1779–81
26 September 1777
|
Life, iii. 110–11. The letter from Dilly (1732–79), one of the most reputable London booksellers, describes the genesis of the Lives of the English Poets. See Introduction, p. 13. |
Dear Sir,
You will find by this letter, that I am still in the same calm retreat, from the noise and bustle of London, as when I wrote to you last. I am happy to find you had such an agreeable meeting with your old friend Dr. Johnson; I have no doubt your stock is much increased by the inter-view; few men, nay I may say, scarcely any man, has got that fund of knowledge and entertainment as Dr. Johnson in conversation. When he opens freely, every one is attentive to what he says, and cannot fail of improvement as well as pleasure.
The edition of the Poets, now printing, will do honour to the English press; and a concise account of the life of each authour, by Dr. Johnson, will be a very valuable addition, and stamp the reputation of this edition superiour to any thing that is gone before. The first cause that gave rise to this undertaking, I believe, was owing to the little trifling edition of the Poets, printing by the Martins, at Edinburgh, and to be sold by Bell, in London. Upon examining the volumes which were printed, the type was found so extremely small, that many persons could not read them; not only this inconvenience attended it, but the inaccuracy of the press was very conspicuous. These reasons, as well as the idea of an invasion of what we call our Literary Property,1 induced the London Booksellers to
print an elegant and accurate edition of all the English Poets of reputation, from Chaucer to the present time.
Accordingly a select number of the most respectable booksellers met on the occasion; and, on consulting together, agreed, that all the proprietors of copy-right in the various Poets should be summoned together; and when their opinions were given, to proceed immediately on the business. Accordingly a meeting was held, consisting of about forty of the most respectable booksellers of London, when it was agreed that an elegant and uniform edition of The English Poets should be immediately printed, with a concise account of the life of each authour, by Dr. Samuel Johnson; and that three persons should be deputed to wait upon Dr. Johnson, to solicit him to undertake the Lives, viz. T.Davies, Strahan, and Cadell. The Doctor very politely undertook it, and seemed exceedingly pleased with the proposal. As to the terms, it was left entirely to the Doctor to name his own: he mentioned two hundred guineas2: it was immediately agreed to; and a farther compliment, I believe, will be made him. A committee was likewise appointed to engage the best engravers, viz. Bartolozzi, Sherwin, Hall, &c. Likewise another committee for giving directions about the paper, printing, &c. so that the whole will be conducted with spirit, and in the best manner, with respect to authourship, editorship, engravings, &c. &c. My brother will give you a list of the Poets we mean to give, many of which are within the time of the Act of Queen Anne, which Martin and Bell cannot give, as they have no property in them; the proprietors are almost all the booksellers in London, of consequence. I am, dear Sir,
Ever your’s,
EDWARD DILLY.
15 March 1779
| Text from the last edition (1783) in Johnson’s lifetime. The final paragraph was not included in the first edition. See Introduction, p. 13. |
The Booksellers having determined to publish a Body of English Poetry, I was persuaded to promise them a Preface to the Works of each Author; an undertaking, as it was then presented to my mind, not very extensive or difficult.
My purpose was only to have allotted to every Poet an Advertisement, like those which we find in the French Miscellanies, containing a few dates and a general character; but I have been led beyond my intention, I hope, by the honest desire of giving useful pleasure.
In this minute kind of History, the succession of facts is not easily discovered, and I am not without suspicion that some of Dryden’s works are placed in wrong years. I have followed Langbaine,1 as the best authority for his plays; and if I shall hereafter obtain a more correct chronology will publish it, but I do not yet know that my account is erroneous.
Dryden’s Remarks on Rymer have been somewhere printed before. The former edition I have not seen. This was transcribed for the press from his own manuscript.
As this undertaking was occasional and unforeseen, I must be supposed to have engaged in it with less provision of materials than might have been accumulated by longer premeditation. Of the later writers at least I might, by attention and enquiry, have gleaned many particulars, which would have diversified and enlivened my Biography. These omissions, which it is now useless to lament, have been often supplied by the kindness of Mr. Steevens and other friends; and great assistance has been given me by Mr. Spence’s Collections,2 of which I consider the communication as a favour worthy of public acknowledgement.
July–September 1779, lxi, 1–10, 81–92, 186–91;
August–December 1781, lxv, 100–12, 353–62, 408–11;
February 1782, lxvi, 113–27
| The ten volumes of Johnson’s Prefaces, Biographical and Critical to the Works of the English Poets—soon to be known as the Lives of the English Poets—appeared in 1779 (four volumes) and 1781 (six). The Revd Edmund Cartwright (1743–1823) became the rector of a Leicestershire parish in 1779 but is best known for his invention of the power-loom. He was a close friend of George Crabbe (see the Life of Crabbe by his son, 1947 edition, 117). See Introduction, pp. 7, 29. |
The long-expected beautiful edition of the English poets has at length made its appearance. Promises that are delayed too frequently, end in disappointment; but to this remark the present publication is an exception. We must ingenuously confess, that, from the first of its being advertised, we considered Dr. Johnson’s name merely as a lure which the proprietors of the work had obtained, to draw in the unwary purchaser; taking it for granted that he would have just allotted, as he owns he originally intended, to every poet, an advertisement, like those which are found in the French miscellanies, containing a few dates, and a general character; an undertaking, as he observes, not very tedious or difficult; and, we may add, an undertaking also that would have conferred not much reputation upon the Writer, nor have communicated much information to his readers. Happily for both, the honest desire of giving useful pleasure, to borrow his own expression, has led him beyond his first intention. This honest desire is very amply gratified. In the walk of biography and criticism, Dr. Johnson has long been without a rival. It is barely justice to acknowledge that he still maintains his superiority. The present work is no way inferior to the best of his very celebrated productions of the same class.
Of the four volumes of his Prefaces already published (more lives being promised), the first is allotted to Cowley and Waller, the second to Milton and Butler, the third is appropriated entirely to Dryden, and the fourth is divided between poets of inferior name, Denham, Sprat, Roscommon, Rochester, Yalden, Otway, Duke, Dorset, Halifax, Stepney, Walsh, Garth, King, J.Philips, Smith, Pomfret, and Hughes.
In the narrative of Cowley’s life there is little, except the manner in which it is told, that is new; but this deficiency, which was not in the Biographer’s power to remedy, is fully compensated for in the review of his writings, which abounds in original criticism. Cowley’s poetical character is introduced with an account of a race of writers who appeared about the beginning of the seventeenth century, whom Dr. Johnson terms the Metaphysical Poets.
[quotes paras. 51–63, ‘The metaphysical poets’ to ‘Milton disdained it’.]
He then proceeds to illustrate his remarks by examples, in the selection of which he is singularly happy. Of these examples the limits of the present Article will not admit of more than the following from Dr. Donne. It is a most curious specimen of metaphysical gallantry:
|
As the sweet sweat of roses in a still, As that which from chaf’d musk-cat’s pores doth trill, As the almighty balm of th’ early East, Such are the sweet drops of my mistress’ breast. And on her neck her skin such lustre sets, They seem no sweat drops, but pearl coronets: Rank sweaty froth thy mistress’ brow defiles. |
‘In all these examples it is apparent,’ as the Critic judiciously remarks, ‘that whatever is improper or vicious, is produced by a voluntary deviation from nature in pursuit of something new and strange; and that the writers fail to give delight, by their desire of exciting admiration.’
‘To chuse the best, among many good, is one of the most hazardous attempts of criticism.’ Dr. Johnson ventures, however, to recommend Cowley’s first piece, which he tells us ought to be inscribed To my Muse, for the want of which the second couplet is without reference. The Ode to Wit, he pronounces to be almost without a rival; and in the verses upon Crashaw, which apparently, says he, excel all that have gone before them, there are beauties which common authors may justly think not only above their attainment, but above their ambition. It were to be wished that a poet, of whom Cowley could speak in such terms of admiration as are to be met with in the verses alluded to, had been admitted into the present collection, or at least that some specimens of his works had been preserved in it.
In speaking of the Pindarique Ode of the last century, Dr. Sprat, the former biographer of Cowley, tells us, that the irregularity of numbers is the very thing which makes that kind of poesy fit for all manner of subjects. But, continues his present historian, he should have remembered that what is fit for every thing can fit nothing well.
[quotes paras. 141–3, ‘The great pleasure of verse’ to ‘supply its place’.]
While he was upon this subject, we could have wished to have had Dr. Johnson’s sentiments on the present pedantic affectation of dividing the English Ode into Strophè, Antistrophè, and Epode. Had the same reasons for such division subsisted now, as prevailed in the times of Pindar, our ode-writers would certainly have had some excuse for adopting it. We may be told, indeed, that this practice has the sanction of the highest poetical authority, we mean that of the late Mr. Gray; but in answer to this we may observe, that as no authority can sanctify absurdity, neither should it prevail with us to adopt what both common sense and reason are compelled to disapprove.
The neglect and obscurity of Cowley’s principal poem the Davideis, is accounted for both from the choice of his subject, and from the performance of the work.
[quotes paras. 147–8, ‘Sacred History’ to ‘they were made’.]
It is not to be supposed that in a poem labouring with these disadvantages, his critic will find much to admire. His character of the Davideis is contained in few words: ‘In the perusal of the Davideis, as of all Cowley’s works, we find wit and learning unprofitably squandered. Attention has no relief; the affections are never moved; we are sometimes surprised, but never delighted, and find much to admire, but little to approve. Still however it is the work of Cowley, of a mind capacious by nature, and replenished by study.’
It is something singular that neither Dr. Johnson nor a former Editor of the select works of this writer take any notice of the following beautiful ode which David is supposed to sing under the windows of Michal’s chamber, when he first declares his passion to her:
[quotes ‘Awake, awake, my lyre’.]
The elegance and harmony of this little piece ought, before this, to have intitled it to selection. Indeed there are an hundred and thirty lines immediately preceding it, in which the characters of the two sisters, Merab and Michal, are drawn with great happiness, that merit notice, if it were for nothing but this, that they are totally free from every characteristic fault with which this Writer is charged. But this is not all their merit; they abound with beauties which common writers may justly think not only above their attainment, but above their ambition.
The character of Cowley, in which we perceive no marks of partiality, is thus concluded:
[quotes final paragraph.]
The preface to the works of Waller comes next in succession. The moral and political character of this applauded writer are developed with great skill and acuteness. Ever attentive to the more important interests of mankind, and sensible that biography ought to be a lesson of virtue, Dr. Johnson never omits to intersperse, amongst the different parts of his narration, either maxims of prudence or reflexions on the conduct of human life; something that may either direct the judgment or meliorate the heart. In the lives of Waller and his cotemporary poets he has proceeded farther; he has made them the vehicles of his political orthodoxy. As we profess the principles of universal toleration, we shall leave his political opinions to themselves. Were we, indeed, disposed to controvert them, it might be considered as an unnecessary trouble. There will never want combatants to attack a man of Dr. Johnson’s reputation, when the attack is to be made on a vulnerable part.
As the limits of our Review will not permit us to accompany our Biographer through the whole extent of his criticism on this Writer, we shall confine ourselves chiefly to that part of it which is allotted to his sacred poems, which do not please, we are told, like some of his other works.
[quotes paras. 134–41, ‘It has been the frequent’ to ‘the sidereal hemisphere’.]
It is thus that he very properly accounts for the failure of Waller in his sacred poems, and not their being written, as his former Editor supposes, after his genius had passed the zenith.
‘That natural jealousy which makes every man unwilling to allow much excellence in another, always produces a disposition to believe that the mind grows old with the body; and that he, whom we are now forced to confess superior, is hastening daily to a level with ourselves. By delighting to think this of the living, we learn to think it of the dead; and Fenton,1 with all his kindness for Waller, has the luck to mark the exact time when his genius passed the zenith, which he places at his fifty-fifth year. This is to allot the mind but a small portion. Intellectual decay is doubtless not uncommon; but it seems not to be universal. Newton was in his eighty-fifth year improving his Chronology, a few days before his death; and Waller appears not, in my opinion, to have lost at eighty-two any part of his poetical powers.’
Some writers carry this fanciful idea of Fenton’s still farther, asserting that, though judgment may retain its vigour to a more distant period, imagination gradually decays at thirty-six. Were arguments wanting to confute such groundless assertions, we need only adduce the instance of the learned and ingenious Critic whose observations are now before us. He, certainly, has passed the zenith allotted to imagination, and probably the farther term which Fenton assigns to the genius of Waller, and yet his writings betray no abatement of intellectual abilities: his imagination still retains the full vigour of youth. —But enough of this trifling; let us return to Waller.
[quotes para. 150, ‘The general character’ to ‘his imitators’, and 153, ‘But of the praise’ to ‘excelled it’.]
The active part which Milton took in the public transactions of the times he lived in, will ever subject him to the misrepresentations of partiality or prejudice. In the biographical part of the preface before us, we have observed some passages not totally free from the influence of one of these principles.
In the openings of the narrative, after mentioning some other particulars of his family, we are told that ‘his father had two sons, John the poet, and Christopher, who studied the law, and adhered, as the law taught him, to the King’s party. After the accession of King James, he was knighted, and made a judge; but, his constitution being too weak for business, he retired before any disreputable compliances became necessary.’ Fenton says, ‘by too easy a compliance with the doctrines of the court, both religious and civil, he attained to the dignity of being made a judge of the Common Pleas, of which he died divested not long after the Revolution.’ As he is said to have adhered to what the law taught him, we will hope, though there doth not seem much reason to believe,
that he retired before any disreputable compliances became necessary. Yet, when the disposition of the times is considered, it is far from probable that he should have been advanced from the obscurity of chamber practice, which he followed, to sit as a judge in the court of Common Pleas, unless his readiness of compliance had been previously known. But, perhaps, as he adhered, as the law taught him, to King Charles’s party, the biographer thought him entitled to some little indulgence.
[comments on Milton at Cambridge.]
When the biographer comes to that part of Milton’s life when he returned from abroad, he tells us, that ‘hearing of the differences between the King and parliament, he thought it proper to hasten home, rather than pass his life in foreign amusements while his countrymen were contending for their rights. At his return he hired a lodging at the house of one Russel a taylor, in St. Bride’s Church-yard, and undertook the education of John and Edward Philips, his sister’s sons. Finding his rooms too little, he took a house and garden in Aldersgate-street. Here he received more boys to be boarded and instructed.’ He then breaks off his narrative to exclaim, ‘Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree of merriment on great promises and small performance, on the man who hastens home, because his countrymen are contending for their liberty, and, when he reaches the scene of action, vapours away his patriotism in a private boarding-school.’
