his breath like a whale,[842] and swallow several cups of tea.

Then in a low voice, cautiously, men would ask Garrick or Boswell the history and habits of this strange being. He had lived like a cynic and an eccentric, having passed his youth reading miscellaneously, especially Latin folios, even those least known, such as Macrobius; he had found on a shelf in his father's shop the Latin works of Petrarch, whilst he was looking for apples, and had read them;[843] "he published proposals for printing by subscription the Latin poems of Politian."[844] At twenty-five he had married for love a woman of about fifty, "very fat, with swelled cheeks, of a florid red, produced by thick painting, flaring and fantastic in her dress,"[845] and who had children as old as himself. Having come to London to earn his bread, some people, seeing his convulsive grimaces, took him for an idiot; others, seeing his robust frame, advised him to buy a porter's knot.[846] For thirty years he worked like a hack for the publishers, whom he used to thrash when they became impertinent;[847] always shabby, having once fasted two days;[848] content when he could dine on "a cut of meat for sixpence, and bread for a penny";[849] having written "Rasselas" in eight nights, to pay for his mother's funeral. Now pensioned[850] by the king, freed from his daily labors, he gave way to his natural indolence, lying in bed often till midday and after. He is visited at that hour. We mount the stairs of a gloomy house on the north side of Fleet Street, the busy quarter of London, in a narrow and obscure court; and as we enter, we hear the scoldings of four old women and an old quack doctor, poor penniless creatures, bad in health and in disposition, whom he has rescued, whom he supports, who vex or insult him. We ask for the Doctor, a negro opens the door; we gather round the master's bed: there are always many distinguished people at his levee, including even ladies. Thus surrounded, "he declaims, then went to dinner at a tavern, where he commonly stays late,"[851] talks all the evening, goes out to enjoy in the streets the London mud and fog, picks up a friend to talk again, and is busy pronouncing oracles and maintaining his opinion till four in the morning.

Whereupon we ask if it is the freedom of his opinions which is fascinating. His friends answer, that there is no more indomitable partisan of order. He is called the Hercules of Toryism. From infancy he detested the Whigs, and he never spoke of them but as public malefactors. He insults them even in his Dictionary. He exalts Charles II and James II as two of the best kings who have ever reigned.[852] He justifies the arbitrary taxes which Government presumes to levy on the Americans.[853] He declares that "Whigism is a negation of all principle";[854] that "the first Whig was the devil";[855] that "the Crown has not power enough";[856] that "mankind are happier in a state of inequality and subordination."[857] Frenchmen of the present time, admirers of the "Contrat Social," soon feel, on reading or hearing all this, that they are no longer in France. And what must they feel when, a few moments later, the Doctor says: "I think him (Rousseau) one of the worst of men; a rascal who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been. ... I would sooner sign a sentence for his transportation, than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the plantations."[858]....

It seems that in England people do not like philosophical innovators. Let us see if Voltaire will be treated better: "It is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them (Rousseau and Voltaire)."[859] In good sooth, this is clear. But can we not look for truth outside an Established Church? No; "no honest man could be a Deist; for no man could be so after a fair examination of the proofs of Christianity."[860] Here is a peremptory Christian; there are scarcely any in France so decisive. Moreover, he is an Anglican, with a passion for the hierarchy, an admirer of established order, an enemy of Dissenters. We see him bow to an archbishop with peculiar veneration.[861] We hear him reprove one of his friends "for saying grace without mention of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."[862] If we speak to him of a Quakers' meeting, and of a woman preaching, he will tell us that "a woman preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs; it is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all."[863] He is a Conservative, and does not fear being considered antiquated. He went at one o'clock in the morning into St. John's Church, Clerkenwell, to interrogate a tormented spirit, which had promised to "give a token of her presence there by a knock upon her coffin."[864] If we look at Boswell's life of him, we will find there fervent prayers, examinations of conscience, and rules of conduct. Amidst prejudices and ridicule he has a deep conviction, an active faith, a severe moral piety. He is a Christian from his heart and conscience, reason and practice. The thought of God, the fear of the last judgment, engross and reform him. He said one day to Garrick: "I'll come no more behind your scenes, David, for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities." He reproaches himself with his indolence, implores God's pardon, is humble, has scruples. All this is very strange. We ask men what can please them in this grumbling bear, with the manners of a beadle and the inclinations of a constable? They answer, that in London people are less exacting than in Paris, as to manners and politeness; that in England they allow energy to be rude and virtue odd; that they put up with a combative conversation; that public opinion is all on the side of the constitution and Christianity; and that society was right to take for its master a man who, by his style and precepts, best suited its bent.

We now send for his books, and after an hour we observe, that whatever the work be, tragedy or dictionary, biography or essay, he always writes in the same style. "Dr. Johnson," Goldsmith said one day to him, "if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales."[865] In fact, his phraseology rolls ever in solemn and majestic periods, in which every substantive marches ceremoniously, accompanied by its epithet; grand, pompous words peal like an organ; every proposition is set forth balanced by a proposition of equal length; thought is developed with the compassed regularity and official splendor of a procession. Classical prose attains its perfection in him, as classical poetry in Pope. Art cannot be more finished, or nature more forced. No one has confined ideas in more strait compartments; none has given stronger relief to dissertation and proof; none has imposed more despotically on story and dialogue the forms of argumentation and violent declamation; none has more generally mutilated the flowing liberty of conversation and life by antitheses and technical words. It is the completion and the excess, the triumph and the tyranny of oratorical style.[866] We understand now that an oratorical age would recognize him as a master, and attribute to him in eloquence the mastery which it attributed to Pope in verse.

We wish to know what ideas have made him popular. Here the astonishment of a Frenchman redoubles. We vainly turn over the pages of his Dictionary, his eight volumes of essays, his many volumes of biographies, his numberless articles, his conversation so carefully collected; we yawn. His truths are too true; we already know his precepts by heart. We learn from him that life is short, and we ought to improve the few moments granted to us;[867] that a mother ought not to bring up her son as a fop; that a man ought to repent of his faults, and yet avoid superstition; that in everything we ought to be active, and not hurried. We thank him for these sage counsels, but we mutter to ourselves that we could have done very well without them. We should like to know who could have been the lovers of ennui who have bought up thirteen thousand copies of his works. We then remember that sermons are liked in England, and that these essays are sermons. We discover that men of reflection do not need bold or striking ideas, but palpable and profitable truths. They desire to be furnished with a useful provision of authentic examples on man and his existence, and demand nothing more. No matter if the idea is vulgar; meat and bread are vulgar too, and are no less good. They wish to be taught the kinds and degrees of happiness and unhappiness, the varieties and results of character and condition, the advantages and inconveniences of town and country, knowledge and ignorance, wealth and moderate circumstances, because they are moralists and utilitarians; because they look in a book for the knowledge to turn them from folly, and motives to confirm them in uprightness; because they cultivate in themselves sense, that is common, practical reason. A little fiction, a few portraits, the least amount of amusement, will suffice to adorn it. This substantial food only needs a very simple seasoning. It is not the novelty of the dishes, nor dainty cookery, but solidity and wholesomeness, which they seek. For this reason essays are Johnson's national food. It is because they are insipid and dull for Frenchmen that they suit the taste of an Englishman. We understand now why they take for a favorite the respectable, the tiresome Dr. Samuel Johnson.