Complete Works of Samuel Johnson

by Samuel Johnson

  Charity would lose its name, were it influenced by so mean a motive as human praise; it is, therefore, not intended to celebrate, by any particular memorial, the liberality of single persons, or distinct societies; it is sufficient, that their works praise them.

  Yet he, who is far from seeking honour, may very justly obviate censure. If a good example has been set, it may lose its influence by misrepresentation; and, to free charity from reproach is itself a charitable action.

  Against the relief of the French only one argument has been brought; but that one is so popular and specious, that, if it were to remain unexamined, it would, by many, be thought irrefragable. It has been urged, that charity, like other virtues, may be improperly and unseasonably exerted; that, while we are relieving Frenchmen, there remain many Englishmen unrelieved; that, while we lavish pity on our enemies, we forget the misery of our friends.

  Grant this argument all it can prove, and what is the conclusion? — That to relieve the French is a good action, but that a better may be conceived. This is all the result, and this all is very little. To do the best can seldom be the lot of man: it is sufficient if, when opportunities are presented, he is ready to do good. How little virtue could be practised, if beneficence were to wait always for the most proper objects, and the noblest occasions; occasions that may never happen, and objects that may never be found.

  It is far from certain, that a single Englishman will suffer by the charity to the French. New scenes of misery make new impressions; and much of the charity, which produced these donations, may be supposed to have been generated by a species of calamity never known among us before. Some imagine, that the laws have provided all necessary relief, in common cases, and remit the poor to the care of the publick; some have been deceived by fictitious misery, and are afraid of encouraging imposture; many have observed want to be the effect of vice, and consider casual alms-givers as patrons of idleness. But all these difficulties vanish in the present case: we know, that for the prisoners of war there is no legal provision; we see their distress, and are certain of its cause; we know that they are poor and naked, and poor and naked without a crime.

  But it is not necessary to make any concessions. The opponents of this charity must allow it to be good, and will not easily prove it not to be the best. That charity is best, of which the consequences are most extensive: the relief of enemies has a tendency to unite mankind in fraternal affection; to soften the acrimony of adverse nations, and dispose them to peace and amity; in the mean time, it alleviates captivity, and takes away something from the miseries of war. The rage of war, however mitigated, will always fill the world with calamity and horrour; let it not, then, be unnecessarily extended; let animosity and hostility cease together; and no man be longer deemed an enemy, than while his sword is drawn against us.

  The effects of these contributions may, perhaps, reach still further. Truth is best supported by virtue: we may hope, from those who feel, or who see, our charity, that they shall no longer detest, as heresy, that religion, which makes its professors the followers of him, who has commanded us to “do good to them that hate us.”

  ON THE BRAVERY OF THE ENGLISH COMMON SOLDIERS

  By those who have compared the military genius of the English with that of the French nation, it is remarked, that “the French officers will always lead, if the soldiers will follow;” and that “the English soldiers will always follow, if their officers will lead.”

  In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness; and, in this comparison, our officers seem to lose what our soldiers gain. I know not any reason for supposing that the English officers are less willing than the French to lead; but it is, I think, universally allowed, that the English soldiers are more willing to follow. Our nation may boast, beyond any other people in the world, of a kind of epidemick bravery, diffused equally through all its ranks. We can show a peasantry of heroes, and fill our armies with clowns, whose courage may vie with that of their general.

  There may be some pleasure in tracing the causes of this plebeian magnanimity. The qualities which, commonly, make an army formidable, are long habits of regularity, great exactness of discipline, and great confidence in the commander. Regularity may, in time, produce a kind of mechanical obedience to signals and commands, like that which the perverse cartesians impute to animals; discipline may impress such an awe upon the mind, that any danger shall be less dreaded, than the danger of punishment; and confidence in the wisdom, or fortune, of the general may induce the soldiers to follow him blindly to the most dangerous enterprise.

  What may be done by discipline and regularity, may be seen in the troops of the Russian emperess, and Prussian monarch. We find, that they may be broken without confusion, and repulsed without flight.