What the Doctor finds to excite merriment we own ourselves ignorant of. Whatever might be Milton’s patriotism, it was necessary he should live. To do this with competence and convenience, he undertook the education of youth. The necessity of this is acknowledged. ‘His allowance was not ample, and he supplied its deficiencies by an honest and useful employment.’ That he promised more than other men in the like situations may be doubted; that he performed less is what no man can have the hardiness to affirm. He had not been above a year in England before he signalized himself, and assisted the cause which he espoused, by his treatise of Reformation, in two books. This work was soon followed by another, and that, in the year following, by a third. With what propriety, therefore, are we to look with merriment at his vapouring away his patriotism in a private boarding-school? In what follows we fully agree with our Author:
[quotes paras. 36–7, ‘This is the period’ to ‘absurd misapprehension’.]
Notwithstanding we give full credit to the justness of these remarks, we cannot think it impossible but Milton might make many improvements upon the modes of education which at that time might prevail; he certainly was capable of striking out new roads to learning that might possibly be shorter and easier than those that were usually travelled. For, though it be true ‘that the speed of the best horseman must be limited by the power of his horse,’ yet, were Dr. Johnson to ride a foxchace, he would find that his speed would depend not only upon the power of his horse, but also upon the choice of his ground.
[quotes paras. 38–41, ‘The purpose of Milton’ to ‘and avoids evil’.]
That those authors are to be read at schools which supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials of conversation, is too evident to be denied: that these purposes are best served by poets, orators, and historians, such as are commonly read at schools, may be doubted. It may be doubted also how far the present question can be any way influenced by the example of Socrates. His methods of instruction seem to differ as much from the modes of education which Dr. Johnson means to defend, as it is possible for Milton’s to do. We should apprehend the innovators who are here opposed, never intended to ‘turn off attention from life to nature:’ they seem to have been actuated by the more rational idea of uniting the study of nature with the knowledge of life. Does not our Author, with respect to Milton, in some degree acknowledge as much? ‘One part of his method,’ says he, ‘deserves general imitation. He was careful to instruct his scholars in religion. Every Sunday was spent upon theology.’
‘Of institutions we may judge by their effects. From this wonder-working academy, I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very eminent for knowledge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a small History of Poetry, written in Latin by his nephew, of which perhaps none of my readers has ever heard.’
When it is considered how small must have been the number of Milton’s scholars, it is matter of wonder rather than of reproach, that even one should ever rise to literary distinction. Were the history of all the schools through the kingdom to be enquired into, we should not find above one scholar in five hundred that ever attains to a like degree of eminence.
Milton, as may naturally be supposed, was an advocate for the liberty of the press. He published a book on that subject, intituled, Areopagitica, a speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed printing.
[quotes para. 58, ‘The danger of such unbounded liberty’ to ‘hang a thief’.]
To those who wish not to favour the designs of arbitrary power, no such problem [of danger from unrestrained printing] is to be found in the whole science of government. The arguments by which it is attempted to make this grand question problematical might be allowed to have some weight, provided they were altogether true. That every dreamer of innovations propagates his projects is acknowledged; is it therefore true that there is no settlement? That every murmurer at government diffuses his discontent is acknowledged likewise; but have we, therefore, no peace? That every sceptic in theology teaches his follies is not to be denied; yet Dr. Johnson will surely not be so hardy as to affirm that we have no religion. In those countries where the press is restrained have they more religion? Or, indeed, have they so much? So far from suspecting that religion is injured by the liberty which every one enjoys of diffusing his own opinions, we are rather disposed to believe she is benefited by it. Were doubt and objection never to be started, it is probable that truth would be but seldom inquired into: were not error to be confuted, truth could never be established: were the attack of the sceptic and infidel to be suspended, the champions of religion would forget the use of their weapons; the centinel would sometimes sleep upon guard. It is by a scrutiny into the principles of religion that the duties of religious obligation are more forcibly impressed upon the mind; and were it not for the sceptic in theology, such a scrutiny would be but rarely thought of or attended to. The illustration of his argument is by no means analogous: an author’s motives for publication may be many and laudable; a thief can enter your house from no motive but to steal: if an author offend against the laws of society, he may be detected and punished; or if he escape, his bondsmen, as we may call them, the printer and publisher, are responsible for his crime. A thief may break into your house, and it is true that you may hang him, provided he be caught. But what security is there that he will be caught, or if not, who is there to make compensation for the injury he may have done you? All this is to be supposed before the analogy between the thief and the author can hold good. Were it, indeed, to be the case, there would be as little to apprehend from the one as the other. If the moment we were robbed the thief were certain to be detected and hanged, a bolt to our doors would be an unnecessary precaution.
Milton’s character is drawn in no amiable colours. According to Dr. Johnson, he labours under a suspicion of such atrocious villany as ought not, but upon the strongest grounds, to be admitted of any man.
[quotes paras. 64–5, ‘While he contented himself’ to ‘wanted to accuse’.]
That the regicides were not the forgers of the prayer in question,2 if we may judge from such evidence as appears, is more likely than that they were. That the use of it by adaptation was innocent, nobody will deny. To charge the author of Icon Basilike with the use of this prayer as with a heavy crime, was illiberal and indecent. But what circumstance in the life of Milton can warrant the suspicion that he either inserted it himself, or was privy to the insertion of it by others? Whatever might be his political errors, his moral character has been ever unimpeached; his regard for truth seems to have been inviolable; his religion appears to be free from every taint of hypocrisy; ‘he lived in a confirmed belief of the immediate and occasional agency of Providence;’ how can we imagine then that he had so little fear in him of the true all-seeing Deity, as to be the perpetrator of such deliberate iniquity? But setting every argument that may be drawn from these considerations aside, there was a meanness in it too despicable for the pride of Milton ever to have submitted to.
The most culpable part of Milton’s conduct seems to be his adulation of Cromwell….
Though it be not improbable that Milton’s republicanism might be, in some degree, founded ‘in petulance, impatient of controul, and pride disdainful of superiority,’ yet he surely was able to give some better reason for adopting republican principles than that a popular government was the most frugal; for the trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth. Though it be shallow policy, as Dr. Johnson observes, ‘to suppose money the chief good, and though the support and expense of a Court be, for the most part, only a particular kind of traffic, by which money is circulated, without any national impoverishment’ yet it is equally true that the extravagance of a Court, by taking from the many to lavish on the few, may be guilty of great national injury.
Through the whole of his narrative Dr. Johnson seems to have no great partiality for Milton as a man: as a poet, however, he is willing to allow him every merit he is entitled to. In the examination of his poetical works he begins with his juvenile productions. The first that offer themselves to him are his Latin pieces. ‘These,’ says he, ‘are lusciously elegant; but the delight which they afford is rather by the exquisite imitation of the ancient writers, by the purity of the diction, and the
harmony of the numbers, than by any power of invention, or vigour of sentiment.’ This character, we apprehend, will generally suit our modern Latin poetry; but we may particularly except that noble ode of Mr. Gray’s, written at the Grande Chartreuse, and some few others; there are not many of the poemata Anglorum that contain ‘much power of invention or vigour of sentiment.’
[quotes paras. 177–9, ‘The English poems’ to ‘dandling the kid’.]
On Lycidas his censures are severe, and well enforced: he is of opinion no man could have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure, had he not known its author. L’Allegro and Il Penseroso are of different estimation. These he acknowledges to be two noble efforts of the imagination. But the greatest of his juvenile performances is the Mask of Comus; ‘in which,’ says the Critic, ‘may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise Lost. Milton appears to have formed very early that system of diction, and mode of verse, which his maturer judgment approved, and from which he never endeavoured nor desired to deviate.
Nor does Comus afford only a specimen of his language; it exhibits likewise his power of description, and his vigour of sentiment, employed in the praise and defence of virtue. A work more truly poetical is rarely found; allusions, images, and descriptive epithets, embellish almost every period with lavish decoration. As a series of lines, therefore, it may be considered as worthy of all the admiration with which the votaries have received it. As a drama it is deficient.’ This deficiency is unfolded in a masterly manner.
The Sonnets come next to be considered. These were written in different parts of Milton’s life, upon different occasions. ‘They deserve not,’ we are told, ‘any particular criticism; for of the best it can only be said, that they are not bad; and perhaps only the eighth and the twenty-first are truly entitled to this slender commendation. The fabric of a sonnet, however adapted to the Italian language, has never succeeded in ours, which, having greater variety of termination, requires the rhymes to be often changed.’
Of the inconveniency of the fabric of a sonnet many of our writers seem to have been aware, having deviated, and, as we think, judiciously, from the strict Italian model, by giving to their rhymes a greater liberty of change. But even of the legitimate sonnet we are not without many beautiful examples: no one will doubt this assertion who has read Mr. Warton’s.
We are far from thinking the sonnet, especially when emancipated from the unnecessary restraint under which it has hitherto laboured, to be ill adapted to the English language. By uniting the elegance and dignity of the ode with the simplicity and conciseness of the ancient epigram, it seems to be a species of composition well suited to convey effusions of tenderness and affection; such incidental effusions, we mean, as flow not from a confluence of various ideas, but such rather as proceed from a single sentiment.
The Paradise Lost comes next to be examined: ‘A Poem, which, considered with respect to design, may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second among the productions of the human mind.’ Dr. Johnson’s criticism on this immortal work extends through fifty pages. To give any adequate idea of it would much exceed our present limits. We cannot, however, resist the temptation of presenting our Readers with one extract from it:
[quotes paras. 229–33, ‘The thoughts which are’ to ‘its fertility’.]
The above extract is given, not as having peculiar excellence, but merely as, from its detached nature, it best admitted of selection.
Of this truly excellent analysis and criticism, it is scarcely hyperbolical to affirm that it is executed with all the skill and penetration of Aristotle, and animated and embellished with all the fire of Longinus. It is every way worthy of its subject: the Paradise Lost is a poem which the mind of Milton only could have produced; the criticism before us is such as, perhaps, the pen of Johnson only could have written.
[several Lives are speedily passed over, mainly by means of quotation.]
In characterising the poetry of Matthew Prior, Dr. Johnson, in more instances than one, deviates from the general opinion of its excellence. Many circumstances, indeed, concurred to elevate Prior’s poetical character higher than its intrinsic merit alone would possibly have raised it. The single circumstance of his exaltation (which was always considered, as in fact it was, the consequence of literary attainments), by speedy gradations from the station of a tavern-boy to the rank of an ambassador, would naturally impress the world with an idea of very uncommon superiority. Prior’s works are considered as composing Tales, Love-verses, Occasional Poems, Alma, and Solomon. ‘His Tales are written with great familiarity and great spriteliness: the language is easy, but seldom gross, and the numbers are smooth, without the appearance of care.’ But it is a doubt with Dr. Johnson, whether he be the original author of any tale which he has given us.
On his Love-verses the critic is particularly severe; and, if one or two pieces be excepted, justly so. And even in those, it is wit and gallantry, rather than passion, that entitles them to notice. A man, like Prior, connecting himself with drabs of the lowest species, must be incapable of feeling either the warmth of a true passion, or the refinements of an elegant one.
[quotes paras. 56–7, ‘In his Amorous Effusions’ to ‘disappointment to himself’.]
That Dr. Johnson’s objections to the scope and tendency of the last mentioned poem are just, no one will, we presume, be hardy enough to dispute; but it is at the same time much to be doubted whether many will agree with him in thinking it a dull and tedious dialogue. Were the question to be asked, which of Prior’s poems has been most generally read? we are of opinion, it would be determined in favour of Henry and Emma. What every one reads can hardly be thought tedious and dull.
[quotes thirty-six paras, from the Life of Pope, with virtually no comment.]
The eighth volume of this amusing work contains the Lives of Swift, Gay, Broome, Pitt, Parnel, A.Philips, and Watts. As it furnishes little that is new, we shall pass on to the subsequent volume, which opens with that well-known specimen of elegant Biography, the life of Savage.
The only variation from the former copies of this work that we have noted, is in the following passage. ‘In the publication of this performance (the Tragedy of Sir Thomas Overbury) he was more successful, for the rays of genius that glimmered in it, that glimmered through all the mists which poverty and Cibber had spread over it, procured him the notice and esteem of many persons,’ &c. To foist in a stigma upon a man so many years after he has lain peaceably in his grave, has the appearance of something singularly disingenuous and unmanly. Indeed, whenever Dr. Johnson has occasion to speak of Cibber, it is with an acrimony that, in any other man, we should suspect must have proceeded from personal resentment. Cibber’s dulness has been so long the butt of ridicule with every pretender to wit, that we are surprised any writer, who affects originality of sentiment, should condescend to divert himself and his readers with so stale a topic. There is no pleasure, as Dr. Johnson elsewhere observes, in chacing a school-boy to his common-places.3
In characterizing Thomson’s merit as a poet, his Biographer nearly
coincides with the general opinion. As a man, however, the representation of his character is not so favourable. In the early part of life, while friendless and indigent, he is represented as soliciting kindness by servile adulation; and when afterwards he had the means of gratification, it is insinuated, that he was grossly sensual. What authorities there are for the former part of this character appear not: the latter, in opposition to the suffrages of the most respectable of his cotemporaries, rests solely on the testimony of the unprincipled and profligate Savage.
We are told that ‘Thomson, in his travels on the continent, found or fancied so many evils arising from the tyranny of other governments, that he resolved to write a very long poem, in five parts, upon Liberty.’ In this passage the Biographer seems to have brought himself into a dilemma: either there are no evils arising from the tyranny of arbitrary governments; or Thomson was a man of no observation. To which will Dr. Johnson subscribe?
[on the source of biographical information about Hammond.]
Dr. Johnson appears not to have recollected that Hammond’s Elegies, the two last excepted, are taken almost literally from Tibullus. Considered merely in the light of translations they have a merit that translations rarely possess. Were it not for the Roman imagery, that is sometimes injudiciously retained, no one, unacquainted with the originals, would suspect that Hammond wrote not from his immediate feelings. To say that ‘it would be hard to find in all his productions three stanzas that deserve to be remembered,’ is certainly the height of prejudice. The Doctor forgets, that although at his time of life the subject of a love elegy may be totally uninteresting, it is not the case with every one, and we doubt not that at a certain period there are those who read them with greater avidity than even LONDON, or the VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES.
Dr. Johnson is at a loss to tell why Hammond, or other writers, have thought the quatrain often syllables elegiac. The character of elegy, he adds, is gentleness and tenuity. So long as some of the most violent and impetuous of the passions are the subjects of elegy, so long will this be an imperfect and mistaken definition.
