19 April 1759
May 1759, xx, 428–37
| Ruffhead (1723–69) was the author of political, legal and, later, biographical works. See Introduction, pp. 25–6. |
The method of conveying instruction under the mask of fiction or romance, has been justly considered as the most effectual way of rendering the grave dictates of morality agreeable to mankind in general. The diversity of characters, and variety of incidents, in a romance, keeps attention alive; and moral sentiments find access to the mind imperceptibly, when led by amusement: whereas dry, didactic precepts, delivered under a sameness of character, soon grow tiresome to the generality of readers.
But to succeed in the romantic way of writing, requires a sprightliness of imagination, with a natural ease and variety of expression, which, perhaps, oftener falls to the lot of middling writers, than to those of more exalted genius: and therefore, we observe, with less regret, of the learned writer of these volumes, that tale-telling evidently is not his talent. He wants that graceful ease, which is the ornament of romance; and he stalks in the solemn buskin, when he ought to tread in the light sock. His stile is so tumid and pompous, that he sometimes deals in sesquipedalia, such as excogitation, exaggeratory, &c. with other hard compounds, which it is difficult to pronounce with composed features—as multifarious, transcendental, indiscerpible, &c. When we meet with instances of this inflated stile, we can scarce forbear calling upon the writer, in the words of Martial—
Grande cothurnati pone Maronis opus.1
This swelling language may shew the writer’s learning, but it is certainly no proof of his elegance. If indeed he had put it into the mouth of a pedant only, nothing could be more apt: but unhappily he has so little conception of the propriety of character, that he makes the princess speak in the same lofty strain with the philosopher; and the waiting woman harangue with as much sublimity as her royal mistress.
With regard to the matter of these little volumes, we are concerned to say, that we cannot discover much invention in the plan, or utility in the design. The topics which the writer has chosen have been so often handled, they are grown threadbare: and with all his efforts to be original, his sentiments are most of them to be found in the Persian and Turkish tales, and other books of the like sort; wherein they are delivered to better purpose, and cloathed in a more agreeable garb. Neither has the end of this work any great tendency to the good of society. It is calculated to prove that discontent prevails among men of all ranks and conditions— the knowledge of which, we may acquire without going to Ethiopia to learn it.
But the inferences which the writer draws from this general discontent are by no means just. He seems to conclude from thence, that felicity is a thing ever in prospect, but never attainable. This conclusion, instead of exciting men to laudable pursuits, which should be the aim of every moral publication, tends to discourage them from all pursuits whatever; and to confirm them in that supine indolence, which is the parent of vice and folly: and which, we dare say, it is not the worthy author’s design to encourage.
It does not follow, that because there are discontented mortals in every station of life, that therefore every individual, in those several stations, is discontented. Whatever men may conclude in the gloom of a closet, yet if we look abroad, we shall find Beings who, upon the whole, afford us a moral certainty of their enjoying happiness. A continued or constant series of felicity is not the lot of human nature: but there are many who experience frequent returns of pleasure and content, which more than counterbalance the occasional interruptions of pain and inquietude. Such may be deemed really happy, who, in general, feel themselves so; and that there are many such, we see no reasonable cause to doubt.
We are apt to conclude too much from the restless disposition of
mankind, and to consider the desire which men express of changing their condition, as a constant mark of discontent and infelicity. But though this is often the case, it is not always so. On the contrary, our eagerness to shift the scene frequently makes a part of present enjoyment. The earnestness with which we pursue some probable, though distant, attainment, keeps the mind in a state of agreeable agitation, which improves its vigour. Be our condition what it will, the mind will soon grow torpid, and a tedium will ensue, unless we substitute some pursuit seemingly unconnected with our present state. Our fondness for change, however, does not always proceed from discontent merely on account of our present station, or from an expectation of greater and more permanent happiness in prospect. A wise man follows some distant pursuit, not as an ultimate, which is to ensure him felicity; but as a medium to keep the mind in action, and counterwork the inconveniences with which every state is attended. He is sensible that, when he attains his wishes, he shall still want something to diversify attention, and that further pursuits will be necessary to favour the active progress of the mind: such distant pursuits therefore, as they often engage the mind agreeably, are so far present enjoyments. But it is time to introduce our Author to the reader’s acquaintance.
