1767
|
Text from pp. 1–10, 70–2. According to Boswell, Campbell (1726?–80) was ‘a Scotch purser in the navy’ (Life, ii. 44). His purpose was—in words from Hudibras on his title-page—to ridicule the ‘Babylonish Dialect Which learned Pedants much affect’; his method (in Boswell’s words) was to apply ‘Johnson’s “words of large meaning” to insignificant matters’, a standard satirical technique of the century. Though Boswell thought Lexiphanes could not harm Johnson, it gained considerable notoriety; a second edition was published in 1767, a third in 1783. See Introduction, p. 5. |
Mr. J——n or the English Lexiphanes and the Critick meet. After some compliments past between them, Lexiphanes rehearses his Rhapsody. It contains a rant about Hilarity and a Garret; Oroonoko’s1 adventure with a Soldier; his own journey to Highgate, and adventures there and on the road; his return to London, and lawsuit about his horse; his walk to Chelsea, where he plays at skittles; his being frightened by a calf on his return, which he mistakes for the Cock-lane Ghost;2 his amours and disappointments at a Bagnio. He is now interrupted by the Critick, who takes him to task for his hard words and affected style, and thinking him mad, applies to a Physician passing by, who proves to be the British Lucretius. He repeats a great many verses, and the Critick gets
rid of him with some difficulty. Another Doctor comes up, who is the Critick’s friend. They talk together upon Lexiphanes’s cafe, and other matters concerning taste and writing. They force him to swallow a potion which makes him throw up many of his hard words. The Doctor goes to a consultation, and the Critick instructs Lexiphanes how to avoid his former faults, and write better for the future.
A
DIALOGUE.
CRITICK. J——N. FIRST PHYSICIAN.
SECOND PHYSICIAN.
CRITICK.
See J——N yonder, our English Lexiphanes, marching along with a huge folio under his arm. Some new piece I’ll warrant, in the stile of his Ramblers. I shall be well entertained, if he is in a reading humour; a thing he is often fonder of than many of his hearers.
J——N.
Most happily occurred, my very benevolent convivial associate. Behold. A novel exhibition which is purely virginal, and which has never been critically* surveyed by any annual or diurnal retailer of literature, in this so signal† a metropolis.
CRITICK
What! a new romance, or a second Rasselas of Abyssinia?
J——N.
Without dubiety you misapprehend this dazzling scintillation of conceit in totality‡, and had you had that constant recurrence to my oraculous dictionary, which was incumbent upon you from the§
vehemence of my monitory injunctions, it could not have escaped you that the word novel exhibits to all men dignified by literary honours and scientifical accomplishments, two discrepant significations. The one imports that which you have affixed to it, a romance or fiction, such as the tale of Ajut and Anningait, or the Prince of Abyssinia*; but that in which I have at present used it, signifies new, recent, hodiernal. And indeed the eye of critical discernment will perceive, that there is a most exquisite elegancy in conferring that appellation upon a recent and hodiernal production. But I am afraid that I shall ransack vacuity, and strike out in vain flashes of instruction from the fortuitous collision of happy incidents,† for your intellects are exhausted,‡ or distorted,§ their fortresses are betray’d to rebels, and their children excited to sedition,|| and you are now labouring under an intellectual famine, and want the banquet of the lady Pekuah’s conversation¶.
CRITICK.
Excuse, dear sir, the dullness of my apprehension. But pray what is the subject of this new piece?
J——N.
It is a rhapsody or a characteristical essay, an assemblage calculated to enhance and diversify convivial festivity. But you must understand, that I totally anti-rhapsodize Ashley.
CRITICK.
What then! you don’t retail your characters in small quantities, as Ashley his punch, pro bono publico? We have them wholesale. But there are many of that name, and I should rather imagine, as ’tis a rhapsody, you mean my Lord Shaftsbury.4
J——N.
You arread me aright. And, indeed, this** luxuriant efflorescence of my wit would have been utterly inexplicable to any but one of your sagacity of conjecture, acuteness of comprehension, and facility of
penetration*. You are one of those gigantick and stupenduous intelli-gences who grasp a system by intuition†.
CRITICK.
Well, then give us a sample of your work, that I may not be altogether deprived of so great a feast, for I promise myself it will be as good as a cup of Nectar‡.
J——N.
Deject then§ exaggeratory obloquy below the horizon of your prospects,|| without the servility of adulation afford openness of ears, sedulity of thought, and stability of attention¶. But above all** expulse hereditary aggregates and agglomerated asperities which may obum-brate your intellectual luminaries with the clouds of obscurity, or obthurate the porches of your intelligence with the adscititious excrement of critical malevolence.
CRITICK.
Begin boldly, my good friend, there are neither agglomerated asperities nor hereditary aggregates about me††.
J——N.
Consider well how I have conglomerated this atchievement of erudition, the insinuation of its exordial sentences*, the selection of its diction, and resplendency of its sentiment.
CRITICK.
It must be all that, if yours. But I pray you begin†.
J——N.
I shall inchoate with one of it’s most delicious morsels of eloquence, and shall at the same time be curt‡. Perpend§, and receive my sayings with a stedfast ear||. But I obsecrate that in the interim you would, by a proper secession, facilitate my enjoyment of the light, whilst I, by the fortuitous liquefaction of spectacular lenses, and their concordant adaptation to my poral regions, meliorate and prolong its fruition¶.
After our post-meridional refection, rejoined Hypertatus, we will
regale with a supernumerary compotation of convivial ale, so adapted to exhilarate the young, and animate the torpor of hoary wisdom with sallies of wit, bursts of merriment, and an unintermitted stream of jocularity. From this assemblage of festivity we will unanimously extrude those screech-owls whose only care is to crush the rising hope, to damp the kindling transport, and allay the golden hours of gaiety with the hateful dross of grief and suspicion. Such is Suspirius, whom I have now known fifty-eight years and four months, who has intercepted the connubial conjunction of two hundred and twenty six reciprocal hymeneal solicitors by prognostications of infelicity, and has never yet passed an hour with me in which he has not made some attack upon my tranquillity, by representing to me, that the imbecillities of age, and infirmities of decrepitude are coming fast upon me. Indeed to those whose timidity of temper subjects them to extemporaneous impressions, who suffer by fascination, and catch the contagion of misery, it is extreme infelicity to live within the compass of a screech-owl’s voice. Therefore let us avoid Suspirius with a studied sedulity, and should we fortuitously meet him in the multifarious confluxes of men, let us repress the solicitude of his advances with a frigid graciousness* ….
CRITICK.
Have done, Mr J——n, for God’s sake have done. We have had enough of ascending and reciting. Besides, I guess what follows is neither fit for you to read nor me to hear. This, however, is not all I find fault with. Where the D——l! have you collected all this trash of hard words? from what magazine or repository have you raked together these perverse terms and absurd phrases, wherewith you have bespattered me, who never did you any wrong, at so unmerciful a rate? Some, I see, are of your own invention; for others you must have ransacked the old musty volumes of former times, justly disregarded when first written, and now deservedly forgotten. The rest I perceive you have gleaned up, with infinite pains, from Greek and Latin, from scholastick writers, and books on the abstruse sciences. And you think you have done a mighty pretty feat, that you have performed an eminent service to learning, when you have wriggled in, over head and shoulders, a new-fashioned long-tailed word, what in your own phrase I would call a vermicular word, or a dark term of art, without considering whether it be proper to the subject, suited to the capacity of your readers, or
indeed whether it be an English word or not. You are the unfittest person of any I know for what you have undertaken, to compile a dictionary. Though ‘tis indeed no wonder you should be employed by booksellers in such a work.
1777
| Life, iii. 173–4. |
In Baretti’s Review, which he published in Italy, under the title of Frusta Letteraria,1 it is observed, that Dr. Robertson the historian had formed his style upon that of ‘Il celebre Samuele Johnson.’ My friend himself was of that opinion: for he once said to me, in a pleasant humour, ‘Sir, if Robertson’s style be faulty, he owes it to me; that is, having too many words, and those too big ones.’