The next life that offers itself is that of Collins: a writer whose imperfections and peculiarities are lost in the blaze of genius. But hear what Dr. Johnson says— ‘His diction was often harsh, unskilfully laboured, and injudiciously selected. He affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival; and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to write poetry. His lines commonly are of slow motion, clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants. As men are often esteemed who cannot be loved, so the poetry of Collins may sometimes extort praise when it gives little pleasure.’
[generous quotation from the Life of Young.]
The next in succession is Dyer; the slender particulars of whose life being already known, it were needless to repeat them.
In the year 1757 he published The Fleece, his greatest poetical work; ‘of which,’ says Dr. Johnson, ‘I will not suppress a ludicrous story. Dodsley the bookseller was one day mentioning it to a critical visiter, with more expectation of success than the other could easily admit. In the conversation the author’s age was asked; and being represented as advanced in life, He will, said the critic, be buried in woollen’
With most profound submission to the recorder of this ludicrous story, as it is here called, the critical visiter’s remark is, surely, as lame an attempt at wit as ever disgraced the vilest pages of the vilest jest book.
Of Grongar Hill, Dyer’s earliest production, we are told, that when it is once read, it will be read again; of the Ruins of Rome, that the title raises greater expectation than the performance gratifies. And of The Fleece, which never became popular, that it is now universally neglected, and that little can be said likely to recal it to attention.
[quotes last two paragraphs on Dyer.]
We fear it is more owing to a decline of poetical taste than to any defects that are here pointed out, that Dyer’s Fleece has been so undeservedly neglected. Indeed, if the time would permit, it would be no difficult undertaking to prove, that the greatest part of the objections that Dr. Johnson has raised against this excellent poem might with equal justice be brought against the Georgics of Virgil, a performance which, nevertheless, will be admired as long as poetry is understood.
[quotes from Lives of Mallet, Shenstone, Akenside, Lyttleton, and West; then finally turns to Johnson’s remarks on Gray, and quotes paras. 32–49 on The Progress of Poesy and The Bard: ‘My process has now’ to ‘ill directed’.]
Dr. Johnson sets out with telling his Readers, that he is one of those that are willing to be pleased, and that, consequently, he would be glad to find the meaning of the first stanza of the Progress of Poetry. It seems rather, that he is less desirous of finding the meaning of it himself, than of preventing others from finding it. Nothing can be more obvious and intelligible, we had almost said trite, than the allegory with which the Progress of Poetry commences. It is true, there is an inaccuracy in suffering the concealed idea to break through the figurative expression, as it does in the seventh line:
Now the rich stream of music winds along.
Of this, little as it can add to the embarrassment of the scene, the Critic has, however, spared no pains to avail himself.
The objection to the second stanza (part of which, indeed, is borrowed from Pindar) will lose much of its force if we advert only to the almost inseparable connection between the poetry of the ancients and their mythology: we shall then perceive, that the influence of the poetical art upon the inhabitants of Greece may not be improperly described by classical imagery.
What is said of the second ternary of stanzas will be found, we are of opinion, a continued tissue of misrepresentation. ‘The first,’ says he, ‘endeavours to tell something, and would have told it, had it not been crossed by Hyperion.’ The liberality and candour of this criticism will best appear, by confronting it with the beautiful passage against which it is levelled:
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Man’s feeble race what ills await, Labour, and penury, the racks of pain, Disease, and Sorrow’s weeping train, And death, sad refuge from the storms of fate! The fond complaint, my song, disprove, And justify the laws of Jove. Say, has he giv’n in vain the heav’nly Muse? Night, and all her sickly dews, Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry, He gives to range the dreary sky: Till down the eastern cliffs afar Hyperion’s march they spy, and glitt’ring shafts of war. |
Gray is next represented as telling his readers that the caverns of the North and the plains of Chili are the residence of Glory and generous Shame. Whoever will look into the stanza from whence this information is collected, will find that he says no such thing. All that he tells his readers (divesting it of its poetical language) is, that there have been poets even among the natives of Greenland and Chili; and that in those breasts, that are susceptible of the impressions of poetry, there is the residence of Glory,
And generous shame,
Th’ unconquerable Mind, and Freedom’s holy flame—
An assertion not only poetical, but, if taken with that degree of latitude with which a general assertion ought to be, philosophically true.
It was sufficient to assert, that The Bard is but a copy from the Prophecy of Nereus (an assertion, however, which every one will not, probably, agree to), without degrading it by a charge of a still meaner plagiarism: it certainly required singular ingenuity to find out, that the abrupt manner in which it opens was suggested by the ballad of Johnny Armstrong! The weaving of the winding-sheet may be given up: Gray was no Spitalfields poet.
That ‘his odes are marked by glittering accumulations of ungraceful ornaments, that strike rather than please; and that his images are magnified by affection,’ will, at least, be thought severe: but it is, surely, more than severe to say, that ‘he has a strutting kind of dignity, and that he is tall by walking on tip-toe.’
It is not to be wondered at, if, to the professed admirers of Mr. Gray, the manner in which he has been treated by Dr. Johnson should appear not only hostile, but malignant: and if they once entertain an opinion that there is malignity in his censure, they will suspect, it is to be feared, that there is treachery in his praise; the passage, upon which he has bestowed his warmest commendations, being, perhaps, the most exceptionable that the severity of criticism could have selected. It is that in which he accounts for Milton’s blindness:
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Nor second he, that rode sublime Upon the seraph wings of extasy, The secrets of th’ abyss to spy, He passed the flaming bounds of place and time: The living throne, the sapphire-blaze, Where angels tremble while they gaze, He saw; but blasted with excess of light, Clos’d his eyes in endless night. |
It is not to be denied that the images he employs are splendidly magnificent: but that the exertions of intellectual vision should extinguish the poet’s corporeal eyes, is a forced and unnatural idea. It is one of those false and hyperbolical thoughts, which, though they may possibly be admired in the poetry of Spain, the chaste simplicity of classical composition ought not to admit of. But even supposing the possibility of the fact, the consequence is inadequate to its cause; so that, whichever way the sentiment be examined, it comes under the class of the false sublime: for if just, it is an anticlimax; if not, it is bombast. And yet it is this sentiment which Dr. Johnson has particularly marked as ‘poetically true and happily imagined.’
But, peace to the manes of the Poet!
The eagle tow’ring in his pride of place4
is still an eagle, notwithstanding a defective feather in his wing.
After the minute and particular attention that has been bestowed upon these volumes as they came before us in succession, to enter into a general discussion of them collectively would be superfluous. It may not, however, be unnecessary to observe, notwithstanding they contain a fund of profound and original criticism, which, perhaps, no other pen but the Doctor’s could have supplied, that some caution is, nevertheless, required to peruse them with advantage. Instances too frequently occur, in which the Critic’s judgment seems altogether under the dominion of predilection or prejudice. To think for himself in critical, as in all other, matters, is a privilege to which every one is undoubtedly intitled: this privilege of critical independence, an affectation of singularity, or some other principle, not immediately visible, is for ever betraying him into a dogmatical spirit of contradiction to received opinions. Of this there need no farther proofs than his almost uniform attempt to depreciate the writers of blank verse, and his rough treatment of Gray. He observes of Shenstone, that he set little value upon those parts of knowledge which he had not cultivated himself; his own taste of poetry seems in some degree regulated by a similar standard: method, ratiocination, and argument, especially if the vehicle be rhyme, oftentimes obtaining his regard and commendation, while the bold and enthusiastic, though perhaps irregular, flights of imagination, are past by with perverse and obstinate indifference. It is not, then, to be wondered at, that the panegyrist of Blackmore should withhold from Collins and Gray what he has bestowed upon Savage and Yalden. Through the whole of his performance the desire of praise, excepting in the case of some very favourite author, is almost always overpowered by his disposition to censure; and while beauties are passed over ‘with the neutrality of a stranger and the coldness of a critic,’ the slightest blemish is examined with micro-scopical sagacity. The truth of this observation is particularly obvious when he descends to his cotemporaries; for whom, indeed, he appears to have little more brotherly kindness than they might have expected
at Constantinople. And so visibly does the fastidiousness of his criticism increase, as his work approaches to a conclusion, that his Readers will scarcely forbear exclaiming, with honest Candide, What a wonderful genius is this Pococurante! Nothing can please him!5
May-June 1779, xlvii, 354–62, 450–3; August 1781, lii, 81–92
| The reviewer’s general opening remarks are given, together with his response to the Life of Gray for comparison with No. 50. |
As the general character of every polished nation depends in a great measure on its poetical productions, too much care cannot be taken, in works of this nature, to impress on foreigners a proper idea of their merit. This task was perhaps never so well executed as in the performance before us. Our poetical militia, cloathed in the new uniform which the editors have here bestowed upon them, make a most respectable figure, both with regard to numbers and appearance. The text is, in general, correct, the paper not too white or glossy, but neat and clean, and the type sharp and elegant; though for eyes turned of fifty it may be thought rather too small. We could have wished, for the sake of uniformity, that the Lives of the Poets, instead of making a number of distinct volumes, had been prefixed to the works of the several authors, and in the same type. But to this we suppose the booksellers had some weighty and substantial objections, which will appear in due time. In the mean while, we must be content with what Dr. Johnson has found leisure to give his poets; some few a long life, some a short one, and some none at all. What we already have is however worthy of the writer; and, like the rest of his works, both amusing and instructive.
Biography, so far at least as it is concerned about little men, is not very entertaining, except when it has the additional grace of novelty to recommend it. The life of a poet is seldom read twice; and when the few
interesting circumstances, or diverting anecdotes that can be picked up concerning him, are once known, curiosity is satisfied: to run over the same ground, therefore, when there could be little hopes of starting fresh game, to be obliged to tell the same tale which had been often repeated, was a task that could not promise to the undertaker much pleasure, or flatter him with the hopes of much additional fame by the execution of it: it was a labour which few men would have had courage and patience enough to engage in; and in which we at the same time firmly believe no man but Dr. Johnson would have performed so well. He has proved, indeed, that a man of genius, penetration, and sagacity, can always, even from old and worn-out materials, strike out something new and entertaining.
The Lives of the Poets, as far as they go (and we hope soon to have more of them) are well written, and as the painters say, in his best manner. This writer has, we know, been censured for a pompous phraseology: with what degree of justice we leave our readers to determine. Certain it is, that very little of this kind appears in the work before us; and for that little we are made ample amends by a variety of judicious reflections on men and manners, sensible and lively observations, together with many excellent criticisms on the most striking passages, equally just and impartial.
The writers of poetical lives seem in general to imagine themselves bound in honour to deal in nothing but panegyrics, and it is looked upon as a kind of petty treason in the biographer to see any fault in the hero of his history. This however is by no means the case with Dr. Johnson; if he has erred, it is rather perhaps on the other side, as his remarks on some of our best poets, particularly Milton and Waller, whose political opinions by no means coincided with his own, may be thought rather too severe….
Dr. Johnson then enters into a minute examination of the several stanzas of The Bard, and concludes his criticism on the Odes by observing that they ‘Are marked by glittering accumulations of ungraceful ornaments… His art and his struggle are too visible, and there is too little appearance of ease or nature.’1
Whether the whole of this free censure is strictly just and well founded, we will not pretend to determine. Certain it is, however, at least in our opinion, that no man ever acquired a high reputation at so easy a rate, or received such great wages for so little work, as Mr. Gray. —On his Elegy in a Country Church-Yard, we agree with Dr. Johnson, that too much praise cannot well be lavished; at the same time we think with him, that Gray’s
Odes, as well as his other little performances, have been much over-rated. The reputation of a poet in this country is, indeed, a matter very fluctuating and uncertain. Whilst he lives, and perhaps many years afterwards, a proper and unbiassed judgment of his real merit is seldom found. It is a long time before whim and caprice, prejudice and partiality subside; and the true character is not often ascertained, till that of the man is entirely forgotten. Gray has been placed by his sanguine admirers by the side of Dryden and Pope. Dr. Johnson seems to have levelled him with the minor bards of a much inferior rank: half a century hence he may, perhaps, be fixed in his right and proper station,
Behind the foremost, and before the last.
In the mean time, as the twig inclined too much one way, we are obliged to Dr. Johnson for bending strongly towards the other, which may make it strait at last.
1779–91
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Text from Letters, ed. J.G.Frazer, 1912, i. 38–40, 170–4, 283–4; ii. 280. Cowper (1731–1800) records the immediate response of a sensitive poet whose roots were in the Augustan period but whose sensibility was Romantic. His Whig sympathies, his passion for Milton (whose poems he proposed to edit and whose Italian and Latin poems he translated), and his Evangelical religion made it peculiarly difficult for Cowper to be an enthusiast for Johnson. See Introduction, pp. 20, 30. |
31 October 1779, to the Revd William Unwin:
I have been well entertained with Johnson’s biography, for which I thank you: with one exception, and that a swingeing one, I think he has acquitted himself with his usual good sense and sufficiency. His treatment of Milton is unmerciful to the last degree. A pensioner is not likely to spare a republican; and the Doctor, in order, I suppose, to convince his royal patron of the sincerity of his monarchial principles, has belaboured that great poet’s character with the most industrious cruelty. As a man, he has hardly left him the shadow of one good quality. Churlishness in his private life, and a rancorous hatred of everything royal in his public, are the two colours with which he has smeared all the canvass. If he had any virtues, they are not to be found in the Doctor’s picture of him; and it is well for Milton, that some sourness in his temper is the only vice with which his memory has been charged; it is evident enough that if his biographer could have discovered more, he would not have spared him. As a poet, he has treated him with severity enough, and has plucked one or two of the most beautiful feathers out of his Muse’s wing, and trampled them under his great foot. He has passed sentence of condemnation upon Lycidas, and has taken occasion, from that charming poem, to expose to ridicule, (what is indeed ridiculous enough,) the childish prattlement of pastoral compositions, as if Lycidas was the prototype and pattern of them all. The liveliness of the description, the sweetness of the numbers, the classical spirit of antiquity that prevails in it, go for nothing. I am convinced by the way, that he has no ear for poetical numbers, or that it was stopped by prejudice against the harmony of Milton’s. Was there ever any thing so delightful as the music of the Paradise Lost? It is like that of a fine organ; has the fullest and the deepest tones of majesty, with all the softness and elegance of the Dorian flute. Variety without end and never equalled, unless perhaps by Virgil. Yet the Doctor has little or nothing to say upon this copious theme, but talks something about the unfitness of the English language for blank verse, and how apt it is, in the mouth of some readers, to degenerate into declamation. Oh! I could thresh his old jacket, till I made his pension jingle in his pocket.
I could talk a good while longer, but I have no room; our love attends you. —Yours affectionately,
W.C.
