The Life of Samuel Johnson

by James Boswell

  In the deep mines of science though Frenchmen may toil,

  Can their strength be compar’d to Locke, Newton, and Boyle?

  Let them rally their heroes, send forth all their pow’rs,

  Their verse-men and prose-men, then match them with ours!

  First Shakspeare and Milton, like gods in the fight,

  Have put their whole drama and epick to flight;

  In satires, epistles, and odes, would they cope,

  Their numbers retreat before Dryden and Pope;

  And Johnson, well arm’d like a hero of yore,

  Has beat forty French,b and will beat forty more!’

  Johnson this year gave at once a proof of his benevolence, quickness of apprehension, and admirable art of composition, in the assistance which he gave to Mr. Zachariah Williams, father of the blind lady whom he had humanely received under his roof. Mr. Williams had followed the profession of physick in Wales; but having a very strong propensity to the study of natural philosophy, had made many ingenious advances towards a discovery of the longitude, and repaired to London in hopes of obtaining the great parliamentary reward.129 He failed of success; but Johnson having made himself master of his principles and experiments, wrote for him a pamphlet, published in quarto, with the following title: An Account of an Attempt to ascertain the Longitude at Sea, by an exact Theory of the Variation of the Magnetical Needle; with a Table of the Variations at the most remarkable Cities in Europe, from the year 1660 to 1680.† To diffuse it more extensively, it was accompanied with an Italian translation on the opposite page, which it is supposed was the work of Signor Baretti, an Italian of considerable literature, who having come to England a few years before, had been employed in the capacity both of a language-master and an authour, and formed an intimacy with Dr. Johnson. This pamphlet Johnson presented to the Bodleian Library.a On a blank leaf of it is pasted a paragraph cut out of a news-paper, containing an account of the death and character of Williams, plainly written by Johnson.b

  In July this year he had formed some scheme of mental improvement, the particular purpose of which does not appear. But we find in his Prayers and Meditations, p. 25, a prayer entitled ‘On the Study of Philosophy, as an Instrument of living;’ and after it follows a note, ‘This study was not pursued.’

  On the 13 th of the same month he wrote in his Journal the following scheme of life, for Sunday:

  ‘Having lived’ (as he with tenderness of conscience expresses himself) ‘not without an habitual reverence for the Sabbath, yet without that attention to its religious duties which Christianity requires;

  1. To rise early, and in order to do it, to go to sleep early on Saturday.

  ‘2. To use some extraordinary devotion in the morning.

  ‘3. To examine the tenour of my life, and particularly the last week; and to mark my advances in religion, or recession from it.

  ‘4. To read the Scripture methodically with such helps as are at hand.

  ‘5. To go to church twice.

  ‘6. To read books of Divinity, either speculative or practical.

  ‘7. To instruct my family.

  ‘8. To wear off by meditation any worldly soil contracted in the week.’

  1756: yETAT. 47.] – In 1756 Johnson found that the great fame of his Dictionary had not set him above the necessity of ‘making provision for the day that was passing over him.’130 No royal or noble patron extended a munificent hand to give independence to the man who had conferred stability on the language of his country. We may feel indignant that there should have been such unworthy neglect; but we must, at the same time, congratulate ourselves, when we consider, that to this very neglect, operating to rouse the natural indolence of his constitution, we owe many valuable productions, which otherwise, perhaps, might never have appeared.

  He had spent, during the progress of the work, the money for which he had contracted to write his Dictionary. We have seen that the reward of his labour was only fifteen hundred and seventy-five pounds; and when the expence of amanuenses and paper, and other articles are deducted, his clear profit was very inconsiderable. I once said to him, I am sorry, Sir, you did not get more for your Dictionary. His answer was, I am sorry, too. But it was very well. The booksellers are generous, liberal-minded men.’ He, upon all occasions, did ample justice to their character in this respect. He considered them as the patrons of literature; and, indeed, although they have eventually been considerable gainers by his Dictionary, it is to them that we owe its having been undertaken and carried through at the risk of great expence, for they were not absolutely sure of being indemnified.

  On the first day of this year we find from his private devotions, that he had then recovered from sickness;a and in February that his eye was restored to its use.b The pious gratitude with which he acknowledges mercies upon every occasion is very edifying; as is the humble submission which he breathes, when it is the will of his heavenly Father to try him with afflictions. As such dispositions become the state of man here, and are the true effects of religious discipline, we cannot but venerate in Johnson one of the most exercised minds that our holy religion hath ever formed. If there be any thoughtless enough to suppose such exercise the weakness of a great understanding, let them look up to Johnson and be convinced that what he so earnestly practised must have a rational foundation.