I read to him a letter which Lord Monboddo2 had written to me, containing some critical remarks upon the style of his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. His Lordship praised the very fine passage upon landing at Icolmkill;3 but his own style being exceedingly dry and hard, he disapproved of the richness of Johnson’s language, and of his frequent use of metaphorical expressions. JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, this criticism would be just, if in my style, superfluous words, or words too big for the thoughts, could be pointed out; but this I do not believe can be done. For instance; in the passage which Lord Monboddo admires, “We were now treading that illustrious region,” the word illustrious, contributes nothing to the mere narration; for the fact might be told without it: but it is not, therefore, superfluous; for it wakes the mind to peculiar attention, where something of more than usual importance is to
be presented. “Illustrious!” —for what? and then the sentence proceeds to expand the circumstances connected with Iona. And, Sir, as to metaphorical expression, that is a great excellence in style, when it is used with propriety, for it gives you two ideas for one; —conveys the meaning more luminously, and generally with a perception of delight.’
c. 1779
|
Text from British Museum Add. MS 37728, f. 34–5v. First published (though differing at many points from the manuscript version given here) in Walpole’s Works, 1798, iv. 361–2. Most of it was written before 1779 (see Walpole’s Correspondence, ed. W.S.Lewis, Yale, 1965, xxxiii. 89 n. 25). |
Dr Johnstone’s Works have obtained so much reputation, & the Execution of them, from partiality to his abilities, has been rated so far above his merit, that without detracting from his capacity or his Learning, it may be usefull to caution young Authors against partiality to his Style & manner, both of which are uncommonly vicious & unworthy of Imitation by any Man who aims at excellence in writing his own Language.
A marked manner, when It runs thro all the compositions of any Master, is a defect in itself, & indicates a deviation from Nature. The Writer betrays his having been struck by some predominant Tint, & his Ignorance of Nature’s Variety. Yet it is true that the greatest Masters of composition are so far imperfect, that they always leave some marks by which We may discover their hand. He approaches the nearest to universality, whose Works do not put it in the power of our Quickness or depth of Sagacity to observe certain characteristic touches that ascertain the specific Author.
Johnston’s Works are all as easily distinguished as if he were an affected Writer; for exuberance is a fault as well as Quaintness. There is Sense in almost every thing Johnstone says; he is often profound, and a just reasoner—I mean, when Prejudice, bigotry, and arrogance do not cloud or debase his Logic. He is benevolent in the application of his morality; dogmatically uncharitable in the dispensation of his Censures; and equally so, when he differs with his Antagonist on general Truths or partial doctrines.
The first Criterion that stamps J’s works for his, is the loaded Style. —I will not call it Verbose, tho strictly proper, because Verbosity generally implies unmeaning Verbiage—a censure he does not deserve. I have allowed & do allow that most of his words have an adequate, & frequently an illustrating purport—the true use of epithets—but then his words are indiscriminately select, & too forcefull for ordinary occasions. They form a hardness of diction, & a muscular toughness that destroy all ease & simplicity. Every Sentence is as high coloured as any. No paragraph improves; the position is as robust as the demonstration; & the weakest part of the paragraph, I mean, in the effect, not in the Solution, is generally the Conclusion. He illustrates till he fatigues. This fault is so usual with him, he is so apt to explain the same thought by three different set of phrases heaped on each other, that if I did not condemn his laboured coinage of words, I would call his threefold inundation of parallel expressions Triptology.
He prefers learned Words to the simple & common—& on every occasion. He is never simple, elegant, or light. He destroys more Enemies with the Weight of his Shield than with his spear, & had rather make 3 mortal wounds in the same part than one. This Monotony, the grievous effect of Pedantry & Self-conceit, prevents him from ever being eloquent. He excites no passion but indignation; his Writings send the Reader away more satiated than pleased. If he attempts humour, he makes yr reason smile, without making you gay; because the Study that his learned mirth demands, annihilates chearfullness. It is the clumsy gambol of a lettered Elephant. We wonder that so grave an Animal should have strayed into the province of the Ape, yet admire that practice should have given the bulky Quadruped so much agility.
Upon the whole, Johnston’s Style appears to me so encumbered, so void of ear & harmony, & consequently so harsh & unpliable that I know no modern Writer whose works coud be read aloud with so little satisfaction. I question whether one should not read a page of equal length in any modern Author in a minute’s time less than one of Johnstons, all proper pauses & accents duly attended to in Both.
His works are the Antipodes of Taste, & he a Schoolmaster of truth, but never its parent; for his doctrines have no novelty, and are never inculcated with indulgence either to the froward child, or to the Dull one. He has set nothing in a new light, yet is as diffuse as if we had every thing to learn. Modern Writers have improved on the Ancients only by conciseness: Dr. Johnstone, like the Chymists of Laputa, endeavours to carry back what has been digested to its pristine & crude principles. He is a Standing proof that the Muses leave works unfinished, if they are not embellished by the graces.
1786
|
Text from the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 1787, i. 27–56. The Revd Robert Burrowes read his two papers on Johnson’s style to the Academy on 13 March and 13 November 1786; Boswell rightly thought that in them Burrowes had ‘analysed the composition of Johnson and pointed out its peculiarities with much acuteness’ (Life, iv. 386). See Introduction, p. 31. |
As the primary and immediate desire of every reader must necessarily be to understand the meaning of his author, of all the faults of stile obscurity must be the most obvious and offensive….
That Johnson’s stile is obscure, the testimony of all unlearned readers abundantly confirms; and from the same authority the cause may be stated to be his perpetual affectation of expressing his thoughts by the use of polysyllables of Latin derivation: a fault, which confines to men of erudition the most animating enforcements to virtue and the most salutary rules of conduct, by disqualifying all who have not been made acquainted by a liberal education with the Latin appellations for things, or those, from whose memories the common use of the English names has in course of time effaced them. And let it not be said that such a class is beneath the attention of an author, when it is considered that almost the whole female world, from the circumstances of their education are necessarily included in it. They learn the words of their language from conversation or familiar books; but with whom are they to converse, or what volumes of musty pedantry are they to ransack, to be enabled to peruse the writings of Johnson without frequent recourse to his dictionary? Nor has this wilful exclusion of the unlearned readers served as a means of conciliating the favour of the learned, who, though they understand Latin, in an English work expect to find English; and whatever may be the peculiarities of their own stile, are forward enough to discover and reprobate those of others.
Thus Dr. Johnson observes, that Milton formed his stile on a perverse and pedantic principle: he was desirous ‘to use English words with a foreign idiom.’1 But Milton’s poetry, if indeed a defence be necessary, is sufficiently defended by established poetic license: and for his prose, let it be observed, that his subjects were learned, and I may say technical, and his readers of such description as left it matter of indifference whether they should be addressed in English or in Latin: that he was engaged in repeated controversies with foreigners, and his works designed to persecute the fortunes of the exiled monarch over the continent, and written, in some sort officially, by the Latin secretary to Cromwell. But surely that principle, which has led Johnson to seek for remote words, though with the English idiom, is no less pedantic than Milton’s, and much more injurious by its obscurity. The reader who knows the single words may perhaps be able to overcome the difficulties of the arrangement, but for ignorance of the single words no remedy can with efficacy be applied. Johnson has besides no peculiarity of situation to plead in excuse, but has on the contrary adopted his pedantic principle against the dissuasive influence of circumstances. From the writer of an English dictionary, there might reasonably be expected a nice selection of words, purely and radically English, or at least the use of such only as had been indisputably admitted into the language: and the complexion of his readers, as well as the popular subjects he treated of, were such as might be thought to
furnish little temptation to learned and antiquated phraseology. Indeed, if rules for periodical essays are to be drawn from the practice of their great English original, Mr. Addison, as the rules of epic poetry from Homer’s, nothing can be more opposite to their true character; for as their professed intent is the improvement of general manners, their stile, as well as their subjects, should be levelled to understandings of every description.
It may be said, however, in favour of Johnson, that the great law-givers of criticism have indulged writers of eminence in a license for calling in the aid of foreign words. But this indulgence, which of right belongs only to poetry, and the more dignified kinds of prose, is even granted to them with but a sparing hand, ‘dabitur licentia sumpta pudenter.’2 Our Author, who in his poems has made but little use of this privilege, has in his prose, extended a limited sufferance to the most unqualified permission and encouragement: he has preferred, on all occasions where a choice was to be made, the remote word of Latin derivation to the received English one, and has brought in the whole vocabulary of natural philosophy, to perplex and encumber familiar English writing. I do not speak of a few words scattered rarely through his works, but of the general character of his stile appearing in every page; not of single acts, but of confirmed and prevailing habits, of newraised colonies, disdaining an association with the natives, and threatening the final destruction of our language. The reader, at his first perusal of the Rambler, finds himself bewildered in a labyrinth of long and learned words, distracted with foreign sounds, and exiled from his native speech, in perpetual want of an interpreter: disgusted at the intrusion of so many phrases to which he has been hitherto a stranger, he labours out a passage through the palpable obscure, and, when he has at last gained the golden prize, laments that so much time should have been wasted, in overcoming the unnecessary obstacles to its approach.
[numerous examples follow.]