This little work is divided into chapters; in the first of which we are presented with a romantic, but high wrought, description of a palace, or rather prison, in a recess called the Happy Valley. In this place, provided with every thing which art and nature could supply, to render it agreeable, the Prince, who had been immured here from his infancy, grows discontented; and his discontent inclines him to meditate his escape. In this disposition of mind, he becomes intimate with Imlac, a man of learning, with a taste for poetry; and who had travelled over a great part of the globe. He entertains the Prince with the relation of his travels, and in the course of his narrative, he gives a description of the advantages enjoyed by the European nations.
‘They are surely happy,’ said the Prince, ‘who have all these conveniences, of which I envy none so much as the facility with which separated friends interchange their thoughts.’
‘The Europeans,’ answered Imlac, ‘are less unhappy than we, but they are not happy. Human life is every where a state, in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.’
The Prince’s answer displays a simplicity of nature and goodness of heart, which is perfectly amiable and engaging,
[quotes ch. 12 ‘I am not yet willing’ to ‘rather specious than useful’.]
Here many striking and pertinent observations might have been made by Imlac, by way of reply. He might have proved the impossibility of ‘filling every day with pleasure.’ He might have shewn, that even wisdom and virtue, the parents of felicity, were sometimes nevertheless the sources of uneasiness and inquietude: that the perfection of our intellectual faculties, often leads to discover defects, which pain us in the observation: that the delicacy of our moral principles often subjects us to inconveniences, to which less susceptible dispositions are strangers. He might have observed to the Prince, that let his conduct in the choice of wife and friends be ever so wise, yet nevertheless his scheme of pleasure might be liable to interruption, from the loss or distress of those friends; and still much more subject to be disturbed by any disaster affecting those more intimate and dear connexions of wife and children: that these accidents, not to mention the shock of separation, might imbitter many days with sorrow. But Imlac, however, is suffered to pursue his narration without any comment on the Prince’s visionary scheme of bliss.
At length the Prince, with the assistance of Imlac, makes his escape with him from the Happy Valley, together likewise with his sister, and her favourite maid. Having passed through a diversity of scenes, and observed a variety of characters, the Prince at last meets with a wise and happy man.
[quotes ch. 18 ‘As he was one day’ to ‘in every one’s power’.]
Here the Writer presents us with an abstract of the Stoical tenets; which, in the event, he turns to ridicule. The Prince, who had obtained leave to visit his moral lecturer, found him one day inconsolable for the loss of an only daughter. Rasselas urged to him the precepts which he himself had so powerfully enforced. ‘Has Wisdom,’ said the Prince, ‘no strength to arm the heart against calamity? Consider that external things are naturally variable, but truth and reason are always the same.’ ‘What Comfort,’ said the mourner, ‘can truth and reason afford me? Of what effect are they now, but to tell me that my daughter will not be restored?’
Rasselas, however, was not disgusted with philosophy.
[quotes ch. 22 ‘He [Rasselas] went often to’ to ‘purify his heart’.]
The learned reader will perceive that, in this extract, the writer has availed himself of the arguments of Tully. But let us attend to the continuation of the debate.
[quotes remainder of ch. 22.]
In the character of this sage, the writer intends to expose the absurdity of the Epicurean doctrine: and it must be confessed, that he has taken an ingenious way of shewing its futility, by making the philosopher found a system of happiness upon a maxim which he is incapable of explaining intelligibly.
Rasselas was full of perplexities, and still continued doubtful concerning the way to happiness. At length, his sister and he agreed to divide between them the work of observation. The prince was to pursue his search in the splendour of courts, while she ranged through the scenes of humbler life.
When they met, they compared their remarks, and each found the other unsuccessful in the pursuit. Among other evils which infest private life, the princess Nekayah instances marriage.
[quotes ch. 26 ‘Some husbands are imperious’ to ‘celibacy has no pleasures’.]