  But the English troops have none of these requisites, in any eminent degree. Regularity is, by no means, part of their character: they are rarely exercised, and, therefore, show very little dexterity in their evolutions, as bodies of men, or in the manual use of their weapons, as individuals; they neither are thought by others, nor by themselves, more active, or exact, than their enemies, and, therefore, derive none of their courage from such imaginary superiority.

  The manner in which they are dispersed in quarters, over the country, during times of peace, naturally produces laxity of discipline: they are very little in sight of their officers; and, when they are not engaged in the slight duty of the guard, are suffered to live, every man his own way.

  The equality of English privileges, the impartiality of our laws, the freedom of our tenures, and the prosperity of our trade, dispose us very little to reverence superiours. It is not to any great esteem of the officers, that the English soldier is indebted for his spirit in the hour of battle; for, perhaps, it does not often happen, that he thinks much better of his leader than of himself. The French count, who has lately published the Art of War, remarks, how much soldiers are animated, when they see all their dangers shared by those who were born to be their masters, and whom they consider, as beings of a different rank. The Englishman despises such motives of courage: he was born without a master; and looks not on any man, however dignified by lace or titles, as deriving, from nature, any claims to his respect, or inheriting any qualities superiour to his own.

  There are some, perhaps, who would imagine, that every Englishman fights better than the subjects of absolute governments, because he has more to defend. But what has the English more than the French soldier? Property they are both, commonly, without. Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving; and this choice is, I suppose, equally allowed in every country. The English soldier seldom has his head very full of the constitution; nor has there been, for more than a century, any war that put the property or liberty of a single Englishman in danger.

  Whence, then, is the courage of the English vulgar? It proceeds, in my opinion, from that dissolution of dependence, which obliges every man to regard his own character. While every man is fed by his own hands, he has no need of any servile arts; he may always have wages for his labour; and is no less necessary to his employer, than his employer is to him. While he looks for no protection from others, he is naturally roused to be his own protector; and having nothing to abate his esteem of himself, he, consequently, aspires to the esteem of others. Thus every man that crowds our streets is a man of honour, disdainful of obligation, impatient of reproach, and desirous of extending his reputation among those of his own rank; and, as courage is in most frequent use, the fame of courage is most eagerly pursued. From this neglect of subordination, I do not deny, that some inconveniencies may, from time to time, proceed: the power of the law does not, always, sufficiently supply the want of reverence, or maintain the proper distinction between different ranks; but good and evil will grow up in this world together; and they who complain, in peace, of the insolence of the populace, must remember, that their insolence in peace is bravery in war.

  P
RAYERS AND MEDITATIONS

  Samuel Johnson died in 1784 in the house of his friend George Strahan, the Vicar of Islington, where the author liked to occasionally visit while suffering from gout, escaping the unhealthy streets of London. Strahan (1744-1824) was known for having been spiritual counsellor to Johnson, who entrusted him with several manuscripts that were later published in their entirety by the vicar as Prayers and Meditations. These personal journal entries and spiritual writings reveal Johnson’s deeply religious nature and the many anxieties he experienced in his later years.

  The title page of the second edition

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  INTRODUCTION

  PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION IN 1785

  PRAYERS AND MEDITATIONS

  SOME OPINIONS OF DR. JOHNSON ON THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

  Samuel Johnson by John Opie

  PREFACE

  TO keep a Diary was one of Dr. Johnson’s lifelong, pious, and unfulfilled Resolutions. He evidently thought, could he but accomplish this desire, he would have been aided in his perpetual struggle after stability of purpose, a rule of life and tranquillity of mind. Though, as events proved, Johnson could no more keep a continuous Diary than he could get up early in the morning (and this although he once sat up all night framing resolutions to do both the one and the other), he did succeed in filling a number of notebooks (some of the tiniest dimensions) with prayers and meditations of the most private and searching character. Some, by no means all, of these Memoranda Johnson, as his end approached, confided to his friend Dr. Strahan, then Vicar of Islington, for publication after death. His first and his main object in giving this direction was Charity (see note on p. 14). A man of letters gets to regard any manuscript of his as so much money. As for the contents of these notebooks, it may of course be, as subsequent editors have surmised, that Johnson dimly remembered them, but personally I have no doubt that the governing consideration with him in this respect, was his complete indifference to personal criticism. He knew the little books contained nothing contrary to religion, and he was therefore perfectly content to let what was in them go forth. We were all told in our childhood that ‘I don’t care’ came to a bad end. Johnson, I must suppose, is the proverbial exception, for no man cared less than he what people said or might say.