There are however two occasions on which this fault appears yet more extravagant and ridiculous. The first of these is, where personages of different descriptions are introduced as writing in their own characters; for what can be more absurd than to suppose a similarity of stile, and particularly where that stile is so far from a simple one, in the writings of persons supposed to be of different ages, tempers, sexes and occupations. Yet all the correspondents of the Rambler seem infected with the same
literary contagion, and the Johnsonian distemper to have been equally communicated to all. Thus Papilius talks of ‘garrulity, erratic industry, and heterogenous notions dazzling the attention with sudden scintillations of conceit.’ Victoria ‘passes through the cosmetic discipline, covered with emollients, and punished with artificial excoriations.’ Misocapelus tells of his ‘officinal state, adhesions of trade, and ambulatory projects;’ and Hypertatus describes the ‘flaccid sides of a foot-ball swelling out into stiffness and extension,’ and talks of ‘concentration of understanding, barometrical pneumatology,’ and ‘tenuity of a defecated air.’3 In such writings the hand of the master must be immediately perceived; the existence of the imaginary correspondents cannot even for a moment be believed, and the Rambler stands convicted of an ineffectual and unnecessary attempt to raise his own consequence by forging letters to himself.
The second occasion on which this fault is equally glaring, is where ordinary or perhaps mean subjects become necessary to be treated of; and a few instances from our author may well warrant my asserting that on such occasions, as he himself says less deservedly of Dr. Young, — ‘burlesque cannot go beyond him.’4 Thus a calamity which will not admit being complained of, is in Johnson’s language, such as ‘will not justify the acerbity of exclamation, or support the solemnity of vocal grief:’ to deny and to profess, are to ‘pronounce the monosyllables of coldness and the sonorous periods of respectful profession:’ when the skillet is watched on the fire, we see it ‘simmer with the due degree of heat, and snatch it off at the moment of projection:’ for sun-set, we read ‘the gentle coruscations of declining day;’ and for washing the face with exactness, we have, ‘washing with oriental scrupulosity.’5 Mean and vulgar expressions cannot have a more powerful recommendation than that one of the ablest writers in the English language could only thus avoid them.
Johnson was a writer of too attentive and critical observation to be ignorant of this remarkable peculiarity of his own stile. In the last paper of his Rambler, where he treats of his work as a classical English composition, he takes notice of, and by a defence, which if admitted would justify and recommend it, shews himself not a little prejudiced in its favour. After declaring, with some ostentation, that ‘he has laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial
barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations;’ that ‘something perhaps he has added to the elegance of its construction, and something to the harmony of its cadence;’ he proceeds to subjoin the following passage: ‘When common words were less pleasing to the ear, or less distinct in their signification, I have familiarized the terms of philosophy by applying them to known objects and popular ideas; but have rarely admitted any word not authorized by former writers: for I believe that whoever knows the English tongue in its present extent, will be able to express his thoughts, without farther help from other nations.’6 The first of these reasons for substituting, in place of a received familiar English word, a remote philosophical one, such as are most of Johnson’s Latin abstract substantives, is its being more pleasing to the ear. But this can only be deemed sufficient by those who would submit sense to sound, and for the sake of being admired by some, would be content not to be understood by others. And though, in some instances, for the sake of tempering the constitutional roughness of the English language, this might be admitted, yet it never can be contended for in such latitude, as would justify the practice of our author. This he well knew, and accordingly defending hard words in an essay in his Idler, he insists largely on the second plea, the greater distinctness of signification. ‘Difference of thoughts,’ he says, ‘will produce difference of language: he that thinks with more extent than another, will want words of larger meaning; he that thinks with more subtilty, will seek for terms of more nice discrimination.’7 In this argument there is certainly some degree of weight, and the exact appropriation and perspicuity of Johnson’s words in some measure confirms it. But that language, which he does not admit to have sunk beneath Milton, would surely have been sufficient to have supported him; and, as he himself observes, ‘though an art cannot be taught without its proper terms, yet it is not always necessary to teach the art: in morality it is one thing to discuss the niceties of the casuist, and another to direct the practice of common life.’ Let the nature of periodical publications determine, which should be more properly the object of the author. But he is not reduced to the alternative: if the testimony of many English authors of eminence, confirmed experimentally by their own practice, is to be relied on, exactness of thought is not necessarily at variance with familiar expression: and if this union was not impossible, would not some endeavour to effect it have deserved the attention of Johnson? Of Johnson who, while his dictionary proves such accurate and copious
knowledge of the powers of our received words, as could not have failed of accomplishing the patriotic task, however arduous, gives in his other works the stronger reason to lament, that his prejudices in favour of a vicious and affected stile should have prevented his undertaking it.
But this fault is surely committed without excuse, in every case where the language furnishes a received word adequate to the distinct communication of the idea: and that many such have innocently incurred Doctor Johnson’s displeasure must be abundantly evident to every reader. A page of his writings, compared with one of any of our eminent English authors on the same subject, will furnish many instances, which cannot be accounted for by attention to harmony of sound, or distinctness of signification: instances, to be ascribed merely to that wantonness of habit which after quoting Congreve’s declaration, that ‘he wrote the Old Batchelor to amuse himself in his recovery from a fit of sickness,’ thinks proper, a few lines after, to explain it in Johnson’s words, by saying, ‘the Old Batchelor was written in the languor of convalescence.’8 It would seem that the aunt of Bellaria,9 who gives the writings of the Rambler to her niece for her perusal, and promises to tell her the meaning of any word she should not understand, has undertaken a task, which the author himself suspects to be not unnecessary, and the reader has reason to apprehend she will scarcely be able to accomplish.
Johnson says indeed, he has rarely admitted any word, not authorized by former writers: but where are we to seek authorities for ‘resuscitation, orbity, volant, fatuity, divaricate, asinine, narcotic, vulnerary, empireumatic, papilionaceous,’ and innumerable others of the same stamp, which abound in and disgrace his pages? For ‘obtund, disruption, sensory or panoply,’ all occurring in the short compass of a single essay in the Rambler?10 Or for ‘cremation, horticulture, germination and decussation,’ within a few pages in his Life of Browne?11 They may be found, perhaps, in the works of former writers, but they make no part of the English language. They are the illegitimate offspring of learning by vanity; adopted indeed, but not naturalized, and though used, yet not authorized: For if use can sufficiently authorize, there is no description of improper words, which can be condemned. Technical words may be defended from Dryden and Milton, obsolete from Shakespeare, vulgar from Swift and Butler. Johnson’s fault lies in this, that he has made such frequent use of remote and abstruse words of Latin original, that his meaning often becomes unintelligible to readers not possessed of a
considerable degree of learning; and whether these words were now first made by him, or having been made by others, had been hitherto denied admittance into the current language, is a matter of perfect indifference.
It must be allowed that these terms are restrained by our author to such precision, that they cannot often resign their places to others more familiar, without some injury to the sense. But such is the copiousness of our language, that there are few ideas on ordinary subjects, which an attentive examination will find incommunicable in its ordinary words. Though we may not have a term to denote the existence of a quality in the abstract, we may perhaps find one to denote it in the concrete; and even though there may be none to express any mode of its existence, there may readily occur one to express its direct negation. It is the business of the writer who wishes to be understood, to try all possible variations of the grammatical structure of his sentence, to see if there be not some which may possibly make known his thought in familiar words. But that this was not the practice of Johnson, his compositions and his celebrated fluency afford the strongest evidence. He seems to have followed the first impulse of his mind in the structure of his sentence, and when he found in his progress no English word at hand to occupy the predetermined place, it was easy to supply the deficiency by calling in a Latin one.
Of this overbearing prejudice, which thus subdued a strongly rational understanding, and misled a judgment eminently critical, it may not be useless to enquire the reasons. To the first and principal of these, no man can be a stranger who has so read the works of Johnson as to have formed a just notion of the peculiar genius of the author. Possessed of the most penetrating acuteness and resolute precision of thought, he delights to employ himself in discriminating what common inaccuracy had confounded, and of separating what the grossness of vulgar conception had united. A judgment, thus employed (as he would perhaps himself describe it) in subtilizing distinctions, and dissociating concrete qualities to the state of individual existence, naturally called for language the most determinate, for words of the most abstract significations. Of these common speech could furnish him with but a scanty supply. Familiar words are usually either the names of things actually subsisting, or of qualities denoted adjectively, by reference to those substantives to which they belong: besides, common use gives to familiar words such a latitude of meaning, that there are few which it does not admit in a variety of acceptations. Johnson, unwilling to submit to this inconvenience, which, in every country, to avoid a multiplicity of terms, had been acquiesced in, sought out those remote and abstruse Latin derivatives, which as they had for the most part hitherto been used but once, were as yet appropriated to one signification exclusively. What the natural bent of his genius thus gave birth to, his successive employments strengthened to maturity.
[illustrates Johnson’s knowledge of Latin and determination to display it.]