5 January 1782, to Unwin:
But what shall we say of his old fusty-rusty remarks upon Henry and Emma?1 I agree with him, that morally considered both the knight and his lady are bad characters, and that each exhibits an example which ought not to be followed. The man dissembles in a way that would have justified the woman had she renounced him; and the woman resolves to follow him at the expense of delicacy, propriety, and even modesty itself. But when the critic calls it a dull dialogue, who but a critic will believe him? There are few readers of poetry of either sex, in this country, who cannot remember how that enchanting piece has bewitched them, who do not know, that instead of finding it tedious, they have been so delighted with the romantic turn of it, as to have overlooked all its defects and to have given it a consecrated place in their memories, without ever feeling it a burthen. I wonder almost, that, as the Bacchanals served Orpheus, the boys and girls do not tear this husky, dry commentator limb from limb, in resentment of such an injury done to their darling poet. I admire Johnson as a man of great erudition and sense; but when he sets himself up for a judge of writers upon the subject of love, a passion which I suppose he never felt in his life, he might as well think himself qualified to pronounce upon a treatise on horsemanship, or the art of fortification.
17 January 1782, to Unwin:
I am glad we agree in our opinion of King Critic, and the writers on whom he has bestowed his animadversions. It is a matter of indifference
to me whether I think with the world at large or not, but I wish my friends to be of my mind. The same work will wear a different appearance in the eyes of the same man according to the different views with which he reads it; if merely for his amusement, his candour being in less danger of a twist from interest or prejudice, he is pleased with what is really pleasing, and is not over curious to discover a blemish, because the exercise of a minute exactness is not consistent with his purpose. But if he once becomes a critic by trade, the case is altered. He must then at any rate establish, if he can, an opinion in every mind, of his uncommon discernment, and his exquisite taste. This great end he can never accomplish by thinking in the track that has been beaten under the hoof of public judgement. He must endeavour to convince the world, that their favourite authors have more faults than they are aware of, and such as they have never suspected. Having marked out a writer universally esteemed, whom he finds it for that very reason convenient to depreciate and traduce, he will overlook some of his beauties, he will faintly praise others, and in such a manner as to make thousands, more modest, though quite as judicious as himself, question whether they are beauties at all. Can there be a stronger illustration of all that I have said, than the severity of Johnson’s remarks upon Prior, I might have said the injustice? His reputation as an author who, with much labour indeed, but with admirable success, has embellished all his poems with the most charming ease, stood unshaken till Johnson thrust his head against it. And how does he attack him in this his principal fort? I cannot recollect his very words, but I am much mistaken indeed if my memory fails me with respect to the purport of them. ‘His words,’ he says, ‘appear to be forced into their proper places; there indeed we find them, but find likewise that their arrangement has been the effect of constraint, and that without violence they would certainly have stood in a different order.’2 By your leave, most learned Doctor, this is the most disingenuous remark I ever met with, and would have come with a better grace from Curl or Dennis.3 Every man conversant with verse-writing knows, and knows by painful experience, that the familiar style is of all styles the most difficult to succeed in. To make verse speak the language of prose, without being prosaic, —to marshal the words of it in such an order as they might naturally take in falling from the lips of an extemporary speaker, yet without meanness, harmoniously, elegantly, and without seeming to
displace a syllable for the sake of the rhyme, is one of the most arduous tasks a poet can undertake. He that could accomplish this task was Prior; many have imitated his excellence in this particular, but the best copies have fallen far short of the original. And now to tell us, after we and our fathers have admired him for it so long, that he is an easy writer indeed, but that his ease has an air of stiffness in it, in short, that his ease is not ease, but only something like it, what is it but a self-contradiction, an observation that grants what it is just going to deny, and denies what it has just granted, in the same sentence, and in the same breath? But I have filled the greatest part of my sheet with a very uninteresting subject. I will only say, that as a nation we are not much indebted, in point of poetical credit, to this too sagacious and unmerciful judge; and that for myself in particular, I have reason to rejoice that he entered upon and exhausted the labours of his office before my poor volume could possibly become an object of them.
21 March 1784, to Unwin:
Last night I made an end of reading Johnson’s Prefaces; but the number of poets whom he has vouchsafed to chronicle being fifty-six [52], there must be many with whose history I am not yet acquainted. These, or some of these, if it suits you to give them a part of your chaise, when you come, will be heartily welcome. I am very much the biographer’s humble admirer. His uncommon share of good sense, and his forcible expression, secure to him that tribute from all his readers. He has a penetrating insight into character, and a happy talent of correcting the popular opinion, upon all occasions where it is erroneous; and this he does with the boldness of a man who will think for himself, but, at the same time, with a justness of sentiment that convinces us he does not differ from others through affectation, but because he has a sounder judgement. This remark, however, has his narrative for its object, rather than his critical performance. In the latter, I do not think him always just, when he departs from the general opinion. He finds no beauties in Milton’s Lycidas. He pours contempt upon Prior, to such a degree, that were he really as undeserving of notice as he represents him, he ought no longer to be numbered among the poets. These, indeed, are the two capital instances in which he has offended me. There are others less important, which I have not room to enumerate, and in which I am less confident that he is wrong. What suggested to him the thought that the Alma was written in imitation of Hudibras,4 I cannot conceive.
18 March 1791, to the Revd Walter Bagot:
I did not call in question Johnson’s true spirit of poetry, because he was not qualified to relish blank verse (though, to tell you the truth, I think that but an ugly symptom); but if I did not express it I meant however to infer it from the perverse judgment that he has formed of our poets in general; depreciating some of the best, and making honourable mention of others, in my opinion not undeservedly neglected. I will lay you sixpence that, had he lived in the days of Milton, and by any accident had met with his Paradise Lost, he would neither have directed the attention of others to it, nor have much admired it himself. Good sense, in short, and strength of intellect, seem to me, rather than a fine taste, to have been his distinguished characteristics. But should you still think otherwise, you have my free permission; for so long as you have yourself a taste for the beauties of Cowper, I care not a fig whether Johnson had a taste or not.
1780
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Extracts from pp. 21–6, 85–9, 98–101, 122–8. The Remarks was published anonymously by the Revd Francis Blackburne (1705–87), rector of Richmond and prebendary of York. It was reprinted from his Memoirs (1780) of the republican Thomas Hollis; this fact clarifies Blackburne’s purpose. For him Milton was a distinguished ‘patron of public liberty’ whereas Johnson was a friend of ‘despotism’. See Introduction, p. 30. |
Milton only, for the present, is our client, and only Milton the prose-writer, who, in that character, must ever be an eye-sore to men of Dr. Johnson’s principles; principles that are at enmity with every patron of public liberty, and every pleader for the legal rights of Englishmen, which, in their origin, are neither more nor less than the natural rights of all mankind.
Milton, in contending for these against the tyrant of the day and his abettors, was serious, energetic, and irrefragable. He bore down all the silly sophisms in favour of despotic power like a torrent, and left his adversaries nothing to reply, but the rhetoric of Billingsgate, from which Lauder,1 in the end of his pamphlet, intituled, King Charles I. vindicated, &c. has collected a nosegay of the choicest flowers; and pity it was, that he was too early to add his friend Johnson’s character of Milton the prose-writer to the savoury bouquet.
When the Doctor found, on some late occasions, that his crude abuse and malicious criticisms would not bring down Milton to the degree of contempt with the public which he had assigned him in the scale of prose-writers; he fell upon an expedient which has sometimes succeeded in particular exigencies. In one word, he determined to write his Life.
There are no men so excellent who have not some personal or casual defect in their bodily frame, some aukward peculiarity in their manners or conversation, some scandalous calumny tacked to their private history, or some of those natural failings which distinguish human from angelic beings.
On the other hand, few men are so totally abandoned and depraved as to have no remnants of grace and goodness, no intervals of sobriety, no touches of regret for departed innocence, no sense of those generous passions which animate the wise and good to praise-worthy actions, or no natural or acquired abilities to abate the resentment of the reputable public, and to atone, in some degree, for their immoralities.
A man of genius, who has words and will to depress or raise such characters respectively, will consider little in his operations upon them, but the motives and occasions which call for his present interference; and the world who know the artificer will make it no wonder that the encomiast and apologist of the profligate Richard Savage should employ his pen to satyrize and calumniate the virtuous John Milton.
[quotes opening paragraph of Life of Milton.]
The uniformity of editions is commonly the bookseller’s care, and the necessity of such uniformity generally arises from the taste of the public; of which, among the number of names exhibited in the title-pages of these volumes, there must be many competent judges. It would be a pity however that a conformity to this taste should engage Dr. Johnson in writing this Life; to go beyond what would more properly have contented himself; the least intimation from the Biographer of the impropriety of a new narrative would, we are persuaded, have made the undertakers of the edition contented with the Doctor’s plan.
He might not indeed have found the means to introduce certain particulars, which embellish his new narrative, into his notes on Mr. Fenton’s abridgement,2 in which there is a vein of candor that does the writer more honour than the ingenuity of his performance; not to mention the different judgment, from that of Dr. Johnson, formed by Mr. Fenton, on some of Milton’s poetical pieces.
We therefore believe this new narrative was calculated rather for Dr. Johnson’s private contentment than the necessities of the edition….
It is hardly necessary to apprize a reader of Milton’s prose-works that his ideas of usurpation and public liberty were very different from those of Dr. Johnson. In the Doctor’s system of government public liberty is the
free grace of an hereditary monarch, and limited in kind and degree, by his gracious will and pleasure; and consequently to controul his arbitrary acts by the interposition of good and wholesome laws is a manifest usurpation upon his prerogative. Milton allotted to the people a considerable and important share in political government, founded upon original stipulations for the rights and privileges of free subjects, and called the monarch who should infringe or encroach upon these, however qualified by lineal succession, a tyrant and an usurper, and freely consigned him to the vengeance of an injured people. Upon Johnson’s plan, there can be no such thing as public liberty. Upon Milton’s, where the laws are duly executed, and the people protected in the peaceable and legal enjoyment of their lives, properties, and municipal rights and privileges, there can be no such thing as usurpation, in whose hands soever the executive power should be lodged. From this doctrine Milton never swerved; and in that noble apostrophe to Cromwell, in his Second Defense of the people of England, he spares not to remind him, what a wretch and a villain he would be, should he invade those liberties which his valour and magnanimity had restored. If, after this, Milton’s employers deviated from his idea of their duty, be it remembered, that he was neither in their secrets, nor an instrument in their arbitrary acts or encroachments on the legal rights of the subject; many (perhaps the most) of which were to be justified by the necessity of the times, and the malignant attempts of those who laboured to restore that wicked race of despotic rulers, the individuals of which had uniformly professed an utter enmity to the claims of a free people, and had acted accordingly, in perfect conformity to Dr. Johnson’s political creed. On another hand, be it observed, that in those State-letters, latinized by Milton, which remain, and in those particularly written in the name of the Protector Oliver, the strictest attention is paid to the dignity and importance of the British nation, to the protection of trade, and the Protestant religion, by spirited expostulations with foreign powers on any infraction of former treaties, in a style of steady determination, of which there have been few examples in subsequent times. A certain sign in what esteem the British government was held at that period by all the other powers of Europe. And as this was the only province in which Milton acted under that government which Dr. Johnson calls an usurpation, let his services be compared with those performed by Dr. Johnson for his present patrons; and let the constitutional subject of the British empire judge which of them better deserves the appellation of a traitor to public liberty, or have more righteously earned the honey of a pension….
It is remarkable, that, in depreciating such of Milton’s writings as thwart Dr. Johnson’s political notions, the censure is always accompanied with some evil imputation upon the writer’s head or his heart. He observes of his serious tracts in general, that Hell grows darker at his frown; borrowing, to make his abuse more tasty, an expression from Milton himself.3 In his treatises of civil power in ecclesiastical cases, and of the means of removing hirelings out of the church, ‘He gratified his malevolence to the clergy.’ In writing his pamphlet called, A ready and easy way to establish a free commonwealth, ‘He was fantastical enough to think, that the nation, agitated as it was, might be settled by it;’ and his notes upon a sermon of Dr. Griffiths, ‘were foolish, and the effect of kicking when he could not strike.’4
If controversial fame were thus to be purchased, Dr. Johnson might be esteemed the first of writers in that province, for no man ever expressed his abuse in a more inimitable style of abuse. And though he may sometimes create suspicions that he has either never read, or does not understand the writings he so peremptorily censures; yet the vehicle is pleasing, and the reputation he has gained by his labours of more general utility precludes all examination, and he expects his scandalous chronicle should be licensed and received upon his own bare word.
‘For Milton to complain of evil tongues,’ says the Doctor, ‘required impudence at least equal to his other powers; Milton, whose warmest advocates must allow, that he never spared any asperity of reproach, or brutality of insolence.’5
Milton wrote in a public contest for public liberty: and he generally in that contest was upon the defensive. The asperity of his reproaches seldom exceeded the asperity of the wickedness upon which those reproaches were bestowed.
Brutality is a word of an ill sound, and required some instances to justify the imputation of it. When these are given, we will readily join issue in the trial, whether Milton or his adversaries were the more brutal or more insolent. They who would reduce mankind to a brutal slavery, under the despotism of a lawless tyrant, forfeit all claim to the rationality of human beings; and no tongue can be called evil for giving them their proper appellation….
In conclusion, the good Doctor turns evesdropper; and, to warn the public against the principles of the miscreant Milton, condescends to
inform us of what passed in the domestic privacies of his family. ‘Milton’s character, in his domestic relations, was severe and arbitrary.’ How does he know this? ‘His family consisted of women,’ he tells you, ‘and there appears, in his books, something like a Turkish contempt of females, as subordinate and inferior beings.’ A most heinous offence! enough to muster the whole multitude of English Amazons against him. But the question is not concerning what is in his books, but what passed in his kitchen and parlour. We want instances; and here they are: ‘That his own daughters might not break the ranks, he suffered them to be depressed by a mean and penurious education.’6
The impudence of Belial would be abashed at so gross a misrepresentation. Milton’s daughters grew impatient of reading what they did not understand; this impatience ‘broke out more and more into expressions of uneasiness.’ What had they now to expect from their Turkish father? what! but stripes and imprisonment in a dark chamber, and a daily pittance of bread and water. No such matter. They were relieved from their task, and ‘sent out to learn some curious and ingenious sorts of manufacture that were proper for women to learn, particularly imbroideries in gold and silver.’7 And how far this branch of education was from being either mean or penurious in those days, the remains of these curious and ingenious works, performed by accomplished females of the highest and noblest extraction, testify to this very day.