This extravagant declamation may entertain those who have read little and thought less, but to others it will probably appear trite, inconclusive, and fallacious. When the writer tells us, that ‘marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures,’ we must confess, that the antithesis is striking; but is the opposition just? If the author is a married man, we smile at his mistake; if he is single, and writes from his own feelings, we commiserate his condition.
After a pause in the conversation, Rasselas, whose remarks on the condition of high life are but slender and imperfect, observes, that quiet is not the daughter of grandeur.
[quotes ch. 27 ‘The highest stations’ to ‘patience must suppose pain’.]
How unnaturally is this debate supported? The prince, with all the simplicity of a credulous virgin, fondly imagines that people in humble station ‘have nothing to do but to love and to be loved, to be virtuous and to be happy;’ while the princess opposes his delusion with bold, manly, and masterly sentiments, enforced with all the energy of declamation. Rasselas, like an innocent and tender pupil, is documented by his philosophic sister, who shews him the folly of his visionary expectations. One would imagine that they had changed sexes: for surely that fond hope and pleasing delusion had been more natural on her side: and those deep sentiments and spirited remonstrances had been more becoming in the prince. Nekayah might have related her observations; but the reflections resulting from them should have been reserved for Rasselas.
In a short time, they renew the conversation concerning marriage.
[quotes ch. 28 ‘I know not, said the princess’ to ‘indissoluble compacts’.]
By this argument, to say nothing of the strange language in which the lady is made to express herself, marriage is not placed in a more favourable light than celibacy was just before. In short, all that we can conclude from this conversation is, that a married life is very wretched, and a single one very miserable. For our parts, we are of opinion, that each state has its advantages and its inconveniencies. But to make a just comparison between both, we must admit all collateral circumstances to be equal. Thus for instance, if we suppose two men and two women, in whom the circumstances of intellect, morals, and disposition are equal, and that one couple is married while the other remains single, certainly we should not hesitate to conclude, that the married pair have the best prospect of enjoying the most perfect felicity human nature is capable of possessing.
After further researches, the prince and princess meet with an astronomer, who imagined that for five years he had possessed the regulation of the weather, and the distribution of the seasons. This species of frenzy gives room for a very sensible chapter on the dangerous prevalence of imagination.
The astronomer, however, is cured of his frenzy by intercourse with the world; and the tale draws to a conclusion, in which, as the writer frankly acknowledges, nothing is concluded. They find that happiness is unattainable, and remain undetermined in their choice of life. As nothing is concluded, it would have been prudent in the author to have said nothing. Whoever he is, he is a man of genius and great abilities; but he has evidently misapplied his talents. We shall only add, that his title-page will impose upon many of Mr. Noble’s2 fair customers, who, while they expect to frolic along the flowery paths of romance, will find themselves hoisted on metaphysical stilts, and born aloft into the regions of syllogistical subtlety, and philosophical refinement.
1759, ii, 447–9
The instruction which is found in most works of this kind, when they convey any instruction at all, is not the predominant part, but arises accidentally in the course of a story planned only to please. But in this novel the moral is the principal object, and the story is a mere vehicle to convey the instruction.
Accordingly the tale is not near so full of incidents, nor so diverting in itself, as the ingenious author, if he had not had higher views, might easily have made it; neither is the distinction of characters sufficiently attended to: but with these defects, perhaps no book ever inculcated a purer or sounder morality; no book ever made a more just estimate of human life, its pursuits, and its enjoyments. The descriptions are rich and luxuriant, and shew a poetic imagination not inferior to our best writers in verse. The style, which is peculiar and characteristical of the author, is lively, correct, and harmonious. It has however in a few places an air too exact and studied.
The ideas which travellers have given us of a mountain in which the branches of the royal family of Abissinia are confined, though it may not be very well founded in fact, affords a ground for the most striking description of a terrestial paradise, which has ever been drawn; in this the author places the hero of his tale.
[Seven paragraphs of quotation follow, including the description of the Happy Valley and the account of Rasselas’s discontent.]
In consequence of these reflections [Rasselas] contrives to escape out of the valley; but if the hero of the tale was not happy in this situation, we are not to be surprised, that he did not find happiness in his excursion into the world at large.