Yet let me not conclude this part of my subject with too unfavourable an impression of our author. As I have stated fully the faults of his words, it is but candid to declare their merits. They are formed according to the exact analogy of the English language; they are forcible and harmonious; but, above all, they are determinate. Discriminated from each other, and appropriated each to one idea, they convey, to such as understand the author’s language, his genuine sense, without superfluity and without mutilation. The distinctions of words esteemed synonimous, might from his writings be accurately collected. For thoughts the most definite, he has language the most precise; and though his meaning may sometimes be obscure, it can never be misunderstood….
As there are no modern writings higher in public estimation than Doctor Johnson’s, and as there are none which abound more in appropriate marks of stile, there are none which can with more advantage be made the subject of critical enquiry. On their obvious and distinguishing characteristic, the too frequent use of Latin derivatives, I have already discoursed at large. I shall in this essay consider such other peculiarities of Johnson’s stile as, though less apt to be taken notice of, will it is presumed when noticed be readily recognized.
And of all these the merit or demerit must rest with full force on Johnson: for, however the stile of his compositions may correspond with his stile of conversation, and however extraordinary and perhaps authentic the stories his biographers tell of his fluency may be, yet nothing in his works can fairly be ascribed to carelessness. His stile in writing, which he had formed early, became familiar by abundant practice, and in the course of a long continued life of dissertation became also his stile of speaking. His authoritative decisions on the merit of all our English authors demand, and his constant employment in critical disquisition should have enabled him to grant it without injury to his literary character, that his own stile should be fairly subjected to animadversion: nor should negligence, which will never be insisted on in diminution of his merit, be admitted as a sufficient plea in extenuating his faults.
As his peculiarities cannot be ascribed to carelessness, so neither are they the effect of necessity. Few of them would have appeared, had Johnson, intent only on communicating his ideas, despised all aids of embellishment. But that this did not suit his ideas of literary perfection, we are sufficiently informed in his remarks on the stile of Swift; an author who has at least this merit, that he has escaped all those faults which the critic has fallen into. The easy and safe conveyance of meaning Johnson there declares to be ‘not the highest praise: against that inattention with which known truths are received, it makes,’ he says, ‘no provision; it instructs, but it does not persuade.’12 Our author seems therefore to have thought it necessary, in conformity with his own principle, to introduce into his stile certain ornaments, which, in his opinion, would prove the effectual means of captivating attention; and these ornaments, too laboriously sought for, and used without sufficient variety, have become the peculiarities of his stile. I shall comprize the principal of them under two heads, as arising either from his endeavours after splendor and magnificence, or from his endeavours after harmony; for to these two heads they may almost all be referred.
Not that it is denied, that magnificence and harmony are objects worthy an author’s regard; but the means made use of to attain these, if not skilfully selected, may fail of their intended effect; may substitute measurement for harmony, and make that only pompous which was designed to be magnificent. On dignified subjects they are no doubt to be attended to, for the stile should always be proportioned to the subject; but on familiar and meaner topics they should, by a parity of reasoning, be avoided: and however well adapted to excite attention, it may be remarked, that in general they rather fix it on the expression, than on the sentiment, and too often cloy that appetite they were intended but to stimulate.
Johnson’s study of splendor and magnificence, by inducing him as much as possible to reject the weaker words of language, and to display only the important, has filled his pages with many peculiarities. His sentences, deprived of those feeble ties which restrained them to individual cases and circumstances, seem so many detached aphorisms, applicable to many other particulars, and certainly more dignified as more universal. But though he may have employed this art with some advantage, it is yet hardly to be recommended. Johnson’s thoughts were so precise, and his expressions so minutely discriminated, that he was able to keep the leading circumstances of the particular case distinctly in view, and in the form of an universal sentence implicitly to insinuate them to the reader: an injudicious imitator, by generalizing his expres-
sions, might in some instances make that false which under restrictions might have been true; and in almost all, make that obscure which otherwise would have been perspicuous.
As every substantive presents a determinate image to the mind, and is of course a word of importance, Johnson takes care to crowd his sentences with substantives, and to give them on all occasions the most distinguished place. The instrument, the motive, or the quality therefore, which ordinary writers would have in the oblique case, usually takes the lead in Johnson’s sentences; while the person, which in connected writing is often expressed by some weak pronoun, is etiher intirely omitted, or thrown into a less conspicuous part. Thus, ‘fruition left them nothing to ask, and innocence left them nothing to fear,’ —‘trifles written by idleness and published by vanity,’ —‘wealth may, by hiring flattery or laying diligence asleep, confirm error and harden stupidity.’13 This practice doubtless gives activity and importance, but caution must be used to prevent its exceeding the bounds of moderation. When the person is to be dethroned from its natural pre-eminence, it is not every quality which has sufficient dignity to assume its place: besides, in narration, or continued writing of any sort, the too frequent change of leading objects in sentences contributes to dissipate the attention, and withdraw it from the great and primary one: and even in Johnson’s hands this ornament has become too luxuriant, when affections, instead of being personified, are absolutely humanized, and we are teized with the repeated mention of ‘ear of greatness,’ —‘the bosom of suspicion,’ —and ‘the eye of wealth, of hope, and of beauty.’14
This attachment to substantives has led him, wherever it was possible by a change of construction, to substitute them in place of the other parts of speech; instead therefore of the usual construction, where the adjective agrees with the substantive, he forms a new substantive from the adjective, which governs the other in the possessive case. Thus, instead of ‘with as easy an approach,’ he always writes, ‘with the same facility of approach:’ instead of ‘with such lively turns, such elegant irony, and such severe sarcasms,’ —he says, ‘with such vivacity of turn, such elegance of irony, and such asperity of sarcasm.’15 When the effect produced no otherwise arises from the substantive, than as possessed of the quality which the adjective denotes, this change of construction is an happy one: it expresses that which is necessary in the thought, by a necessary member
of the sentence; whereas the usual form lays the whole stress of the idea on a word, which, without the smallest injury to the construction, may be safely removed. An instance however may shew, that Johnson sometimes uses it where the same reasoning would shew it to be absolutely improper. ‘Steele’s imprudence of generosity, or vanity of profusion,’ he says, ‘kept him always incurably necessitous.’16 —Here, since Steele’s generosity could not have kept him necessitous if it had not been excessive or imprudent, ‘imprudence of generosity’ is proper: but as his being vain of profusion, if he had not actually been profuse, never could have produced this effect; since his vanity is but the very remote cause of that which his profusion would have effected, whether he had been vain of it or not, ‘vanity of profusion’ is an improper expression.
This ambition of denoting every thing by substantives has done considerable violence to Johnson’s constructions:— ‘places of little frequentation,’ —‘circumstances of no elegant recital,’ —‘with emulation of price,’ —‘the library which is of late erection,’ —‘too much temerity of conclusion,’ —‘Phillips’s addiction to tobacco,’ are expressions of affected and ungraceful harshness.17 This, however, is not the worst fault such constructions may have, for they often become unnecessarily obscure: as ‘he will continue the road by annual elongation;’ that is, by compleating some additional part of it each year:— ‘Swift now lost distinction;’18 that is, he could not now distinguish his acquaintances. Many of the substantives too which are thus introduced, are words absolutely foreign to the language: as ‘ebriety of amusement,’ —‘perpetual perflation,’ —‘to obtain an obstruction of the profits, though not an inhibition of the performance,’ —‘Community of possession must always include spontaneity of production.’19 One of our most usual forms of substantives, the participle of the verb used substantively, to give room for such introduced words he has on all occasions studiously avoided: Yet Dr. Louth would scarcely have given the rule for a construction repugnant to the genius of our language;20 and some arguments will be necessary to prove that the words, ‘renewing, vanishing, shadowing and recalling,’ should give place to ‘renovation, evanescence, adumbration and revocation,’ when it is considered, that all who understand English know the meaning of the former, while the latter are intelligible to such only of them as understand Latin; but of this I have elsewhere treated fully.
Johnson’s licentious constructions however are not to be conceived as flowing entirely from his passion for substantives. His endeavours to attain magnificence, by removing his stile from the vulgarity, removed it also from the simplicity of common diction, and taught him the abundant use of inversions and licentious constructions of every sort. Almost all his sentences begin with an oblique case, and words used in uncommon significations, with Latin and Greek idioms, are strewed too plentifully in his pages. Of this sort are the following: ‘I was only not a boy’ —‘Part they did’ —‘Shakespeare approximates the remote’ —‘Cowley was ejected from Cambridge’ —‘Brogues are a kind of artless shoes’ — ‘Milk liberal of curd.’21 Such expressions it is unnecessary to mark with censure; they bear in themselves an harshness so repulsive, that easy writing must be held in more than ordinary contempt, when they are considered as patterns worthy of imitation.