To account for this tyranny of Milton over his females, the Doctor says, ‘He thought woman made only for obedience, and man only for rebellion.’8
In the first member of this quaint antithesis the Doctor perhaps did not guess far amiss at Milton’s thought. He seems to have been of St. Paul’s opinion, that ‘women were made for obedience.’9 But Paul and Milton had different ideas of rebellion from those of Dr. Johnson. That Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick,10 were rebels in Dr. Johnson’s scale, no one can doubt. And yet they had certainly an equal right to insist upon the privileges of Englishmen against Dr. Laud11 and his assessors, as Paul had to plead those of a Roman citizen against the chief captain Lysias; and
even to require that the said Archbishop should repair to the several prisons of these sufferers to ask their pardon, and to conduct them in person and with honour out of their confinement; as was done in the case of Paul and Silas, by the magistrates of Philippi; who (however the Biographer may stomach the idea of such a humiliation of this magnanimous prelate) seem to have understood the honour due to the laws of their country, and the rights of free citizens, something better than either Abp. Laud or Dr. Johnson.
But after all, would Dr. Johnson lead us to the converse of the sentiment he ascribes to Milton, as a tenet of his own orthodoxy? What his family-connexions with females may be we profess not to know; but we cannot believe that he is so far in love with petticoat-government, as to subscribe to the proposition, that ‘men are made only for obedience, and women only for rebellion.’
But here we take our leave of his new narrative; leaving his strictures on Milton’s poetry to the examination of critics by profession; all of whom, we are persuaded, will not approve them merely because they came from Dr. Johnson. They will observe that they are tainted throughout with the effects of an inveterate hatred to Milton’s politics, with which, as the Biographer of a Poet the author of Paradise Lost, the Critic had very little to do.
14 April 1781
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Text from Correspondence of Walpole and William Mason, 1851, i. 171–2. Boswell remarked with notable understatement that Horace Walpole (1717–97) ‘never was one of the true admirers of Johnson’ (Life, iv. 314). Walpole’s barbed comments on Johnson are numerous; one must suffice: ‘Johnson was an odious and mean character…with all the pedantry he had all the gigantic littleness of a country schoolmaster’ (Memoirs of the Reign of George III, 1845, iv. 297). William Mason, to whom he wrote the letter below, himself regarded Johnson as ‘a bear upon stilts’ (Boswell, Life, ii. 347 n. 3). |
Sir Joshua Reynolds has lent me Dr. Johnson’s Life of Pope, which Sir Joshua holds to be a chef-d’oeuvre. It is a most trumpery performance and stuffed with all his crabbed phrases and vulgarisms, and much trash as anecdotes; you shall judge yourself:—he says, that all he can discover of Pope’s correspondent Mr. Cromwell1 is that he used to hunt in a tie-wig. The Elegy on the Unfortunate Lady he says, signifies the amorous fury of a raving girl; and yet he admires the subject of Eloïsa’s Epistle to Abelard. The machinery in The Rape of the Lock he calls combinations of skilful genius with happy casuality, in English I guess a lucky thought; publishing proposals is turned into emitting them.2 But the 66th page is still more curious, it contains a philosophic solution of Pope’s not transcribing the whole Iliad as soon as he thought he should, and it concludes with this piece of bombast nonsense, he that runs against time has an antagonist not subject to casualties. Pope’s house here he calls the house to which his residence afterwards procured so much celebration, and that his vanity produced a grotto where necessity enforced a passage; and that, of his intellectual character, the constituent and fundamental principle was good sense, a prompt and intuitive perception of
consonance and propriety.3 Was poor good sense ever so unmercifully overlaid by a babbling old woman! How was it possible to marshal words so ridiculously? He seems to have read the ancients with no view but of pilfering polysyllables, utterly insensible to the graces of their simplicity, and these are called standards of biography! I forgot he calls Lord Hervey’s challenging Pulteney, summoning him to a duel.4 Hurlothrumbo talked plain English in comparison of this wight on stilts,5 but I doubt I have wearied you, —send me something to put my mouth in taste again.
1781
| One of several writers who took strong exception to Johnson’s unsympathetic treatment of Gray was the Revd William Windsor Fitzthomas; he published his pamphlet anonymously. Anna Seward, a fervent admirer of Gray, complimented Fitzthomas on his vindication of the poet: ‘You have stretched the giant at your feet’ (Letters, 1811, ii. 147). The compliment was partisan. See Introduction, pp. 7, 30. |
The polite and literary world has, of late, been laid under fresh obligations to Dr. Johnson, for his excellent biographical and critical prefaces to the works of the most eminent English poets. These prefaces, as it is well known, are written with the Doctor’s usual precision, vigour, and clearness of style; his usual methodical arrangement, and discriminative judgment; and, for the most part, with his usual candour and critical
justice. On the perusal, however, of his remarks on the writings of Gray, I was instantly struck by his unfair, and unusual mode of criticism, as well as by his total deviation from the common track of popular opinion. His strictures on Gray, seem to be influenced by, I know not what, prejudice; and he takes up Gray’s lyricks, apparently, with a fixed resolution to condemn them.
It was not, altogether, the ambition of erecting a temporary shed, under the shadow of so noble a structure as that of Dr. Johnson’s literary reputation, which induced me to offer to the public the following hasty remarks. A certain love of truth and of justice, even in the meerest trifles, so natural to the human mind; together with a hope of in some measure vindicating, the poetical reputation of the late excellent Mr. Gray, from the too severe, and hyper critical censures of our modern Aristarchus, has made me a candidate for the immortality of a week; and excited a desire of adding somewhat to the heap of pamphlets, with which literature is already so much oppressed.
I shall begin with the Doctor’s remarks on the two Sister Odes;1 upon which, perhaps on account of their enjoying a peculiar portion of the public approbation, he seems, in a peculiar manner, to exercise his critical and dictatorial severity.
Of the first stanza of the ode on the progress of poetry, he observes, that, ‘Gray seems in his rapture to confound the images of spreading sound and running water.’ To prevent a frequent and troublesome application to the poet, I choose to lay the whole passage before the reader. The ode opens thus:
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Awake, Æolian Lyre, awake, And give to rapture all thy trembling strings. From Helicon’s harmonious springs A thousand rills their mazy progress take: The laughing flowers, that round them blow, Drink life and fragrance as they flow. Now the rich stream of music winds along, Deep, majestic, smooth and strong, Through verdant vales, and Ceres’ golden reign: Now rowling down the steep amain, Headlong, impetuous, see it pour: The rocks, and nodding groves, rebellow to the roar. |
In his notes on this stanza, Gray professes that his intention is to imitate the usual model of all lyric performances, the odes of Pindar. Now it is
one of Pindar’s well-known and characteristic peculiarities, to incorporate for the most part his similes, with his subject. Gray therefore as an imitator, unites the image of poetry, (which as it was of old ever accompanied and regulated by the lyre, he calls music,) to that of the simile, a majestic stream of flowing water. He then, in order to shew the power of poetry in enobling and adorning every subject, metaphorically describes it as taking its course like a gently-flowing and majestic river, through verdant vales and Ceres’ golden reign, enriching the adjacent country with life and fragrance: and lastly to characterise the vehement and passionate kind of poetry, as rowling down the steep amain, and causing the rocky banks and pendent groves to rebellow to its roar.
‘But,’ objects the Doctor, ‘where does music, however smooth and strong, after having visited the verdant vales, rowl down the steep amain, so as that rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar?’
I have before observed, that this is evidently said of music and poetry in their primitive conjunction: but let us, for the present, suppose it to be spoken of music alone. —Can the Doctor, though avowedly insensible of the effects of music, be likewise so ignorant of the art, as not to know that there is admissible in it as great a variety of style, as in either of its sister arts? Are not both ancient and modern musicians allowed the power of, in some degree, exciting, as well as soothing, the passions of the more susceptible part of mankind? Is there not a rapid and impetuous style of music, as well as a grave and equable one? By what image can this impetuous style of music be, with greater metaphorical propriety, illustrated, than by the foregoing one! How can the effects of poetry be more happily typified, than by those of its sister art, music* !
The Doctor then dismisses this stanza, by observing, that, ‘if this be said of music, it is nonsense; if it be said of water, it is nothing to the purpose’; and thus leaves us suspended between the horns of an apparent dilemma.
But to forbid its being said of music in its separate state, is, in a manner, to interdict the use of all figurative decoration. It is to deny an artist the assistance of the necessary implements of his trade. We must all be well aware that this passage, literally understood, is stark nonsense when applied to either of the arts. —But it is, most evidently, a simile interwoven with the subject, and by the poet designed to characterise the more vehement and empassioned kind of poetry, in its original union
with music; and, to a mind not previously and designedly rendered insensible to its beauty, cannot fail of conveying an image, perfectly clear and distinct; and ideas, in the highest degree vivid and sublime.
We find the whole of the second stanza of this ode, included in one general censure: ‘It is unworthy’, says the critic, ‘of further notice. Criticism disdains to chace a school-boy to his common places’. He pays not the least attention to the effect of the transition and contrast, both with respect to the versification, and the subject. He gives us not the least encouragement to approve of those beautiful lines, with which the second stanza commences:
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Oh! sovereign of the willing soul, Parent of sweet and solemn breathing airs, Enchanting shell! the Sullen cares, And frantic passions hear thy soft controul. |
The remaining part of this stanza is a very close imitation*, (not to say translation) of part of the first Pythian ode of Pindar; and, consequently, retains a leaven of that mythological fiction, in which all the ancient poets so greatly delighted. —The Doctor’s observations concerning the interweaving the old mythology into modern performances, are undoubtedly just and rational. There is indeed something so puerile, frigid, and uninteresting in the greater part of the mythological fictions, as inevitably to repel the attention of every reader, not wholly devoted to the antique. But there is no general rule without its exceptions: the fiction before us is so pleasing to the imagination, and the lines it is contained in, so poetical and animated, that very few classical readers would, I think, wish this stanza cancelled.
On the third stanza, the Doctor’s strictures are chiefly verbal: and few, I believe, will choose to contradict Dr. Johnson’s verbal criticism. He does not, however, dismiss this stanza, without remarking its pleasing effect on the ear.
I now accompany the critic to the first, of the second ternary of stanzas; which, as we are informed, ‘endeavours to tell something, and would have told it, had it not been crossed by Hyperion’. —It is indeed crossed by Hyperion: but in like manner is the Essay on Criticism, crossed by the Alpine traveller’, the Campaign, by the destroying Angel;2 and many
other excellent poems, by many other excellent illustrative similes. Gray, to use the Doctor’s expression, here ‘endeavours to tell’, (and to the greater part of his readers will, I believe, appear actually to enumerate) the various, and unavoidable evils, the black train of misfortunes incident to human life: and, from their existence, endeavours likewise to prove the great utility of poetry, by its well-known power, in some measure to divert or alleviate them. Which position, (still uniting the subject and simile) he illustrates by the similitude of the solar light, driving away the ill-omened birds of darkness, and dispersing the gloom and terrors of the night. —But this union of the subject and simile seems, unaccountably enough, for ever to lie in the Doctor’s way; and to prove an eternal stumbling block to his critical sagacity. If he does not approve of this union, why does he not tell us so? —But, if we may be allowed to judge from appearances, the Doctor either does not, or will not, observe this intentional union.
The remark on the non-dependence of the conclusion on the premises of the following stanza, is acute and judicious.
Stanza the third ‘sounds big’, as we are informed, ‘with Delphi, and Egean, and Illissus, and Meander, and hallowed fountain, and solemn sound’. —If to talk big be a liberty that may be granted to the Muses at all, it may be allowed, I think, as an exclusive privilege, to the lyric Muse. Dignified sound, is such a requisite auxiliary to her usual elevation of sentiment, as to be, in a manner, inseparable from her, without degrading her to a level with the rest of the choral band. It cannot, however, be denied by Gray’s greatest admirers, but that he is too fond of superfluous splendour; of accumulating and crouding his images; and of overloading his lines with unnecessary, though not unmeaning epithets. On the Doctor’s observation* on the position in the latter part of this stanza, I must beg leave a little to dilate.
Gray’s position is, briefly, this: After descanting on the natural connection between poetry, liberty, and all the nobler virtues, and its abhorrence of, and desertion from all those countries in which tyrant power and coward vice prevail, he exemplifies by a cursory view of the present state of those countries in which poetry once particularly flourished, and by its emigration from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England, as each became unworthy of its independent dignity and
immaculate purity. —The thought is ingenious, and the attempt laudable; and must give the highest pleasure to every true lover of the fine arts: and if it be difficult to support this position by historical fact, it is, in my opinion, no less difficult by the same method to overthrow it.
It is certain that poetry is a shrub which has sometimes taken root, and put forth its fairest blossoms in a barren and, apparently, ungrateful soil. Poetical genius seems, on a retrospect, to have started up casually, as it were in the course of nature, without much dependence on the moral or political state of the countries to which it owed its origin. There have, no doubt, been times in which poetical merit has been particularly encouraged; and poetry, of course, more cultivated by ambitious pretenders. There have, we know, been times in which it has even been admitted to a share in the legislature: but in general it may be said of genius, that as no encouragement whatever can originally produce it, so no discouragement or difficulties can extinguish its noble ardour, when produced.
In England, it is particularly hard to point out the golden age of poetry: its greatest poetical luminaries have, for the most part, appeared singly; they have not often shone in constellations of uniformly diffused lustre. But it will somewhat tend to the support of Gray’s hypothesis, if we remark, that the more noble and original works, those which bid the fairest for immortal praise, were mostly produced in ages conspicuous for the exertion of the nobler virtues; and in countries distinguished by an unremitting ardour for liberty and independence.
The Doctor’s remarks on the first of the third ternary of stanzas are eminently judicious, and unexceptionably just.
It is observable of the next stanza, that our great critic has singled out for commendation almost the only thing that former critics have chosen to reprobate. This thing is the poetical account of Milton’s blindness. Whether it be commended justly, or not, it is certain a reader of very moderate abilities and poetical experience may decide. —With regard to the car of Dryden, I can by no means agree with the Doctor, that it will suit every rider. Gray, as he tells us in his notes, means here to characterise the sounding energy and stately march of Dryden’s versification: and he has done it very happily and discriminatively in the following lines:
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Behold where Dryden’s less presumptuous car, Wide o’er the fields of glory, bear Two coursers of ethereal race, With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding pace. |
Can these lines, with equal propriety, be applied to Waller, Prior, Addison, or even Pope himself? Surely not!