Though the author has not put his name to the work, there is no doubt that he is the same who has before done so much for the improvement of our taste and our morals, and employed a great part of his life in an astonishing work for fixing the language of this nation; whilst this nation, which admires his works, and profits by them, has done nothing for the author.
1802
| From the Critical Enquiry into the Moral Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson, 80–5 (see No. 2). See Introduction, p. 26. |
Rasselas has been considered as the masterpiece of Johnson, and has received very extensive and indeed merited commendation. But admiration of the man will often hurry us beyond deserved praise, and sink us in the meanness of hyperbole; and I fear this is sometimes the case with the Prince of Abyssinia. The language is harmonious, the arguments are acute, and the reflections are novel—but with all its splendour it exhibits a gloomy and imperfect picture. An excuse may indeed be offered for the melancholy scenes of life contained in this performance, which must be denied to the Rambler. Every one knows that Rasselas was composed to obtain money to behold an expiring parent whom Johnson tenderly loved; and it may be supposed that the gloom occasioned by such an approaching event, might in some measure tincture his writings. It is also to be remembered that he wrote it in want. These are indeed raisons de convenance, and might be admitted, did the Prince of Abyssinia stand out as an exception to his other writings: But as it is too much like all his other speculations upon life, we may justly conclude, that the same Rasselas would have been produced had he written it in the sunshine of plenty, and in the gaiety of happiness.
What has been said of the Rambler may be said of Rasselas. It is entitled to every praise which can be bestowed on language, on sentiment, and on argument; it is the production of a mind abundant in allusion, and capable of sublimity. It no where falls off from its dignity, but is uniformly grand even to a fault; for hence arises a want of discrimination which is remarkably obvious. The prince and princess, the waiting maid, the man of learning, and the robber, all discourse in the same exalted style, and reason with the same energy and perspicuity. Yet this is a fault which may be pardoned, in consideration of the advantages which we reap from it….
The plan proposed in composing Rasselas was to shew the vanity of all human wishes, and how much our most ardent designs may be frustrated by the will of heaven, or by the agency of their fellow creatures. This is indeed a common subject, and I fear a useless one, at least, when treated in the manner which Johnson has done. I know no advantage which mankind can reap from being told that life is one continued scene of misery, and that no condition can afford its possessor happiness. This information, if it were true, every man must know without being told, and as it is false, every man must despise. This is the doctrine of Rasselas, and this is exemplified by a variety of adventures; yet I may still read and admire it as a pleasing tale, and exhibiting pleasing ideas: but it excites no tumultuous sensations, nor awakens any sympathy; hence it is soon forgotten; the reader finds in it nothing which he has been accustomed to experience or believe; nothing which bears any resemblance to the real events of life; nor any situations which he can assimilate to his mind. The disquisitions which it contains are indeed valuable, but as they are literary, they can have but few admirers.
1810
|
Text from 1820 edition, xxvi. pp. i-viii. Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825), the immensely productive miscellaneous writer and educationist, included Rasselas in her fifty-volume series, The British Novelists. Given here is her preface. See Introduction, p. 26. |
Hercules, it is said, once wielded the distaff; and the Hercules of literature, Dr. Johnson, has not disdained to be the author of a novel. To say the truth, nothing which he has written has more the touch of genius than Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia: nor do any of his performances bear stronger marks of his peculiar character. It is solemn, melancholy and philosophical. The frame of the story is an elegant and happy exertion of fancy. It was probably suggested to his mind from recollections of the impression made upon his fancy by a book which he translated when he first entered on his literary career, namely, Father Lobo’s Account of a Voyage to Abyssinia.1
In that country, it is said, the younger branches of the royal family, instead of being sacrificed, as in some of the Eastern monarchies, to the jealousy of the reigning sovereign, are secluded from the world in a romantic and beautiful valley, where they are liberally provided with every thing that can gratify their tastes or amuse their solitude. This recess, which Dr. Johnson calls the happy valley, he has described with much richness of imagination. It is represented as being shut in by inaccessible mountains, and only to be entered through a cavern closed up with massy gates of iron, which were thrown open only once a year, on the annual visit of the emperor. At that time artists and teachers of every kind, capable of contributing to the amusement or solace of the princes, were admitted; but once admitted, they were immured for life with the royal captives. Every charm of nature and every decoration of art is supposed to be collected in this charming spot, and that its inhabitants had been, in general, content with the round of amusements provided for them, till at length Rasselas, a young prince of a sprightly and active genius, grows weary of an existence so monotonous, and is seized with a strong desire of seeing the world at large. In pursuance of this project, he contrives to dig a passage through the mountain, and to escape from this paradise with his favourite sister Nekayah and her attendant, and the philosopher who had assisted them in their enterprise, and who, being previously acquainted with the world, is to assist their inexperience. They are all equally disgusted with the languor of sated desires and the inactivity of unvaried quiet, and agree to range the world in order to make their choice of life.