Metaphorical expression is one of those arts of splendor which Johnson has most frequently employed; and while he has availed himself of all its advantages, he has escaped most of its concomitant faults. Here is no muse, which in one line is a horse and in the next a boat;22 nor is there any pains requisite to keep the horse and boat from singing. Johnson presents to your view no chaos of discordant elements, no feeble interlining of the literal with the figurative. In his metaphors and similes the picture is always compleat in itself, and some particulars of exact resemblance are distinctly impressed upon the reader. What image can be more beautiful than that which represents the beginnings of madness as ‘the variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours which from time to time cloud reason without eclipsing it?’ Or what more apposite than that which calls Congreve’s personages ‘a sort of intellectual gladiators?’23
Sometimes, indeed, it must be acknowledged, his metaphors succeed each other in too quick succession, and are followed up too elaborately: but to commit this fault he was solicited by temptations scarcely to be resisted. Much of his life had been consumed in enquiring into the various acceptations of each word, all of which except the primary one are so many metaphorical uses of it; so that every word suggested many metaphors to his mind, presenting also from his quotations a variety of other terms of the same class, with which it would wish to be associated. Thus ardour, which in his preface to his Dictionary, he observes, is never used to denote material heat, yet to an etymologist would naturally suggest it;
and Johnson accordingly, speaking of the ‘ardour of posthumous fame,’ says that ‘some have considered it as little better than splendid madness; as a flame kindled by pride and fanned by folly.’24 Thinking of a deep stratagem, he is naturally led from the depth to the surface, and declares ‘that Addison knew the heart of man from the depths of stratagem to the surface of affectation.’25 His subjects too were such as scarcely could be treated of without figurative diction: the powers of the understanding require the aid of illustration to become intelligible to common readers. But to enquire how our author illustrates them, is to detect the greatest and almost the only fault in his metaphors. ‘The mind stagnates without external ventilation’ —‘An intellectual digestion, which concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the husks’ —‘An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind, fermented by study, and sublimed by imagination.’26 From such illustrations common readers will, it is feared, receive but little assistance. The sources from which his allusions are borrowed are so abstruse and scientific, and his expressions so studiously technical, that even those who most commend his similes as apposite, cannot pretend that many of them are explanatory.
Of the peculiarities of Johnson’s stile, which I proposed to treat of under my second head, as arising from his study of harmony, the principal I may call the parallelism of his sentences; which admits no clause, without one or two concomitants, exactly similar in order and construction. There is scarcely a page of the Rambler which does not produce abundant instances of this peculiarity: and what is the ornament, which, if introduced so often, can be always introduced happily? Or what is the ornament, however happily introduced, which will not disgust by such frequent repetitions? Johnson’s mind was so comprehensive, that no circumstance occurred to him unaccompanied by many others similar; no effect, without many others depending on the same or similar causes. So close an alliance in the thought naturally demanded a corresponding similitude in the expression: yet surely all similar circumstances, all the effects of each cause, are not equally necessary to be communicated; and as it is acknowledged that even a continued poem of pure iambics would disgust, variety must appear an indispensably necessary ingredient to harmony. Were we even to admit then, that in any particular triod the construction of one of its clauses could not be altered without injuring the harmony of the sentence, yet a regard to the harmony of the whole treatise will occasionally make such an alteration necessary.
But these parallel sentences are not always faultless in themselves. Sometimes, though indeed rarely, a word is used without a definitive appropriation to that to which it is annexed; as in this instance, ‘Omnipotence cannot be exalted, infinity cannot be amplified, perfection cannot be improved:’27 where the exact relation between amplitude and infinity, and between improvement and perfection, is not at all kept up by exaltation being applied to Omnipotence. Sometimes two words are introduced, which answer hardly any other purpose than to make the parallelism more conspicuous, by adding a new member to each clause. Thus, in the following passage, ‘grows too slothful for the labour of contest, too tender for the asperity of contradiction, and too delicate for the coarseness of truth;’28 where labour, asperity and coarseness are sufficiently implied in slothful, tender and delicate. Sometimes too the parallelism itself is unnecessarily obtruded on the reader, as ‘quickness of apprehension and celerity of reply,’ where ‘celerity’ having precisely the same meaning as ‘quickness,’ could only have been introduced to make up the parallelism: ‘Nothing is far-sought or hard-laboured’ where the first adverb is essential to the sense, and the last only to the sound.29 ‘When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather, they are in haste to tell each other what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.’30 Such uninteresting enumerations, since they contribute nothing to the meaning, we can only suppose introduced, as our author observes of some of Milton’s Italian names, to answer the purposes of harmony.
It were unjust however not to declare, that many of his parallelisms are altogether happy. For antithesis indeed he was most eminently qualified; none has exceeded him in nicety of discernment, and no author’s vocabulary has ever equalled his in a copious assortment of forcible and definite expressions. Thus, in his comparison of Blackmore’s attack on the dramatic writers with Collier’s, ‘Blackmore’s censure,’ he says, ‘was cold and general, Collier’s was personal and ardent: Blackmore taught his readers to dislike, what Collier incited them to abhor.’31 But it is useless to multiply instances of that which all must have perceived, since all his contrasts and comparisons possess the same high degree of accuracy and perfection. From the same cause may be inferred the excellence of his parallel sentences, where praise-worthy qualities are separated from their concomitant faults, or kindred effects are disunited: as where he calls Goldsmith ‘a man who had the art of being minute without
tediousness, and general without confusion; whose language was copious without exuberance, exact without constraint, and easy without weakness.’32 But Johnson’s triods occur so frequently, that I find myself always led aside to wonder, that all the effects from the same cause should be so often discovered reducible to the mystical number three: I torment myself to find a reason for that particular order in which the effects are recited, and I am involuntarily delayed to consider, whether some are not omitted which have a right to be inserted, or some enumerated which due discretion would have suppressed. Surely I must be singular in my turn of thought, or this art of attention, which thus leads away from the main subject, cannot be an happy one.
His desire of harmony has led him to seek even for the minute ornament of alliteration. Thus, he says, ‘they toil without prospect of praise, and pillage without hope of profit.’ —‘Shakespeare opens a mine, which contains gold and diamonds in inexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals.’33 Alliteration indeed is so often casual, and so often necessary, that it is difficult to charge it on an author’s intentions. But Johnson employs it so frequently, and continues it through so many words, as in the instances given above, that when we consider too how nearly allied it is as an ornament to parallelism, we have I think sufficient grounds to determine it not involuntary.
Under this head I shall beg leave to mention one peculiarity of Johnson’s stile, which though it may not have arisen, at least not entirely, from his endeavours after harmony, yet discovers itself obviously to the reader by its effects upon the ear; I mean the studied recurrence of the same words in the latter part of the sentence, which had appeared in the former; the favourite ornament of his Idler, as parallelisms are of the Rambler, and used not unfrequently in the Lives of the Poets. As the use of it is attended with many advantages and many disadvantages, the author who would adopt it should watch it with a suspicious eye. If restrained within the bounds of moderation, it is on many occasions the most lively, concise, perspicuous and forcible mode of expressing the thought. Since the words too at their return naturally recall to the mind the antecedent members of the sentence, it may be considered as a valuable assistant in imprinting the thought upon the memory. It has also this additional advantage, that as unfairness in reasoning often arises from change of terms, so where the terms are not changed, we are apt to presume the
reasoning to be fair. Thus, where we read in the Life of Savage the following sentence, ‘As he always spoke with respect of his master, it is probable the mean rank in which he then appeared did not hinder his genius from being distinguished or his industry from being rewarded; and if in so low a state he obtained distinctions and rewards, it is not likely they were gained but by genius and industry.’34 In this instance the perspicuity of the reasoning seems to have been preserved through such a chain of propositions, merely by the artifice of returning the same words a second time to the reader’s observation. But the unrestrained use of this art is perhaps one of the greatest faults an author can adopt. A fault, which burlesques grave subjects by communicating impressions of levity, and on occasions less serious, instead of being sprightly degenerates into quaintness: which for disquisition and reasoning gives us nothing but point and epigram; by a constrained conciseness often betrays to obscurity, and where most successful, leads but to trite retorts and verbal oppositions, which the reader has already anticipated, and perhaps already rejected.
Were Johnson however to be charged with negligence, it might be most fairly on the subject of harmony. There are many passages in his works where sounds almost similar are suffered to approach too near each other; and though some of these are too palpable to be passed over unnoticed by the author, yet I can never think any ear so incorrect as to adopt sameness and monotony for harmony. Either way however Johnson is culpable, and his alternative is either a faulty principle, or a negligence in his practice.