We are now arrived at the concluding stanza, of which the Doctor, apparently, unwilling to praise where he cannot blame, says nothing at all. Few readers, however, of any poetical discernment or feelings, will, I think, acquiesce in this neglect. Few, but those of the dullest heads and coldest hearts, can, I am persuaded, read this part of the ode, without feeling in a peculiar manner, the effect of the transition, the beauty of the imagery, and the glowing warmth of the diction. —The circumstance of Dryden’s having written but one ode of the sublime and truly lyric kind, and suddenly withdrawing his masterly hand from those chords he knew so well to strike, is here exquisitely expressed by the image of a musician, unexpectedly pausing in the midst of his strain:
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Hark, his hands the lyre explore! Bright-eyed Fancy hovering o’er Scatters from her pictured urn Thoughts that breathe and words that burn. But ah! ’tis heard no more— |
The remainder of the stanza must necessarily appear feeble after animation like this!
I cannot help remarking here, that the Doctor’s critical process with Gray, differs, considerably, from that which he makes use of towards every other writer. He is with Gray more verbal, logical, and minute, where these critical niceties ought, in reason, least of all to be practised. He is less observant of the versification and imagery; and for the most part declines giving us either a general, or comparative character of the pieces under inspection.
[examines Johnson’s comments on The Bard.]
I am now arrived at the end of my collateral remarks: and hope I have, to the reader’s satisfaction, shown the visible injustice of some of the great critic’s remarks, and the no less visible futility of others. The Doctor dismisses these odes with a general observation, which would, I think, be rendered more just, and characteristic of the poet’s merit, were it invertedly parodied in the following manner:
These odes are distinguished by splendid accumulations of the most graceful ornaments; they strike no less than please: the images are amplified by an imagination eminently poetical; the language is, for the most part, void of harshness. The mind of the writer seems to glow with that enthusiasm, which ever will be deemed by frigid critics unnatural, in proportion as it is unusual, or unknown to them. He has a kind of native dignity, and is tall without walking in stilts. His art and his struggle are but little visible, disguised under the becoming veil of ease and nature.
I cannot take leave of the reader without subjoining an observation, which, no doubt, has occurred to many.
After all these remarks, these severe strictures, I much suspect, that the Doctor offers us but an artificial copy of his sentiments, with regard to this truly elegant and original writer. Is it reasonable to imagine, considering the well-known taste and discernment of Dr. Johnson, that he should really be so callous to that beautiful simplicity which runs through many of Gray’s productions? Or, considering his just, and truly discriminated decisions on the merits of every other writer, that he should really be so insensible to the inexpressible dignity and animation which reign in these particular odes? —It seems most probable, therefore, that the Doctor, looking upon the great, and almost unexampled reputation of this writer as somewhat superior to his real merit, might think that he was doing the public a piece of service, by ‘bending the twig the contrary way’; and, by confining Gray’s fame within its proper bounds, render it more solid and durable. —If this were his design, it must be, I think, the general opinion, that he has greatly over-acted his part in the critical drama.
1782, xxv, 203–8
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Text from second edition, 1791, 203–4. This review of the second group of Lives provides a representative journalistic stock-taking of the undertaking as a whole. |
Though the merits of this learned performance have been long since the subject of discussion, and its reputation be established on the most universal applause, yet the uniformity of our plan, and the respect due to a name so justly celebrated, require that we should connect with our former remarks some observations on the last six volumes of this valuable work.
Perhaps no age or country has ever produced a species of criticism more perfect in its kind, or better calculated for general instruction, than the publication before us: for whether we consider it in a literary, philosophical, or a moral view, we are at a loss whether to admire most the author’s variety and copiousness of learning, the soundness of his judgement, or the purity and excellence of his character as a man.
It is surely of importance to the rising generation to be supplied in the most elegant walk of literature with a guide, who points out what is beautiful in writing as well as in action, who uniformly blends instruction with amusement, who informs the understanding, and rectifies the judgement, while he mends the heart.
But notwithstanding the general popularity of this performance, and an uncommon degree of decision in its favour, it was not to be expected that a work of this nature, indeed that any work, should pass totally without exception, or without censure. In some instances it has divided the opinions of the learned, in a few it has provoked the severity of criticism; with what propriety the public have judged from the pamphlets that have appeared, particularly in defence of Gray. That the doctor was not over zealous to allow him the degree of praise that the public voice had pretty universally assigned him, is, we think, sufficiently apparent. Partiality to his beautiful elegy, had perhaps allotted him a rank above his general merits: that justice was the object of the biographer, we cannot doubt; but in combating opinions we suppose to be erroneous, we are extremely subject to fall ourselves into the opposite extreme, and to this we are inclined to attribute whatever deviations from the general accuracy of the author may be met with in the course of this work. In this opinion we are confirmed by instances on the other side, where the doctor seems to give hyperbolical praise to names, which had perhaps been suffered to lie under too much neglect and oblivion. Whether the origin of something like an attachment to a particular set of notions, or a set of men, may be explained upon this principle, we leave our readers to determine. That our learned author’s judgement has been warped on some subjects, where party has an influence, is the opinion of probably the greater number of his admirers; and if it be true, it is a decisive argument to show the prevalence of prejudice, and that the strongest understanding is not always proof against its inroads.
[the remainder of the review consists chiefly of quotation.]
1783
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Extracts from pp. 1–7, 14–16, 36–8. The Revd Robert Potter (1721–1804) was a country clergyman, schoolmaster, and translator of Aeschylus; he acknowledged Johnson’s literary distinction but regretted his insensitivity to writers such as Gray, Collins, and Shenstone. See Introduction, pp. 19, 30. |
Just Criticism, directed by superior learning and judgement, and tempered with candor, must at all times have an happy influence on the public taste, and of course be favourable to the interests and credit of literature…. Every age is not so happy as to produce an Addison; yet the present age owes much to the vigorous and manly understanding of Dr. Johnson: this truly respectable writer was early and deservedly distinguished by his great abilities, and the public has so long been habituated to receive and submit to his decisions, that they are now by many considered as infallible. Some years ago he wrote the life of Savage, a man neither amiable nor virtuous, but of a singular character formed from singular circumstances of distress, which never happened before, probably will never happen again in the life of any other man: undeserved distress has a claim to pity; and pity has always in it some mixture of love, which wishes to palliate the failings of the unfortunate sufferer; Dr. Johnson has the feelings of humanity warm at his honest heart; he has therefore with a free and spirited indignation stigmatized the unnatural mother, and to her unrelenting cruelty ultimately refers the faults of the unhappy son, faults which truth would not allow him to suppress, nor his virtue incline him to defend. In his account of Savage as a Poet, he places his genius in the fairest light, and makes just apologies for his inaccuracies. This little tract was written with an animated glow of sentiment, a vigorous and clear expression, and a pleasing candor sometimes perhaps stretched a little beyond the line of judgement: it pleased; it must always please: no wonder then that the public expressed no small degree of satisfaction, when it was known that this celebrated author was engaged in writing the Lives of the most eminent English Poets, with critical observations on their works; much was expected from his knowledge and judgement; but high raised expectations are frequently disappointed: in these volumes, amidst the many just observations, the solid sense, and deep penetration which even his enemies must admire, his warmest friends find some passages which they must wish unwritten or obliterated.
It is not my intention to follow the Biographer through all the lives he has written; but, after a few cursory remarks, these pages will be confined to his observations on Lyric Poetry, particularly on the Odes of Mr. Gray. As I shall have frequent occasions to dissent from the Critic’s judgement, I shall give my reasons freely and firmly, but with great respect to his understanding and virtues.
‘With the political tenets of the writer, I have nothing to do; my business is with his criticism:’1 yet it were to be wished that the spirit of party had not been so warmly diffused through this work; it is often disagreeable, but in the Life of Milton it is disgusting: not that I am inclined to defend the religious or political principles of our great poet; I know too well the intolerant spirit of that liberty, which worked its odious purposes through injustice, oppression, and cruelty: but it is of little consequence to the present and future ages whether the author of Paradise Lost was Papist or Presbyterian, Royalist or Republican; it is the Poet that claims our attention: if however in the life of Milton it were necessary to take notice of the part he bore in those disastrous times, it might have been more eligible to have imitated the moderation of J.Philips, who, though he wrote more than seventy years nearer those times, when the facts were yet fresh on mens memories, checked his expression of the abhorrence of them, through respect to his master, with this beautiful apostrophe,
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And had that other Bard, Oh, had but he, that first ennobled song With holy raptures, like his Abdiel been, ’Mongst many faithless, strictly faithful found; Unpity’d he should not have wail’d his orbs, That roll’d in vain to find the piercing ray, |
And found no dawn, by dim suffusion veil’d! But he—However, let the Muse abstain, Nor blast his fame, from whom she learn’d to sing In much inferior strains. —2 |
We are also sorry to see the masculine spirit of Dr. Johnson descending to what he perhaps in another might call ‘anile garrulity.’ In reading the life of any eminent person we wish to be informed of the qualities which gave him the superiority over other men: when we are poorly put off with paltry circumstances, which are common to him with common men, we receive neither instruction nor pleasure. We know that the greatest men are subject to the infirmities of human nature equally with the meanest; why then are these infirmities recorded? Can it be of any importance to us to be told how many pair of stockings the author of the Essay on Man wore?3 Achilles and Thersites eat, and drank, and slept; in these things the Hero was not distinguished from the Buffoon: are we made the wiser or the better by being informed that the Translator of Homer stewed his Lampreys in a silver saucepan?4 Who does not blush when he finds recorded that idle story of a nameless critic, who said of the author of The Fleece, He will be buried in woolen?5 Is this held up for wit? Is it intended as a sarcasm on Dyer? Is it not an insult to the understanding of the reader? Let me stop a moment to speak of this writer. ‘Dyer is not a poet of bulk or dignity sufficient to require an elaborate criticism.’6 Does Dr. Johnson estimate poetical merit, as Rubens did feminine beauty, by the stone? Well then might he recommend Blackmore to us. If The Fleece be now universally neglected, let me join my testimony to that of Akinside, that such neglect is a reproach to the reigning taste; the poem is truly classical: to say that ‘Dyer’s mind was not unpoetical.’7 is parsimonious praise; he had a benevolent heart, a vigorous imagination, and a chastised judgement; his style is compact and nervous; his numbers have harmony, spirit, and force.
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On they move Indissolubly firm; nor obvious hill, Nor streit’ning vale, nor wood, nor stream divides Their perfect ranks. —8 |
The present passion for anecdotes may make these levities pardonable: but when the narrative goes further, and reflects upon the social and moral character of a worthy person, it must be taken up in an
higher tone. We are carefully informed of the avidity of Addison, of the eagerness with which he laid hold on his proportion of the profits arising from the papers of the Spectator, of his unmerciful exaction of an hundred pounds lent by him to Steele.9 If this be true, it only shows that Addison had not ‘exalted his moral to divine:’ but the intervention of more than sixty years has not yet obliterated the remembrance of his gentle manners and benevolent disposition: that Steele was not an œconomist is well known; but what authority Dr. Johnson has for saying that Addison reclaimed his loan by an execution, we are not told: I am told by the best authority that it is an absolute falsehood. This vindication is due to the memory of a man, who was universally respected whilst he lived, and ‘of whose virtue it is a sufficient testimony, that the resentment of party has transmitted no charge of any crime;’ ‘who taught, with great justness of argument and dignity of language, the most important duties, and sublime truths;’ ‘who employed wit on the side of virtue and religion, purified intellectual pleasure, separated mirth from indecency,’ enlightened and refined the age in which he lived, ‘and excited such an emulation of intellectual elegance, that, from his time to our own, life has been gradually exalted, and conversation purified and enlarged.’10
This purity, this enlargement leads us to resent the cruel manner in which Dr. Johnson speaks of the Lady, who is the subject of Hammond’s Elegies11: an old Goth would not have been guilty of such an indelicacy: but whatever character her lover, or his Biographer, may have bequeathed her, those, who were so happy as to be acquainted with her, speak of her as a very excellent and amiable woman. This offence against truth and good manners is the more inexcusable, as Dr. Johnson had opportunities enough of informing himself of the Lady’s real character. With regard to Hammond, whether Mr. Shiels12 was misled by false accounts I cannot determine; but that this Poet was not the Son of Anthony Hammond, who was allied to Sir Robert Walpole by marrying his Sister, I can assure the public upon the authority of that respectable family.13 His Elegies certainly have faults, which the Critic is eagle-eyed to discover; but they have beauties, against which he shuts his eyes; a younger man might perhaps say with Spenser,
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Such one’s ill judge of love, that cannot love, Ne in their frozen hearts feel kindly flame. For-thy they ought not thing unknown reprove, Ne natural affection faultless blame.14 |
‘Why Hammond, or other writers, have thought the quatrain of ten syllables elegiac, it is difficult to tell.’ Perhaps the difficulty is not great; the next sentence may serve to explain it; ‘the character of the Elegy is gentleness and tenuity;’ no other measure in the English language glides with such easy sweetness, and in such a gentle strain of melody. ‘But this Stanza has been pronounced by Dryden, whose knowledge of English metre was not inconsiderable, to be the most magnificent of all the measures which our language affords.’15 The critic himself accounts for this opinion of Dryden, ‘Davenant was perhaps at this time his favourite author, though Gondibert never appears to have been popular; and from Davenant he learned to please his ear with the stanza of four lines alternately rhymed.’16 The elegant Aikins, in their dissertation on Gondibert,17 have adverted to its measure with propriety and fine taste. But it is not for nothing that this opinion of Dryden is held out to us: Mr. Gray’s Elegy is written in this metre; it had been too desperate to have hazarded an open attack on that poem; the Critic therefore shelters himself behind the authority of Dryden, and seems to direct his censure against Hammond, whilst the shaft is aimed at Gray.
[introduces the subject of the ode and thus turns to Johnson’s criticism of Gray’s poetry. This topic occupies the second half of the book.]
Sublimity is the essential and characteristic perfection of the Ode; where this can be attained by ‘the placid beauties of methodical deduction’, that artful course is pursued; but it is more often seized by a rapid and impetuous transition; yet this is always under the controul of some nice connexion, is never vague and wanton, never loses sight of its important object. The Ode is daring, but not licentious; though it is great, it disclaims ‘the proud irregularity of greatness’.
Collins was the first of our poets that reached its excellence: his mind was impressed with a tender melancholy, but without any mixture of that sullen gloom which deadens its powers; it led him to the softest sympathy, that most refined feeling of the human heart; his faculties
were vigorous, and his genius truly sublime; his style is close and strong, and his numbers in general harmonious. He was well acquainted with Æschylus and Euripides, and drew deep from their fountains: his thoughts had a romantic cast, and his imagination a certain wild grandeur, which sometimes perhaps approaches to the borders of extravagance; but this led him to descriptions and allegories wonderfully poetical; such for instance is the Antistrophe in his Ode to Liberty, and the first part of his Ode to Fear; Æschylus himself has not a bolder conception, and the grandeur of thought is as greatly expressed. Dr. Johnson speaks of this sublime Poet with a tenderness which reflects honour on himself; he allows him sometimes to have sublimity and splendor, but in the coldness of criticism expresses some disapprobation of his allegorical imagery, and is unjust to his harmony.