The author, having thus stretched his canvass, proceeds to exhibit and to criticize the various situations and modes of human existence; public life and private; marriage and celibacy; commerce, rustic employments, religious retirement, &c., and finds that in all there is something good and something bad—that marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures; that the hermit cannot secure himself from vice, but by retiring from the exercise of virtue; that shepherds are boors, and philosophers—only men. Unable to decide amidst such various appearances of good and evil, and having seen enough of the world to be disgusted with it, they end their search by resolving to return with the first oppor-
tunity in order to end their days in the happy valley; and this, to use the author’s words in the title of his last chapter, is ‘the conclusion, in which nothing is concluded.’
Such is the philosophic view which Dr. Johnson and many others have taken of life; and such indecision would probably be the consequence of thus narrowly sifting the advantages and disadvantages of every station in this mixt state, if done without that feeling reference to each man’s particular position, and particular inclinations, which is necessary to incline the balance. If we choose to imagine an insulated being, detached from all connexions and all duties, it may be difficult for mere reason to direct his choice; but no man is so insulated: we are woven into the web of society, and to each individual it is seldom dubious what he shall do. Very different is the search after abstract good, and the pursuit of what a being born and nurtured amidst innumerable ties of kindred and companionship, feeling his own wants, impelled by his own passions, and influenced by his own peculiar associations, finds best for him. Except he is indolent or fastidious, he will seldom hesitate upon his choice of life. The same position holds good with regard to duty. We may bewilder ourselves in abstract questions of general good, or puzzle our moral sense with imaginary cases of conscience; but it is generally obvious enough to every man what duty dictates to him, in each particular case, as it comes before him.
The proper moral to be drawn from Rasselas is, therefore, not that goods and evils are so balanced against each other that no unmixed happiness is to be found in life, —a deduction equally trite and obvious; nor yet that a reasoning man can make no choice, —but rather that a merely reasoning man will be likely to make no choice, —and therefore that it becomes every man to make early that choice to which his particular position, his honest partialities, his individual propensities, his early associations impel him. Often does it happen that, while the over-refined and speculative are hesitating and doubting, the plain honest youth has secured happiness. Without this conclusion, the moral effect of the piece, loaded as it is with the miseries of life, and pointing out no path of action as more eligible than another, would resemble that of Candide,2 where the party, after all their adventures, agree to plant cabbages in their own garden: but the gloomy ideas of the English philosopher are softened and guarded by sound principles of religion.
Along with Voltaire, he strongly points and perhaps exaggerates the
miseries of life; but instead of evading their force by laughing at them, or drawing from them a satire against Providence, which Candide may be truly said to be, our author turns the mind to the solid consolations of a future state: ‘All,’ says he, ‘that virtue can afford is quietness of conscience, and a steady prospect of a future state: this may enable us to endure calamity with patience, but remember that patience must suppose pain.’
Such is the plan of this philosophical romance, in the progress of which the author makes many just strictures on human life, and many acute remarks on the springs of human passions; but they are the passions of the species, not of the individual. It is life, as viewed at a distance by a speculative man, in a kind of bird’s-eye view; not painted with the glow and colouring of an actor in the busy scene: we are not led to say, ‘This man is painted naturally,’ but, ‘Such is the nature of man.’ The most striking of his pictures is that of the philosopher, who imagined himself to have the command of the weather, and who had fallen into that species of insanity by indulging in the luxury of solitary musing, or what is familiarly called castle-building. His state is strikingly and feelingly described, and no doubt with the peculiar interest arising from what the author had felt and feared in his own mind; for it is well known that at times he suffered under a morbid melancholy near akin to derangement, which occasionally clouded his mighty powers; and no doubt he had often indulged in these unprofitable abstractions of thought, these seducing excursions of fancy.