Yet his pages abound with memorials of close attention to harmony; unfortunately with memorials equally deserving of censure; with heroic lines and lyric fragments. Thus, he says, ‘Pope foresaw the future efflorescence of imagery just budding in his mind, and resolved to spare no art or industry of cultivation; the soft luxuriance of his fancy was already shooting, and all the gay varieties of diction were ready at his hand to colour and embellish it.’ ‘I will chase the deer, I will subdue the whale, resistless as the frost of darkness, and unwearied as the summer sun.’35 Surely this is to revive the Pindaric licentiousness, to confound the distinction between prose and poetry, to introduce numbers by study while negligence admits rhymes, and to annihilate the harmony of prose, by giving the reader an obvious opportunity to compare it with the harmony of versification.
Indeed all the peculiarities of Johnson’s stile, pursued to their excess,
tend to raise prosaic composition above itself: they give the admirers of Gray a fit occasion of retorting ‘the glittering accumulation of ungraceful ornaments, the double double toil and trouble, the strutting dignity which is tall by walking on tip-toe,’36 which have so harshly been objected to their favourite. Simplicity is too often given up for splendor, and the reader’s mind is dazzled instead of being enlightened.
I shall now conclude this enquiry into the peculiarities of Johnson’s stile with remarking, that if I have treated more of blemishes than beauties, I have done it, not so much to pass censure on Johnson, as to give warning to his imitators. I have indeed selected my instances from his writings: but in writings so numerous, who is there that would not sometimes have indulged his peculiarities in licentiousness? I have singled him out from the whole body of English writers, because his universally acknowledged beauties would be most apt to induce imitation; and I have treated rather on his faults than his perfections, because an essay might comprize all the observations I could make upon his faults, while volumes would not be sufficient for a treatise on his perfections.
1795
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Extract from Letters, 1811, iv. 54–6. Seward’s correspondent was Johnson’s friend William Seward (1747–99). She gives a specific example of Johnson’s ability vividly to excite his reader’s imagination. The contrast to be made is with Macaulay’s allegation about his habit of ‘padding out a sentence with useless epithets’ (see No. 80). |
17 May 1795, to Seward:
Dr Johnson, whose sophistry in criticism has been fatal to the general poetic taste of this period, elevated the style of prose composition much above the water-gruel mark. His splendid example demonstrates, that efflorescence and strength of language united, are necessary to form the perfection of writing in prose as well as in verse; and the brilliant diction of Gibbon and Berrington,1 equally proves the dull mistake of supposing a plain unornamented style necessary, even to history itself.
Johnson’s Tour to the Hebrides shows us the possibility of giving, by the graces of language, an exquisite charm to many observations and descriptions, which, without those verbal graces, would disgust by their want of essential importance. If he had plainly told us, that the channels of the rivers and of the brooks in the Highlands were much wider than the streams that occupied them at the season he travelled through those tracks; —that such disproportionate breadth of channel was occasioned by the frequent and sudden floods; —and that such depth and rapidity after rain, combined with their general shallowness to prevent their containing fish: we should certainly have thought the information dully unimportant, and have probably exclaimed— ‘Pshaw! who knows not that the generally shallow streams of mountainous countries, often deep by flood, must, in dry seasons, have larger beds than they fill, and cannot possibly sustain fish?’ But who, that is not insensible to the magic of fine style, can read the information without delight, as he thus imparts it?
We passed many rivers and rivulets which commonly ran, with a clear shallow stream, over an hard pebbly bottom. These channels, which seem so much wider than the water they convey would naturally require, are formed by the violence of wintry floods, produced by the accumulation of innumerable streams that fall from the hills, and bursting away, with resistless impetuosity, make themselves a passage proportioned to their mass.
Such capricious and temporary waters cannot be expected to produce fish. The rapidity of the wintry deluge sweeps them away, and the scantiness of the summer stream would hardly sustain them above the ground. This is the reason why, in fording the northern rivers, no fishes are seen, as in England, wandering in the water.2
By the picturesque power of the numerous epithets, in the first sentence, we are placed on the brink of those currents, while they are hurrying through their broad and stony channel, and we seem to stand amidst the wild scenes through which they flow. In the second, the image of the more vital English rivers and brooks is brought distinctly to the eye, by that fine poetic expression, ‘wandering in the water.’
1809
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Extract from Essays…illustrative of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler, 1809, i. 198–201, 280–6. By profession a physician, Drake (1766–1836) was well known as an essayist and miscellaneous writer. See Introduction, pp. 31–2. |
The public had been accustomed, in the pages of the Spectator, to great variety of style, to a fascinating gaiety of manner, and to a perpetual interchange of topic, and it was not therefore hastily taught to relish the solemn and majestic tone of the preceptive Rambler. It gradually gained ground, however, with the learned, the wise, and the good; and
though not more than five hundred of each paper were taken off during its publication in numbers, as soon as it was collected into volumes, its circle of attraction began rapidly to enlarge. Yet that it acquired enthusiastic admirers, if not numerous yet select, even from its earliest appearance, may be drawn from contemporary publications; from the newspapers of the day, from the Gentleman’s Magazine, and from The Student, a miscellany of which, in the second essay of this volume, we have exhibited a passage of high praise in favour of the Rambler.1 Fresh proofs, however, of an early and zealous support of this paper, have very lately appeared in the Correspondence of Richardson, edited by Mrs. Barbauld, and which, as singularly striking and curious, cannot fail of being acceptable to my readers. In a letter to Mr. Cave, dated August 9th, 1750, the author of Clarissa thus forcibly expresses his opinion:
Though I have constantly been a purchaser of the Ramblers from the first five that you was so kind as to present me with, yet I have not had time to read any further than those first five, till within these two or three days past. But I can go no further than the thirteenth, now before me, till I have acquainted you that I am inexpressibly pleased with them. I remember not any thing in the Spectators that I read, for I never found time— (alas! my life has been a trifling busy one) to read them all, that half so much struck me; and yet I think of them highly.
I hope the world tastes them; for its own sake, I hope the world tastes them; the author I can only guess at. There is but one man, I think, that could write them; I desire not to know his name; but I should rejoice to hear that they succeed; for I would not, for any consideration, that they should be laid down through discouragement.
I have, from the first five, spoke of them with honour. I have the vanity to think that I have procured them admirers; that is to say, readers. And I am vexed that I have not taken larger draughts of them before, that my zeal for their merit might have been as glowing as now I find it.
Excuse the overflowing of a heart highly delighted with the subject; and believe me to be an equal friend to Mr. Cave and the Rambler, as well as
Their most humble servant,
S.RICHARDSON.
To this, Mr. Cave in a letter written August the 13th, 1750, replies,
that Mr. Johnson is the Great Rambler; being, as you observe, the only man who can furnish two such papers in a week, besides his other great business, and has not been assisted with above three.
I may discover to you that the world is not so kind to itself as you wish it. The
encouragement, as to sale, is not in proportion to the high character given to the work by the judicious, not to say the raptures expressed by the few that do read it; but its being thus relished in numbers, gives hope that the sets must go off; as it is a fine paper, and, considering the late hour of having the copy, tolerably printed.
When the author was to be kept private, (which was the first scheme,) two gentlemen, belonging to the prince’s court, came to me to enquire his name, in order to do him service; and also brought a list of seven gentlemen to be served with the Rambler. As I was not at liberty, an inference was drawn, that I was desirous to keep to myself so excellent a writer. Soon after, Mr. Doddington sent a letter directed to the Rambler, inviting him to his house, when he should be disposed to enlarge his acquaintance. In a subsequent number a kind of excuse was made, with a hint that a good writer might not appear to advantage in conversation.
I have had letters of approbation from Dr. Young, Dr. Hartley, Dr. Sharpe, Miss C——, &c. &c. most of them, like you, setting them in a rank equal, and some superior, to the Spectators, (of which I have not read many for the reasons which you assign;) but, notwithstanding such recommendation, whether the price of two-pence, or the unfavourable season of their first publication, hinders the demand, no boast can be made of it.
These letters clearly evince that the uncommon merit of the Rambler was very soon appreciated by men of taste and genius….
The publication of the Rambler produced a very rapid revolution in the tone of English composition; an elevation and dignity, an harmony and energy, a precision and force of style, previously unknown in the history of our literature, speedily became objects of daily emulation; and the school of Johnson increased with such celerity, that it soon embraced the greater part of the rising literary characters of the day, and was consequently founded on such a basis as will not easily be shaken by succeeding modes. Of his immediate contemporaries, who strove to wield the weapons of Achilles, Mr. Courtenay, in his ‘Poetical Review of the moral and literary Character of Dr. Johnson,’2 has given us, in very elegant verse, the following discriminative catalogue:
[see below, pp. 369–70.]