The want of a good taste in a professed Critic is a mental blindness which totally incapacitates him for the discharge of the high office he has assumed; but the want of good manners is an offence against those laws of decorum which, by guarding the charities of society, render our intercourse with each other agreeable: yet there is in some persons a blunt and surly humour, which prides itself in despising these laws of civility; and often with an awkward affectation of pleasantry they play their rude gambols to make mirth, and
Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait,
Tempest the ocean.18
To whatever liberal motive this conduct may possibly be imputed, we are told by an excellent writer that ‘there is a certain expression of style and behaviour which verges towards barbarism; and that it is a degree of barbarism to ascribe nobleness of mind to arrogance of phrase or insolence of manners.’ If there is a writer who, more than others, has a claim to be exempted from this pelting petulance, Mr. Gray has that claim: his own polished manners restrained him from ever giving offence to any good man, his warm and chearful benevolence endeared him to all his friends; though he lived long in a college, he lived not sullenly there, but in a liberal intercourse with the wisest and most virtuous men of his time; he was perhaps the most learned man of the age, but his mind never contracted the rust of pedantry; he had too good an understanding to neglect that urbanity which renders society pleasing; his conversation was instructing, elegant, and agreeable; superior knowledge, an exquisite taste in the fine arts, and above all purity of
morals and an unaffected reverence for religion made this excellent person an ornament to society and an honour to human nature.
[records his own response to Gray’s odes in opposition to Johnson’s.]
I cannot quit this subject without taking a review of the Ode. The Bard, as Dr. Beattie, who caught the enthusiasm of the Poet, finely observes, just escaped from the Massacre of his brethren, under the complicated agitations of grief, revenge, and despair, and surrounded with the scenery of rocks, mountains, and torrents, stupendous by nature, and now rendered hideous by desolation, imprecates perdition upon the bloody Edward.’19 The effect of this imprecation on the tyrant and his warrior chiefs is greatly represented by images of varied terror; the king’s crested pride was dismayed;
Stout Glo’ster stood aghast in speechless trance:
To arms! cried Mortimer, and couch’d his quiv’ring lance.
The description of the Bard adds to the great ideas of Raphael and Milton a wild dignity of sorrow which strikes us with awe. His lamentations over his slaughtered brethren call for revenge in strains of dreadful harmony. Amidst these woe-wild notes he sees their spirits sitting on a distant cliff, and weaving the ample winding-sheet of Edward’s race; on this, ‘seized with prophetic enthusiasm, he foretells in the most alarming strains, and typifies by the most dreadful images, the disasters that were to overtake his family and descendents.’20 And now, ‘The work is done.’ The airy images melt away in a track of light that fires the western skies. Yet other visions, visions of glory, now burst upon his sight; he beholds in a prophetic extasy a succession of genuine kings, of the line of Tudor, regain their sovereignty; the deep sorrows of his lyre are now changed to measures of transport and rapture, he hails the Bards of future times, whose voices reach his ear, and with strains of defiance and triumph, seeing his death inevitable, (like the poor mariner that leaps from his burning ship into the sea) to preserve himself from the outrages of his enemies he plunges from the mountain’s height into the roaring tide below.
The wild and romantic scenery, the strength of conception, the boldness of the figures, the terrible sublimity, the solemn spirit of prophecy, and the animated glow of visions of glory render this ‘the finest Ode in the world.’ The language of Gray is always pure, peculiarly
compact and nervous, ever appropriated to his subject; when that is gay and smiling, his diction is elegant and glittering; in the sober reflections of saintly melancholy it is grave and solemn; and it rises with an elevated dignity along with the boldest flights of his sublime imagination; and his numbers, regulated by a fine taste and a nice ear, have through all their various modulations a rich and copious harmony. Gray inherited the ample pinion of the Theban Eagle, and sails with supreme dominion through the azure deep of air; but he never sinks to that humiliating lowness to which not want of genius, but the poverty of his subject often depresses the Theban’s fluttering pennons: he therefore has a claim to the highest rank in the realms of Lyric Poety. This testimony to his merit would from any lover of literature have been an act of justice; but from the translator of Æschylus,21 who owes so much to him, it is a debt of Gratitude.
What could induce Dr. Johnson, who as a good man might be expected to favour goodness, as a scholar to be candid to a man of learning, to attack this excellent person and poet with such outrage and indecency, we can only conjecture from this observation, ‘there must be a certain sympathy between the book and the reader to create a good liking.’ Now it is certain that the Critic has nothing of this sympathy, no portion nor sense of that vivida vis animi,22 that etherial flame which animates the poet; he is therefore as little qualified to judge of these works of imagination, as the shivering inhabitant of the caverns of the North to form an idea of the glowing sun that flames over the plains of Chili.
Dr. Johnson knows well that ‘all Truth is valuable, and that satyrical criticism may be considered as useful, when it rectifies error and improves judgement; he that refines the publick taste is a publick benefactor.’23 Under this idea he will value the truth of these observations; and upon a more careful review of this Ode of Gray he will perhaps discover that it has some little use, that it promotes one truth; ‘it makes kings fear to be tyrants, tyrants to manifest their tyrannical humours.’24 Few indeed are the pages any where to be found from which some useful instruction may not be derived by those who are disposed to receive it; even these may be a lesson to literary tyrants to bear their faculties meekly, to favour the Progress of Poetry, and to spare the Bard.
1787
|
The first edition of Hawkins’s Life was published in March 1787; the second, with many additions and corrections, appeared three months later. Extract from second edition, 534–8. Hawkins is not without his merits as a biographer but, for the most part, his critical comments on Johnson’s writings are perfunctory. Below are his remarks on the Lives of the English Poets, which he considered the most celebrated of the works by the man he describes elsewhere as ‘the greatest proficient in vernacular erudition, and one of the ablest critics of his time’ (p. 441). See Introduction, P. 33. |
The book came abroad in the year 1778, in ten small volumes, and no work of Johnson has been more celebrated. It has been said to contain the soundest principles of criticism, and the most judicious examen of the effusions of poetic genius, that any country, not excepting France, has to shew; and so much of this is true, that, in our perusal of it, we find our curiosity, as to facts and circumstances, absorbed in the contemplation of those penetrating reflections and nice discriminations, which are far the greater part of it.
It is, nevertheless, to be questioned, whether Johnson possessed all the qualities of a critic, one of which seems to be a truly poetic faculty. This may seem a strange doubt, of one who has transfused the spirit of one of Mr. Pope’s finest poems into one written by himself in a dead language,1 and, in two instances, nearly equalled the greatest of the Roman satyrists. By the poetic faculty, I mean that power which is the result of a mind stored with beautiful images, and which exerts itself in creation and description: of this Johnson was totally devoid. His organs, imperfect as they were, could convey to his imagination but little of that intelligence
which forms the poetic character, and produces that enthusiasm which distinguishes it. If we try his ability by Shakespeare’s famous description;
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The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from Heaven to earth, from earth to Heaven; And, as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation, and a name:2 |
he will appear deficient. We know that he wanted this power; that he had no eye that could be said to roll or glance, and, therefore, that all his conceptions of the grandeur and magnificence of external objects, or beautiful scenes, and extensive prospects, were derived from the reports of others, and consequently were but the feeble impressions of their archetypes; so that it may be questioned whether, either waking or sleeping,
Such sights as youthful poets dream,3
were ever presented to his view.
This defect in his imaginative faculty, may well account for the frigid commendation which Johnson bestows on Thomson, and other of the descriptive poets, on many fine passages in Dryden, and on the Henry and Emma of Prior. Moral sentiments, and versification, seem chiefly to have engaged his attention, and on these his criticisms are accurate, but severe, and not always impartial. His avowed fondness for rhyme is one of the blemishes in his judgment: he entertained it in opposition to Milton, and cherished it through the whole of his life; and it led him into many errors. Dryden had his doubts about the preference of rhyme to blank verse; and I have heard Johnson accuse him for want of principle in this respect and of veering about in his opinion on the subject. No such imputation could fasten on himself.
That Johnson had no sense of the harmony of musical sounds, himself would frequently confess, but this defect left him not without the power of deriving pleasure from metrical harmony, from that commixture of long and short quantities, which the laws of prosody have reduced to rule, and from whence arises a delight in those whose ear is unaffected by consonance. The strokes on the pulsatile instruments, the drum for instance, though they produce monotonous sounds, have, if made by
rule, mathematical ratios of duple and triple, with numberless fractions, and admit of an infinite variety of combinations, which give pleasure to the auditory faculty; but of this Johnson seems also to have been insensible. That his own numbers are so harmonious as, in general, we find them, must have been the effect of his sedulous attention to the writings of Dryden and Pope, and the discovery of some secret in their versification, of which he was able to avail himself.
If Johnson be to be numbered among those poets in whom the powers of understanding, more than those of the imagination, are seen to exist, we have a reason for that coldness and insensibility which he so often discovers in the course of this work; and, when we recollect that he professed himself to be a fastidious critic, we are not to wonder, that he is sometimes backward in bestowing applause on passages that seem to merit it. In short, he was a scrupulous estimator of beauties and blemishes, and possessed a spirit of criticism, which, by long exercise, may be said to have become mechanical. So nicely has he balanced the one against the other, that, in some instances, he has made neither scale preponderate, and, in others, by considering the failings of his authors as positive demerit, he has left some celebrated names in a state of reputation below mediocrity. A spirit like this, had before actuated him in his preface to Shakespeare, in which, by a kind of arithmetical process, subtracting from his excellencies his failings, he has endeavoured to sink him in the opinion of his numerous admirers, and to persuade us, against reason and our own feelings, that the former are annihilated by the latter.
His censures of the writings of lord Lyttelton, and of Gray, gave great offence to the friends of each: the first cost him the friendship of a lady, whose remarks on the genius of Shakespeare have raised her to a degree of eminence among the female writers of this time;4 and the supposed injury done by him to the memory of Gray, is resented by the whole university of Cambridge. The character of Swift he has stigmatized with the brand of pride and selfishness, so deeply impressed, that the marks thereof seem indelible. In the praises of his wit, he does him no more than justice; of his moral qualities, he has made the most; and of his learning, of which Swift possessed but a very small portion, he has said nothing. Few can be offended at Johnson’s account of this man, whose arrogance and malevolence were a reproach to human nature; and in whose voluminous writings little is to be found, that can conduce to the improvement or benefit of mankind, or, indeed, that it beseemed a clergyman to publish.
In his own judgment of the lives of the poets, Johnson gave the preference to that of Cowley, as containing a nicer investigation and discrimination of the characteristics of wit, than is elsewhere to be found. Others have assigned to Dryden’s life the pre-eminence. Upon the whole, it is a finely written, and an entertaining book, and is likely to be coeval with the memory of the best of the writers whom it celebrates.
1789
|
Extracts from pp. 109, 172–5, 189–94. This work was an expanded version of Potter’s ‘Remarks’ which appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine, October 1781–March 1782 (li, 463–7, 506–10, 561–4; lii, 24–6, 116–18). It is more fragmented and censorious than No. 57. The section on Shenstone is included to illustrate a kind of rapturous delight that was quite alien to Johnson’s critical temper. See Introduction, pp. 30, 32. |
It may be perceived from our author’s mean opinion of him, was a lover as well as lord: as to his poetry, I have a better opinion of it than our author, whose mind was, in some respects, as narrow as a crane’s neck.
Johnson’s and his mind were so diametrically opposite, that they were like the elephant and rhinoceros; and in the story of the wooden book,2
Johnson chose rather to burlesque learning than to omit so idle a jest: nevertheless, of the two, it must be admitted, that Shenstone was at least as far removed from being a piece of timber as himself, who a little resembled King Log. For as to the stanzas of Shenstone, ‘to which’ (says Johnson) ‘if any mind denies its sympathy, it has no acquaintance with love or nature;’3 —the reader should be informed, that it is said that he had no perception of their beauty till it was pointed out to him; but whether the sketches exhibited by him for laying out pleasure-grounds were his, I know not. Shenstone brings to mind Tickell’s lines addressed to Addison:
Ne’er was to the bow’rs of bliss convey’d
A purer spirit, or more welcome shade. —4
which however were, I suppose, too mythological for our author. Be that as it might, the concluding criticism is really cruel: but it is beyond the power of Johnson’s libel on this tender poet, Hammond, Gray, &c., of his ironical commendation of Addison, as himself has given out, or of any pedagogue’s contempt, to destroy their reputation; although he introduces Gray with his knotted club to knock down the gentle Shenstone, to be himself knocked down at last by our blind Polypheme in the wantonness of his might. He makes Lyttleton too give him a stroke,5 in the spirit of him who furnished the monkies with clubs to belabour one another for his diversion.
The Doctor, as always, sickens at the idea of any thing rural. Were it not vain to argue against a person who possessed but three out of the five senses, being destitute of that of taste and sight, one might have asked him who wrote London, whether great cities do not afford something sickening, distressing, or horrible, at every step by day or by night. Too true it is, that the savageness of mankind renders rural, as well as other scenes, often sickening and odious; but the scenes of pastoral may be supposed to be laid in Arcadia, or rather indeed in fancied Arcadia. But if we will not in this admit fiction allowed to every kind of poetry, but insist on truth, ancient, or perhaps some modern, realities may afford some satisfaction. It may not be impossible, that as the belief of the true God has always been preserved in some corner of the world, so the genuine simplicity of nature may have been quite extinct. But otherwise, the pastoral poet may revert to the state of man before the
fall. At all times grazing flocks are certainly a pleasing sight: though, in modern times, those who deem themselves of the better sort, annex, like the lowest of mankind whom they nevertheless despise, no idea of entertainment to the prospect of them, but sordidness: they, I will not say, like our biographer, have not the least relish of nature as it is solely God’s. If according to a remark of Pope’s, in his essay on pastoral, only the pleasing objects of rural life should be presented to view,6 that of a shepherd in Britain at this day has agreeable circumstances. Let one figure to himself a fine spring morning; the sun rising over a distant hill, bespangling the wide surrounding lawn with pearl, the harmless smiling flocks cropping it, and the lark singing over his head, whilst perhaps the thought of his fair one attunes his own voice to the carrol and the song. If moreover he has a genius for verse, or music to entertain his long leisure, the comparison with sequestered scenes of Arcadia will not seem preposterous. But withal, the reader of pastoral, as of romance, may please himself with the natural congenial idea of a future immortal state, realizing, and more than realizing, the sweet tranquil descriptions of Arcadian and Elysian vales, or of golden castles and ivory gates turning to angelic harmony, such as it never entered the imagination of poet to conceive. Regarding the pastoral of romance, as better than past, as prophetic of what is to come; of, for ought we know, Paradise Regained, when the thoughts of the butcher shall not mingle with the sights of the flocks and herds….