  Pious authors of the first rank are sufficiently rare to make us thankful for Prayers and Meditations, and Johnson’s piety is as indisputable as it is interesting. It represents a type always prevalent among the laity, but exceedingly ill-represented in our literature. It is not the primitive piety of the Early Church, nor is it the Evangelicalism of a later day, still less the ‘enthusiasm’ of the Methodist Revival. There is something mediæval about its gloom — something Jansenist about its mysticism, whilst there is not a little of the Eighteenth Century in that ‘obstinate rationality’ which, as the doctor himself half proudly, half ruefully admitted, made communion with the Roman Church an impossibility for him.

  Religion to Johnson was an awful thing. He never learnt to take his ease on Zion. In the tavern, indeed, he could stretch out his legs and hold his own and far more than his own with all comers, but in Church, or in the grim solitude of his chamber he knelt in self-abasement, with fear and trembling. There is no taint of professionalism about his faith. He is nothing of the cleric. He owns to hours of doubt and darkness. The world was always very near to him, nor does he ever pretend to have got rid of the flesh. Ill thoughts pursue him even to the Altar on the occasion of his annual communions on Easter Sunday. His constant prayer was to be loosed from the chain of his sin: ‘though we be tied and bound with the chain of our sin, yet let the pitifulness of thy great mercy loose us.’ Johnson has been blamed for the timidity of his piety by more confident spirits, but who can doubt its representative character? ‘Samuel Johnson in the era of Voltaire’ purifying and fortifying his soul, and holding real communion with the Highest, ‘in the Church of St. Clement Danes,’ was to Carlyle a thing to be looked at ‘with pity, admiration, and awe.’ In these Prayers and Meditations the reader is admitted, let him not abuse the occasion, into the innermost sanctuary of a soul. It is a welcome retreat for the student of Eighteenth Century Literature. ‘What think you of our new set of Fanatics, called the Methodists? I have seen Whitefield’s Journal, and he appears to me as mad as ever George Fox the Quaker. These are very fit missionaries you will say to propagate the Christian faith among Infidels. There is another of them, one Wesley, who came over from the same mission. So a future Bishop, the learned Warburton, may be discovered writing to the ingenuous Mr. Des Maiseaux in the second volume of Nichol’s Literary History. What with untutored enthusiasm on the one hand, a somewhat heartless scepticism on the other, and the mid-channel full of the downright irreligion of the Warburtonian school, Dr. Johnson’s trembling piety and utter sincerity is a true haven of refuge.

  It is strange in reading the Prayers and Meditations to come across Johnson’s frank admission, made in his sixty-third year, that he ‘had never looked upon a very great part’ of the Bible. But this defect he had managed to cure by the following year (see p. 75).

  AUGUSTINE BIRRELL.

  INTRODUCTION

  THE RELIGIOUS SIDE OF DR. JOHNSON’S CHARACTER

  WISHING, about a year ago, to purchase a copy of Prayers and Meditations, the writer had to advertise for it in the Publishers’ Circular. So far as he knows, it is many years since the last edition was issued from the press. Moreover, in conversation with a considerable number of acquaintances, all of whom were readers of Boswell, he discovered that not one of them had ever seen the book. Some knew of it in a furtive kind of way, and others had read extracts from it in Boswell and elsewhere. That was all. It was thought, therefore, that a new edition of the work would be welcomed by the public. For though it is asserted that while everybody reads Boswell, only the literary student buys the collected works of Johnson, it seemed likely, for several reasons, that Prayers and Meditations would form an exception. In the first place, the book is comparatively small, and occupies a unique position among the compositions of the author. In the next place, it is intrinsically worthy to take permanent rank among books of devotional literature. And in the third place, and chiefly, it gives an insight into the religious character of Johnson, without which no completely accurate judgment of the man can be formed.