To the celebrated scholars which Mr. Courtenay has thus commemorated for their casual imitation of the style of Johnson, may be now added many more writers of acknowledged genius, and whose works are calculated to impart a very increased value to the language in which they are composed. The resemblance has with many of them
been unintentional, and is consequently a strong proof of the wide influence which the diction of Johnson had already acquired over the literature of his country. When such writers as Dr. Robertson, Dr. Blair, Mr. Gibbon, Mr. Burke, Dr. Leland, Madame D’Arblay, Dr. Ferguson, Dr. Knox, Dr. Stuart, Dr. Parr, Dr. Gillies, Archdeacon Nares, Mr. Mackenzie, Mr. Chalmers, Mr. Roscoe, and Dr. Anderson, can be brought forward as having, in a greater or less degree, founded their style on that of the author of the Rambler, it may be presumed that the merits of the model which they had chosen, or unconsciously imitated, must have been great. In fact, the adoption of the style of Johnson by the Critic, the Orator, and the Historian, has been frequently attended with the best effects; as the weight, the splendor, and dignity of the subjects have often been such as would most happily harmonize with the strong and nervous periods of their prototype. On topics of a more familiar kind, however; on topics which detail the history of minute manners, where humour, irony, and delicate satire are demanded; it surely would be no mark of judgment to employ the elaborate and sonorous phraseology so uniformly characteristic of the lucubrations of the Rambler. The Novel and the familiar periodical Essay seldom require the grand and stately march of the Johnsonian period; Goldsmith, Mackenzie, and Madam D’Arblay have occasionally adopted, it is true, the splendour and force of Johnson with great felicity; but the general cast of their diction is widely different; on the contrary, the Essays of Dr. Knox,3 though truly valuable for their moral and literary wealth, are, in point of composition, too studiously and exclusively copies from this great master. It has been too generally forgotten, indeed, that, bold, impressive, and magnificent as is the language of Johnson when occupied on themes of great importance, it has frequently been his misfortune to lavish it upon subjects too delicate to support its weight; on subjects where ease and plainness only were required, where sonorous words served only to excite burlesque, and elaborate periods only to encumber.
To him, however, who possesses a correct taste and a strong discriminate judgment, the study of the style of Johnson must be attended with the best results; he will have before him specimens of the noblest and the richest diction of which our literature can boast; a diction, indeed, from its nature considerably limited in its due application; but when employed on subjects of true dignity and serious moment, to record the labours of the hero or the legislator, or to clothe with fresh
energy the maxims of virtue and of piety, perhaps unparalleled in the powers of impression.
If we turn from the style of the Ramblers, to the consideration of their merit in the delineation of character and the exhibition of humour, we shall find abundant reason to conclude that Johnson was a most accurate and discriminating observer of human life in all its various shades and modifications. Though destined, during the most vigorous portion of his existence, to obtain a precarious, and very often a most scanty support, by the daily labours of his pen, he was yet enabled, in consequence of his powers, and rapidity of execution, to pass much of his time in the bosom of society. Excelling in conversation, expert in appreciating and drawing forth the talents of his companions, and often anxious, from morbid sensation, to escape from himself, he delighted not only in the frequent association of his intimate friends, but in that variety and information which are to be derived from mingling with every class of mankind. As he affirmed of himself, he had been ‘running about the world more than almost any body;’4 and the result of this habit was, in a mind uncommonly retentive and acute, a most exuberant fund of character and anecdote.
To stores thus ample and rich was added a strong but peculiar vein of humour; widely different, indeed, from the delicate and indirect satire of Addison, but nearly as powerful, and much more highly coloured. Had the language of Johnson been more plastic and accommodating, this talent would have appeared still more prominent; for, owing to the unvarying swell of his diction, which almost necessarily induces a tone of mind inimical to ridicule, his object has sometimes escaped the penetration of his readers; though it must be noticed, that occasionally the humour has been unintentionally heightened by the singular contrast of style and subject.
December 1811
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Journal entry from R.J.Mackintosh, Memoirs of Sir James Mackintosh, 1835, ii. 166–71. In the course of a general estimate of Johnson, Mackintosh (1765–1832) —politician, lawyer, and historian—assesses his contribution to the development of English prose style. See Introduction, pp. 20, 31. |
Dr. Johnson had a great influence on the taste and opinions of his age, not only by the popularity of his writings, but by that colloquial dictatorship which he exercised for thirty years in the literary circles of the capital. He was distinguished by vigorous understanding and inflexible integrity. His imagination was not more lively than was necessary to illustrate his maxims; his attainments in science were inconsiderable, and in learning, far from the first class; they chiefly consisted in that sort of knowledge which a powerful mind collects from miscellaneous reading and various intercourse with mankind. From the refinements of abstruse speculation he was withheld, partly perhaps by that repugnance to such subtleties which much experience often inspires, and partly also by a secret dread that they might disturb those prejudices in which his mind had found repose from the agitations of doubt. He was a most sagacious and severely pure judge of the actions and motives of men, and he was tempted by frequent detection of imposture to indulge somewhat of that contemptuous scepticism respecting the sincerity of delicate and refined sentiments, which affected his whole character as a man and a writer.
In early youth he had resisted the most severe tests of probity. Neither the extreme poverty nor the uncertain income to which the virtue of so many men of letters has yielded, even in the slightest degree weakened his integrity, or lowered the dignity of his independence. His moral principles (if the language may be allowed) partook of the vigour of his understanding. He was conscientious, sincere, determined; and his pride was no more than a steady consciousness of superiority in the most valuable qualities of human nature; his friendships were not only firm, but generous, and tender beneath a rugged exterior; he wounded none of those feelings which the habits of his life enabled him to estimate; but he had become too hardened by serious distress not to contract some disregard for those minor delicacies, which become so keenly susceptible in a calm and prosperous fortune. He was a Tory, not without some propensities towards Jacobitism, and a high Churchman, with more attachment to ecclesiastical authority and a splendid worship than is quite consistent with the spirit of Protestantism. On these subjects he neither permitted himself to doubt nor tolerated difference of opinion in others. The vigour of his understanding is no more to be estimated by his opinions on subjects where it was bound by his prejudices, than the strength of a man’s body by the efforts of a limb in fetters. His conversation, which was one of the most powerful instruments of his extensive influence, was artificial, dogmatical, sententious, and poignant, adapted, with the most admirable versatility, to every subject as it arose, and distinguished by an almost unparalleled power of serious repartee. He seems to have considered himself as a sort of colloquial magistrate, who inflicted severe punishment from just policy. His course of life led him to treat those sensibilities, which such severity wounds, as fantastic and effeminate, and he entered society too late to acquire those habits of politeness which are a substitute for natural delicacy.
As a man, then, Johnson had a masculine understanding, clouded on important subjects by prejudice, a conscience pure beyond the ordinary measure of human virtue, a heart full of rugged benevolence, and a disregard only for those feelings in controversy or in conversation, of which he had not learnt the force, or which he thought himself obliged to wound. As a writer, he is memorable as one of those who effect a change in the general style of a nation, and have vigour enough to leave the stamp of their own peculiarities upon their language.
In the progress of English style, three periods may be easily distinguished. The first period extended from Sir Thomas More to Lord Clarendon. During great part of this period, the style partook of the rudeness and fluctuation of an unformed language, in which use had not yet determined the words that were to be English. Writers had not yet discovered the combination of words which best suits the original structure and immutable constitution of our language: where the terms were English, the arrangement was Latin—the exclusive language of learning, and that in which every truth in science, and every model of elegance, was contemplated by youth. For a century and a half, ineffectual attempts were made to bend our vulgar tongue to the genius of the language supposed to be superior; and the whole of this period, though not without a capricious mixture of coarse idiom, may be called the Latin, or pedantic age, of our style.
In the second period, which extended from the Restoration to the middle of the eighteenth century, a series of writers appeared, of less genius indeed than their predecessors, but more successful in their experiments to discover the mode of writing most adapted to the genius of the language. About the same period that a similar change was effected in France by Pascal, they began to banish from style learned as well as vulgar phraseology, and to confine themselves to the part of the language naturally used in general conversation by well-educated men. That middle region, which lies between vulgarity and pedantry, remains commonly unchanged, while both extremes are equally condemned to perpetual revolution. Those who select words from that permanent part of a language, and who arrange them according to its natural order, have discovered the true secret of rendering their writings permanent, and of preserving that rank among the classical writers of their country, which men of greater intellectual power have failed to attain. Of these writers, whose language has not yet been slightly superannuated, Cowley was probably the earliest, as Dryden and Addison were assuredly the greatest.