The following remark ought to startle those who have permitted their mind to feed itself in solitude with its own creations and wishes. ‘All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity; but while this power is such as we can control or repress, it is not visible to others, nor considered as any depravation of the mental faculties. In time, some particular train of ideas fixes the attention, all other intellectual gratifications are rejected. By degrees the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time despotic; then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes away in dreams of rapture or of anguish.’
Rasselas is, perhaps, of all its author’s works, that in which his peculiar style best harmonizes with the subject. That pompous flow of diction, that measured harmony of periods, that cadenced prose which Dr. Johnson introduced, though it would appear stiff and cumbrous in the frame of a common novel, is sanctioned by the imitation, or what our authors have agreed to call imitation, of the Eastern style, a style which has been commonly adopted in Almoran and Hamet,3 Tales of the Genii,4 and other works, in which the costume is taken from nations whose remoteness destroys the idea of colloquial familiarity. We silence our reason by the laws we have imposed upon our fancy, and are content that both Nekayah and her female attendant, at the sources of the Nile, or the foot of the Pyramid, should express themselves in language which would appear unnaturally inflated in the mouths of a young lady and her waiting-maid conversing together in London or in Paris. It has been remarked, however, that Nekayah, it is difficult to say why, is more philosophical than her brother.
It has been already mentioned that the frame of this piece was probably suggested by the author’s having some years before translated an account of Abyssinia. It may be remarked by the way, how different an idea of the country and its inhabitants seems to have been entertained at that time, from that which is suggested by the accounts of Bruce and Lord Valentia.5 Thomson, who probably took his ideas from the voyage-writers of the time, represents the country of ‘jealous Abyssinia’ as a perfect paradise, ‘a world within itself; disdaining all assault;’ and mentions the ‘palaces, and fanes, and villas, and gardens, and cultured fields’ of this innocent and amiable people with poetic rapture.6 We must suppose that Father Lobo never had the honour of dancing with them on a gala-day.
Rasselas was published in 1759, and was then composed for the purpose of enabling the author to visit his mother in her last illness, and for defraying the expenses of her funeral. It was written with great rapidity; for the author himself has told us that it was composed in the evenings of one week, sent to the press in portions as it was written, and never reperused when finished. It was much read, and has been translated into several languages. Rich indeed must be the stores of that mind which could pour out its treasures with such rapidity, and clothe its thoughts, almost spontaneously, in language so correct and ornamented.
Perhaps the genius of Dr. Johnson has been in some measure mistaken. The ponderosity of his manner has led the world to give him more credit for science, and less for fancy, than the character of his works will justify. His remarks on life and manners are just and weighty, and show a
philosophical mind, but not an original turn of thinking. The novelty is in the style; but originality of style belongs to that dress and colouring of our thoughts in which imagination is chiefly concerned.
In fact, imagination had great influence over him. His ideas of religion were awful and grand, and he had those feelings of devotion which seldom subsist in a strong degree in a cold and phlegmatic mind; but his religion was tinctured with superstition, his philosophy was clouded with partialities and prejudices, his mind was inclined to melancholy.
In the work before us he has given testimony to his belief in apparitions, and has shown a leaning towards monastic institutions. Of his discoveries in any region of science posterity will be able to speak but little; but in his Ramblers he will be considered as having formed a new style, and his Rasselas, and Vision of Theodore, must give him an honourable place among those writers who deck philosophy with the ornamented diction and the flowers of fancy.
It should not be forgotten to be noticed in praise of Rasselas, that it is, as well as all the other works of its author, perfectly pure. In describing the happy valley, he has not, as many authors would have done, painted a luxurious bower of bliss, nor once throughout the work awakened any ideas which might be at variance with the moral truths which all his writings are meant to inculcate.