  It is true that careful readers of Boswell cannot but notice how frequently he draws attention to the scrupulous piety and evangelical faith of his hero. But amid the great mass of material which Boswell brings together, the endless anecdotes, the brilliant conversations and disquisitions on all manner of subjects, and the constant movement of distinguished personages across his pages, those side references to the religious faith of Johnson are apt to be neglected, or, at all events, to receive only a cursory attention. In Prayers and Meditations we see the veil lifted. We are allowed to look into the private soul-life of Johnson. The hilarity of the tavern supper, the discussions of the literary club, the strenuous political controversy, the social circle at Thrale’s, at Strahan’s, and at Sir Joshua Reynolds’, — all this we leave behind; and we follow the stalwart fighter home to the privacy of his room, and his solitary communings with God and his own heart. And there we see a different man from the loud talker, the ardent and sometimes ferocious disputant, or the convivial friend as he was known to his associates in the outside world. A different man, and yet the same. For in the humility as of a little child in which he bows before the Throne of Grace; in the remorseless condemnation of his vices and sins, his sloth and broken vows; in his earnest and penitent pleas for pardon and amendment; we see something of the same vehemence of passion which marked his daily life among men.

  A recent American writer, one who loves and admires Johnson’s prayers, objects to the publication of the Meditations in the minutiæ of their introspection, the mingling of pious ejaculations and descriptions of bodily sickness and remedies. From these published details he thinks Johnson himself
would shrink, and that no good end can be served by them. This rather late and superfine objection is completely answered by the fact that Johnson himself gave the Diary to Strahan for publication; and by the further consideration that it is good for posterity to see the inner life of a great man who lived over a century ago, who, to us, is one of the most important personages of those times, and who was the last man likely to wish that any part of his life should be cautiously hidden from view. For, surely, no great man so habitually and fearlessly showed himself to others as he really was — in all the strength and weakness, the greatness and littleness of his character. And there were few things that his rough, blunt honesty despised more than squeamishness, or any sort of false sentiment, in matters of this kind. May it not also be urged that no sympathetic heart can rise from the perusal of these disjointed diary-jottings of the soul-life of Johnson without being the better for it himself, and without having a tenderer regard for the writer of them?

  How few people, comparatively, ever think of Johnson as a profoundly religious man. Yet such he was. And religion influenced his daily life and thought in a remarkable degree. None the less so, because it happened to be tinged with ceremonialism on the one hand, and, on the other hand, sometimes lapsed into superstitions and scruples which seem odd in so strong a character. Of Dr. Campbell he said, ‘Campbell is a good man, a pious man. I am afraid he has not been in the inside of a church for many years; but he never passes a church without pulling off his hat. This shows that he has good principles.’ That is sheer formalism. So, likewise, is his scrupulous observance of fast-days. His inclination to believe in ghosts, apparitions, dreams, and witchcraft, reveals, on the other hand, a credulity verging on superstition, and is in keeping with his habit of touching all the posts between the Mitre tavern and his lodgings. But it would be very foolish to conclude from these odd, half-concealed characteristics that Johnson’s religion was superficial, credulous, or merely ceremonial. As will be seen from his Opinions on revealed religion and doctrine, which are printed at the end of this volume, he had very clear and decided views on the great dogmas of the Christian Church. And it is equally clear from his habits of personal devotion that what the old divines used to call ‘the root of the matter’ was in him. Day by day he tried to live, in the sight of the Eternal, a life of devout and Scriptural piety. That he enumerates and mourns his failures to do so with painful penitence and sorrow, only emphasises the sincerity and genuineness of his religion. As a matter of fact, no man of his time had larger, healthier, and saner views on the real nature of godliness and practical Christian duty. In some religious circles of the day the revival of evangelicalism and the rise of Methodism had led to formalism and precision of dress, and to a corresponding outcry against elegance and fashion.