The third period may be called the Rhetorical, and is distinguished by the prevalence of a school of writers, of which Johnson was the founder. The fundamental character of the Rhetorical style is, that it employs undisguised art, where classical writers appear only to obey the impulse of a cultivated and adorned nature. As declamation is the fire of eloquence without its substance, so rhetoric consists in the forms of eloquence without its spirit. In the schools of the rhetorician, every ornament of composition is made by a rule; where ornaments are natural, the feeling from which they spring, if it be tempered, performs the office of taste, by regulating their number, and adapting them to the occasion; but those who fabricate them by rule, without this natural regulator, have no security against unseasonable and undistinguishing profusion. These writers have not the variety of nature, but the uniformity of a Dutch garden.
As the English classical writers had been led by the nature of their subjects as well as the bent of their genius, to cultivate a temperate elegance, rather than to emulate the energy and grandeur of their less polished predecessors, so Johnson and his followers, in their attempt (which was partly successful) to impart more vigour and dignity to the general style, receded so far from vulgarity as to lose all ease and variety, and so exclusively preferred terms of Latin origin, as to sacrifice all that part of the English language on which its peculiar character depends. With Latin words they attempted also the renewal of those inversions and involutions which the syntax of that language allows, but which, after a vain effort of a century, had been banished from ours. All their words were thrown into one mould, and their periods came up in the same shape. As the mind of Johnson was robust, but neither nimble nor graceful, so his style, though sometimes significant, nervous, and even majestic, was void of all grace and ease, and being the most unlike of all styles to the natural effusion of a cultivated mind, had the least pretensions to the praise of eloquence. During the period, now near a close, in which he was a favourite model, a stiff symmetry and tedious monotony succeeded to that various music with which the taste of Addison diversified his periods, and to that natural imagery which the latter’s beautiful genius seemed with graceful negligence to scatter over his composition. They who had not fancy enough to be ornamental, sought to distinguish themselves by being artificial; and, though there were some illustrious exceptions, the general style had all those marks of corrupt taste which Johnson himself had so well satirised in his commendation of the prose of Dryden, and of which he has admirably represented the opposite in his excellent criticism on Addison. His earlier writings abound most with examples of these faults of style. Many of his Latin words in an English shape no imitator has ventured to adopt; others have already dropped from the language, and will soon be known only in Dictionaries. Some heaviness and weariness must be felt by most readers at the perusal of essays on life and manners, written like the Rambler; but it ought never to be forgotten that the two most popular writers of the eighteenth century, Addison and Johnson, were such efficacious teachers of virtue, that their writings may be numbered among the causes which in an important degree have contributed to preserve and to improve the morality of the British nation.
His Dictionary, though distinguished neither by the philosophy nor by the erudition which illustrate the origin and history of words, is a noble monument of his powers and his literary knowledge, and even of his industry, though it betrays frequent symptoms of that constitutional indolence which must have so often overpowered him in so immense a labour.
Towards the end of his life, when intercourse with the world had considerably softened his style, he published his Lives of the English Poets, a work of which the subject ensures popularity, and on which his fame probably now depends. He seems to have poured into it the miscellaneous information which he had collected, and the literary opinions which he had formed, during his long reign over the literature of London. The critical part has produced the warmest agitations of literary faction. The time may perhaps now be arrived for an impartial estimate of its merits. Whenever understanding alone is sufficient for poetical criticism, the decisions of Johnson are generally right. But the beauties of poetry must be felt before their causes are investigated. There is a poetical sensibility which in the progress of the mind becomes as distinct a power as a musical ear or a picturesque eye. Without a considerable degree of this sensibility it is as vain for a man of the greatest understanding to speak of the higher beauties of poetry, as it is for a blind man to speak of colours. To adopt the warmest sentiments of poetry, to realise its boldest imagery, to yield to every impulse of enthusiasm, to submit to the illusions of fancy, to retire with the poet into his ideal worlds, were dispositions wholly foreign from the worldly sagacity and stern shrewdness of Johnson. As in his judgment of life and character, so in his criticism on poetry, he was a sort of Freethinker. He suspected the refined of affectation, he rejected the enthusiastic as absurd, and he took it for granted that the mysterious was unintelligible. He came into the world when the school of Dryden and Pope gave the law to English poetry. In that school he had himself learned to be a lofty and vigorous declaimer in harmonious verse; beyond that school his unforced admiration perhaps scarcely soared; and his highest effort of criticism was accordingly the noble panegyric on Dryden. His criticism owed its popularity as much to its defects as to its excellencies. It was on a level with the majority of readers—persons of good sense and information, but of no exquisite sensibility, and to their minds it derived a false appearance of solidity from that very narrowness which excluded those grander efforts of imagination to which Aristotle and Bacon confined the name of poetry. If this unpoetical character be considered, if the force of prejudice be estimated, if we bear in mind that in this work of his old age we must expect to find him enamoured of every observation which he had thrown into a striking form, and of every paradox which he had supported with brilliant success, and that an old man seldom warmly admires those works which have appeared since his sensibility has become sluggish and his literary system formed, we shall be able to account for most of the unjust judgments of Johnson, without recourse to any suppositions inconsistent with honesty and magnanimity. Among the victories gained by Milton, one of the most signal is that which he obtained over all the prejudices of Johnson, who was compelled to make a most vigorous, though evidently reluctant, effort to do justice to the fame and genius of the greatest of English poets. The alacrity with which he seeks every occasion to escape from this painful duty in observation upon Milton’s Life and Minor Poems sufficiently attest the irresistible power of Paradise Lost. As he had no feeling of the lively and graceful, we must not wonder at his injustice to Prior. Some accidental impression, concurring with a long habit of indulging and venting every singularity, seems necessary to account for his having forgotten that Swift was a wit. As the Seasons appeared during the susceptible part of Johnson’s life, his admiration of Thomson prevailed over the ludicrous prejudice which he professed against Scotland, perhaps because it was a Presbyterian country. His insensibility to the higher poetry, his dislike of a Whig university, and his scorn of a fantastic character, combined to produce that monstrous example of critical injustice which he entitles the Life of Gray.
Such is the character which may be bestowed on Johnson by those who feel a profound reverence for his virtues, and a respect approaching to admiration for his intellectual powers, without adopting his prejudices, or being insensible to his defects.
1818–33
| Extracts from his lecture on style, 1818 (Coleridge’s Essays and Lectures…, 1907, 324–5) and table-talk (edn. 1835, ii, 216–18, 274–5). |
After the Revolution, the spirit of the nation became much more commercial, than it had been before; a learned body, or clerisy, as such, gradually disappeared, and literature in general began to be addressed to the common miscellaneous public. That public had become accustomed to, and required, a strong stimulus; and to meet the requisitions of the public taste, a style was produced which by combining triteness of thought with singularity and excess of manner of expression, was calculated at once to soothe ignorance and to flatter vanity. The thought was carefully kept down to the immediate apprehension of the commonest understanding, and the dress was as anxiously arranged for the purpose of making the thought appear something very profound. The essence of this style consisted in a mock antithesis, that is, an opposition of mere sounds, in a rage for personification, the abstract made animate, far-fetched metaphors, strange phrases, metrical scraps, in every thing, in short, but genuine prose. Style is, of course, nothing else but the art of conveying the meaning appropriately and with perspicuity, whatever that meaning may be, and one criterion of style is that it shall not be translateable without injury to the meaning. Johnson’s style has pleased many from the very fault of being perpetually translateable; he creates an impression of cleverness by never saying any thing in a common way. The best specimen of this manner is in Junius,1 because his antithesis is less merely verbal than Johnson’s. Gibbon’s manner is the worst of all; he has every fault of which this peculiar style is capable.
4 July 1833
Dr. Johnson’s fame now rests principally upon Boswell. It is impossible
not to be amused with such a book. But his bow-wow manner must have had a good deal to do with the effect produced; —for no one, I suppose, will set Johnson before Burke, —and Burke was a great and universal talker; —yet now we hear nothing of this except by some chance remarks in Boswell. The fact is, Burke, like all men of genius who love to talk at all, was very discursive and continuous; hence he is not reported; he seldom said the sharp short things that Johnson almost always did, which produce a more decided effect at the moment, and which are so much more easy to carry off. Besides, as to Burke’s testimony to Johnson’s powers, you must remember that Burke was a great courtier; and after all, Burke said and wrote more than once that he thought Johnson greater in talking than in writing, and greater in Boswell than in real life.
1 November 1833
Dr. Johnson seems to have been really more powerful in discoursing viva voce in conversation than with his pen in hand. It seems as if the excitement of company called something like reality and consecutiveness into his reasonings, which in his writings I cannot see. His antitheses are almost always verbal only; and sentence after sentence in the Rambler may be pointed out to which you cannot attach any definite meaning whatever. In his political pamphlets there is more truth of expression than in his other works, for the same reason that his conversation is better than his writings in general.