These Lives, which furnish the literary of a century, and contain many good morsels of criticism, &c. may be named with Plutarch’s, on account of the veins of pleasantry interspersed; but if we compare the numerous apothegms recorded by Plutarch, with the few recited by Johnson, we shall find our author’s greatly superior, and be apt to conclude that both Plutarch’s heroes and himself entertained but an indifferent notion of repartee. These two great biographers also resemble each other in possessing a considerable spice of the old woman.
The characteristics of Dr. Johnson were general and extensive classical erudition, strong sense, and accurate observation; which seasoned with dry humour and sly detraction, rather than Dryden’s free, and Pope’s pungent wit, have rendered his classical erudition equally immortal. Strange, and a pity it was, that with his great qualities, he, or rather his posthumous editors, should make the world the confessor of his weak-
nesses, and of his methodism, commixed as they were with literary butchery and savageness. Indeed his character consisted of contradictions. Though his piety was great, and he feared not man, but God, nor any dangers of death, yet he trembled at the thoughts of it. His piety was of the kind, that, haughty and arrogant as it was, would have held the world in the fetters of slavery and priestcraft, whilst the precepts inculcated in these lives run counter both to divinity and christian morality. He thought that every one but himself should submit to the great, whilst he despised all men but Popes and Kings, and his father among the rest. As his own character was inconsistent, so his countrymen, nine in ten of whom despised his principles, and nine in ten of the remainder his uncouth manner approaching to savageness, though he was enamoured of a smooth luxurious age, adored him. So devoted was he to the ways of the world, that in this latter work, he, as Bacon says of Machiavel,7 taught rather what men do, than what they ought to do, as Bacon himself taught by example.
Of his works; though they have little of originality, and his style has a certain atrabiliousness, and his tissue of paragraphs an unpleasing quaintness, it must be confessed that his Dictionary, Rambler, and the two imitative translations of Juvenal, &c. are very excellent; and that these Lives of the English Poets contain a fund of very valuable general criticism, and that his remarks on Pope’s Epitaphs are singularly acute,8 and, for the most part, just. But the coarseness of his constitution, his vigorous mind being perhaps vitiated or degraded by the grossness of his body, vibrated not to the delicate touches of a Shenstone and a Hammond, nor even to the stronger hand of a Gray, but gravitated by the weight of that in which it was inclosed to earth. Johnson’s feelings were more ordinary than fine, which indeed accounts for his popularity; more nervous than elevated; and I take Hawkesworth to have been at least his equal in sublimity, and that the author of the Adventurer9 deserves one history of his life.
Johnson was in literature what the first Pitt was in politics, both being alike rough and overbearing. And it would, methinks, be no disagreeable speculation for a moment, how such violent spirits would have assorted on the national theatre? But, as according to Johnson, Garrick was mute in a court of law,10 and the Lord Chief Justice would probably make
but an indifferent figure on the stage, so it is probable that he, whose knowledge much exceeded Pitt’s, would have borne the bell in conversation, as he easily did in the company of Chesterfield, but would not have been a match for either in Parliament; though it is not likely that he would have brooked total silence, as did, according to report, the whole House of Commons, at one period of Chatham’s greatness. How was it at the club, of which Charles Fox and Burke were members? When the Doctor ridiculed Lord Mansfield for being the pack-horse of the law,11 he might have remembered that himself had been a lexicographical pioneer.
Johnson seldom writes to the fancy; nor visibly ironically so as to discover such a purpose to the reader; but in a continual jog-trot of didactic, allowing no holiday. He constantly addresses himself to the understanding; makes no excursions into the regions of spirits, beyond ‘this visible diurnal sphere,’ nor essays knowledge denied to ‘ears of flesh and blood;’ nor even wishes to stray beyond the walks of mere modern life, back to the regions of Gothic fancy. His timid, impalpable, dreary religion permitted him not to expatiate in the field of hypothesis and conjecture; reveries, vain, perhaps, yet amusing; the food of the soul, and a refuge from the miseries and calamities of life. Terribly afraid of free-thinking, though not hostile to free-eating, he immersed in dogma and superstition, fearing to make use of reason as a mediator between extremes. He had the anxiety and yearning of the psalmist without the joy and exultation: such as repel from a pleasant contemplation of the Deity, and instead of imparting delight, make men shrink back from eternity, and exhibit the idea of death terrible; such as pluck away the rose buds of ideal hope from the hour of the separation of soul and body, and point it only with thorns. But these maladies, and his other defects and faults, candour will partially set down to his frame of body, ill adapted to a perfect mind, and acknowledge him, with whose anecdotes the press teemed, to have been no inconsiderable person, but a great author, notwithstanding his Dictionary is imperfect, his Rambler pompous, his Idler inane, his Lives unjust, his poetry inconsiderable, his learning common, his ideas vulgar, his Irene a child of mediocrity, his genius and wit moderate, his precepts worldly, his politics narrow, and his religion bigoted.
1789–97
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Text from Letters, ed. A.Constable, 1811, ii. 307–8; v. 31–2. Anna Seward (1747–1809), the ample ‘Swan of Lichfield’, was capable of a sympathetic response to Johnson (see Introduction, pp. 21, 22, 31); she was also capable of malevolence. There appears to be calculated malice in the two letters printed here. Her correspondents were the Revd Thomas Whalley, prebendary of Wells and minor poet, and Thomas Park the antiquary. |
7 April 1789, to Whalley:
I do not think it fair to appeal to Johnson’s critical tribunal for arbitration on any poetic subject, except indeed his dictionary, which, for verbal authority, may generally be relied upon. In his critical dissertations, the Lives of the Poets, he is too perpetually stimulated by rival-hating envy, to perplex and mislead concerning the true merits of the art, and the respective claims of the artists, to have his decisions referred to in disputes of this nature. You observe ‘that, having never written sonnets, he could have no bias upon his judgment from jealousy.’ Now Johnson has not attempted Pindaric odes any more than sonnets; it may, therefore, with equal force, be alleged, that, no clashing interest existing, we may rely upon his judgment, as inevitably impartial, when he decides upon their claims. Yet how unjust, how despicable is his wretched contempt of Gray’s noble odes! Remember, also, his contempt for the sweet, the matchless Lycidas of our immortal Bard; and, I am sure, you will confess that, either a wretched depravity of taste, or a lying spirit of criticism, incapacitates his dogmas for becoming umpires between literary friends, when they differ about any thing Milton has written. He decide, indeed! who asserts in his life of that poet, that nobody closes the leaves of the Paradise Lost with any wish of ever opening them again!!!1 Surely it is strange that you should say of him, who could so say, that ‘Milton has, on
the whole, had due honour from Johnson.’ To me it appears, that whatever praise he gives Milton, was for the purpose of giving an air of impartiality to his injustice, and keener edge to his sarcasms. But that his malice to Milton is so glaring, he might have a better right than yourself to dislike the sonnets of that poet, since his hatred to blank verse was allowed, and since they partake so much of its nature. That my opinions do not blindly follow the whistling of a great name, my confession that I cannot read a canto of Spenser without weariness may evince.
21 December 1797, to Park:
After Johnson rose himself into fame, it is well known that he read no other man’s writings, living or dead, with that attention without which public criticism can have no honour, or, indeed, common honesty. If genius flashed upon his maturer eyes, they ached at its splendour, and he cast the book indignantly from him. All his familiarity with poetic compositions, was the result of juvenile avidity of perusal; and their various beauties were stampt upon his mind, by a miraculous strength and retention of memory. The wealth of poetic quotation in his admirable Dictionary, was supplied from the hoards of his early years. They were very little augmented afterwards.
In subsequent periods, he read verse, not to appreciate, but to depreciate its excellence. His first ambition, early in life, was poetic fame; his first avowed publication was in verse. Disappointed in that darling wish, indignant of less than first-rate eminence, he hated the authors, preceding or contemporary, whose fame, as poets, eclipsed his own.2 In writing their lives, he gratified that dark passion, even to luxury. The illiberal propensity of mankind in general, to be gratified by the degradation of eminent talents, favoured his purpose. Wit and eloquence gilded injustice, and it was eagerly swallowed*.
1859
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Text from Collected Writings, ed. D.Masson, 1890, iv. 114–7. The date of composition of this piece is not known; it was first published (under the title of a ‘Prefatory Memorandum’) in the collected edition of De Quincey’s writings in 1859. It is perhaps the most hostile response to one of the Lives. De Quincey regards Johnson as ‘the worst enemy that Milton and his great cause have ever been called upon to confront; the worst as regards undying malice!’ (p. 105). |
[De Quincey claims that Johnson was determined to put a mine under ‘the most consecrated of Milton’s creations’, Paradise Lost.]
Into this great chef-d’oeuvre of Milton it was no doubt Johnson’s secret determination to send a telling shot at parting. He would lodge a little gage d’amitié, a farewell pledge of hatred, a trifling token (trifling, but such things are not estimated in money) of his eternal malice. Milton’s admirers might divide it among themselves; and, if it should happen to fester and rankle in their hearts, so much the better; they were heartily welcome to the poison: not a jot would he deduct for himself if a thousand times greater. O Sam! kill us not with munificence. But now, as I must close within a minute or so, what is that pretty souvenir of gracious detestation with which our friend took his leave? The Paradise Lost, said he, in effect, is a wonderful work; wonderful, grand beyond
all estimate; sublime to a fault. But—well, go on, we are all listening. But—I grieve to say it, wearisome. It creates a world of admiration (one world, take notice); but—oh, that I, senior offshoot from the house of Malagrowthers,1 should live to say it! —ten worlds of ennui; one world of astonishment; ten worlds of taedium vitae. Half and half might be tolerated—it is often tolerated by the bibulous and others; but one against ten? No, no!
This, then, was the farewell blessing which Dr. Johnson bestowed upon Paradise Lost! What is my reply? The poem, it seems, is wearisome; Edmund Waller called it dull. A man, it is alleged by Dr. Johnson, opens the volume; reads a page or two with feelings allied to awe; next he finds himself rather jaded; then sleepy; naturally shuts up the book; and forgets ever to take it down again.2 Now, when any work of human art is impeached as wearisome, the first reply is wearisome to whom? For it so happens that nothing exists, absolutely nothing, which is not at some time, and to some person, wearisome or potentially disgusting. There is no exception for the works of God. ‘Man delights not me, nor woman either,’3 is the sigh which breathes from the morbid misanthropy of the gloomy but philosophic Hamlet. Weariness, moreover, and even sleepiness, is the natural reaction of awe or of feelings too highly strung; and this reaction in some degree proves the sincerity of the previous awe. In cases of that class, where the impressions of sympathetic veneration have been really unaffected, but carried too far, the mistake is—to have read too much at a time. But these are exceptional cases: to the great majority of readers the poem is wearisome through mere vulgarity and helpless imbecility of mind; not from overstrained excitement, but from pure defect in the capacity for excitement. And a moment’s reflection at this point lays bare to us the malignity of Dr. Johnson. The logic of that malignity is simply this: that he applies to Milton, as if separately and specially true of him, a rule abstracted from human experience spread over the total field of civilisation. All nations are here on a level. Not a hundredth part of their populations is capable of any unaffected sympathy with what is truly great in sculpture, in painting, in music, and by a transcendent necessity in the supreme of Fine Arts—Poetry. To be popular in any but a meagre comparative sense as an artist of whatsoever class is to be confessedly a condescender to human infirmities. And, as to the test which Dr. Johnson, by implication, proposes as trying the merits of Milton in his greatest work, viz. the degree in which it was read, the
Doctor knew pretty well, —and when by accident he did not was inexcusable for neglecting to inquire, —that by the same test all the great classical works of past ages, Pagan or Christian, might be branded with the mark of suspicion as works that had failed of their paramount purpose, viz. a deep control over the modes of thinking and feeling in each successive generation. Were it not for the continued succession of academic students having a contingent mercenary interest in many of the great authors surviving from the wrecks of time, scarcely one edition of fresh copies would be called for in each period of fifty years. And, as to the arts of sculpture and painting, were the great monuments in the former art, those, I mean, inherited from Greece, such as the groups, &c., scattered through Italian mansions, —the Venus, the Apollo, the Hercules, the Faun, the Gladiator, and the marbles in the British Museum, purchased by the Government from the late Lord Elgin,4 —stripped of their metropolitan advantages, and left to their own unaided attraction in some provincial town, they would not avail to keep the requisite officers of any establishment for housing them in salt and tobacco. We may judge of this by the records left behind by Benjamin Haydon5 of the difficulty which he found in simply upholding their value as wrecks of the Phidian era. The same law asserts itself everywhere. What is ideally grand lies beyond the region of ordinary* human sympathies; which must, by a mere instinct of good sense, seek out objects more congenial and upon their own level. One answer to Johnson’s killing shot, as he kindly meant it, is that our brother is not dead but sleeping.6 Regularly as the coming generations unfold their vast processions, regularly as these processions move forward upon the impulse and summons of a nobler music, regularly as the dormant powers and sensibilities of the intellect in the working man are more and more developed, the Paradise Lost will be called for more and more: less and less continually will there be any reason to complain that the immortal book, being once restored to its place, is left to slumber for a generation. So far as regards the Time which is coming; but Dr. Johnson’s insulting farewell was an arrow
feathered to meet the Past and Present. We may be glad at any rate that the supposed neglect is not a wrong which Milton does, but which Milton suffers. Yet that Dr. Johnson should have pretended to think the case in any special way affecting the reputation or latent powers of Milton, —Dr. Johnson, that knew the fates of Books, and had seen by moonlight, in the Bodleian, the ghostly array of innumerable books long since departed as regards all human interest or knowledge—a review like that in Beranger’s7 Dream of the First Napoleon at St. Helena, reviewing the buried forms from Austerlitz or Borodino, horses and men, trumpets and eagles, all phantom delusions, vanishing as the eternal dawn returned, —might have seemed incredible except to one who knew the immortality of malice, —that for a moment Dr. Johnson supposed himself seated on the tribunal in the character of judge, and that Milton was in fancy placed before him at the bar,
Quem si non aliqua nocuisset, mortuus esset.8