  His works this year were, an abstract or epitome, in octavo, of his folio Dictionary, and a few essays in a monthly publication, entitled, The Universal Visiter. Christopher Smart, with whose unhappy vacillation of mind he sincerely sympathised, was one of the stated undertakers of this miscellany; and it was to assist him that Johnson sometimes employed his pen. All the essays marked with two asterisks have been ascribed to him; but I am confident, from internal evidence, that of these, neither ‘The Life of Chaucer,’ ‘Reflections on the State of Portugal,’ nor an ‘Essay on Architecture,’ were written by him. I am equally confident, upon the same evidence, that he wrote ‘Further Thoughts on Agriculture;’! being the sequel of a very inferiour essay on the same subject, and which, though carried on as if by the same hand, is both in thinking and expression so far above it, and so strikingly peculiar, as to leave no doubt of its true parent; and that he also wrote A Dissertation on the State of Literature and Authours,’! and A Dissertation on the Epitaphs written by Pope.’f The last of these, indeed, he afterwards added to his Idler. Why the essays truly written by him are marked in the same manner with some which he did not write, I cannot explain: but with deference to those who have ascribed to him the three essays which I have rejected, they want all the characteristical marks of Johnsonian composition.

  He engaged also to superintend and contribute largely to another monthly publication, entitled The Literary Magazine, or Universal Review;∗ the first number of which came out in May this year. What were his emoluments from this undertaking, and what other writers were employed in it, I have not discovered. He continued to write in it, with intermissions, till the fifteenth number; and I think that he never gave better proofs of the force, acuteness, and vivacity of his mind, than in this miscellany, whether we consider his original essays, or his reviews of the works of others. The ‘Preliminary Address’ f to the Publick is a proof how this great man could embellish, with the graces of superiour composition, even so trite a thing as the plan of a magazine.

  His original essays are, ‘An Introduction to the Political State of Great Britain;’! ‘Remarks on the Militia Bill;’f131 ‘Observations on his Britannick Majesty’s Treaties with the Empress of Russia and the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel;’f132 ‘Observations on the Present State of Affairs;’f and ‘Memoirs of Frederick III, King of Prussia.’f In all these he displays extensive political knowledge and sagacity, expressed with uncommon energy and perspicuity, without any of those words which he sometimes took a pleasure in adopting in imitation of Sir Thomas Browne; of whose Christian Morals he this year gave an edition, with his ‘Life’f prefixed to it, which is one of Johnson’s best biographical p
erformances. In one instance only in these essays has he indulged his Brownism. Dr. Robertson, the historian, mentioned it to me, as having at once convinced him that Johnson was the author of the ‘Memoirs of the King of Prussia.’ Speaking of the pride which the old King, the father of his hero, took in being master of the tallest regiment in Europe, he says, ‘To review this towering regiment was his daily pleasure; and to perpetuate it was so much his care, that when he met a tall woman he immediately commanded one of his Titanian retinue to marry her, that they might propagate procerity.’ For this Anglo-Latian word procerity, Johnson had, however, the authority of Addison.

  His reviews are of the following books: ‘Birch’s History of the Royal Society;’! ‘Murphy’s Gray’s Inn Journal;’! ‘Warton’s Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, Vol. I;’f ‘Hampton’s Translation of Polybius;’f ‘Blackwell’s Memoirs of the Court of Augustus;’! ‘Russel’s Natural History of Aleppo;’ f ‘Sir Isaac Newton’s Arguments in Proof of a Deity;’ f ‘Borlase’s History of the Isles of Scilly;’f ‘Home’s Experiments on Bleaching;’f ‘Browne’s Christian Morals;’f ‘Hales on Distilling Sea-Water, Ventilators in Ships, and curing an ill Taste in Milk;’f ‘Lucas’s Essay on Waters;’f ‘Keith’s Catalogue of the Scottish Bishops;’f ‘Browne’s History of Jamaica;’! ‘Philosophical Transactions, Vol. XLIX.’f ‘Mrs. Lennox’s Translation of Sully’s Memoirs;’∗ ‘Miscellanies by Elizabeth Harrison;’f ‘Evans’s Map and Account of the Middle Colonies in America;’! ‘Letter on the Case of Admiral Byng;’∗133 ‘Appeal to the People concerning Admiral Byng;’∗ ‘Hanway’s Eight Days’ Journey, and Essay on Tea;’∗ ‘The Cadet, a Military Treatise;’! ‘Some further Particulars in Relation to the Case of Admiral Byng, by a Gentleman of Oxford;’ ∗ ‘The Conduct of the Ministry relating to the present War impartially examined;’! A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil.’∗ All these, from internal evidence, were written by Johnson; some of them I know he avowed, and have marked them with an asterisk accordingly. Mr. Thomas Davies indeed, ascribed to him the Review of Mr. Burke’s ‘Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful;’ and Sir John Hawkins, with equal discernment, has inserted it in his collection of Johnson’s works: whereas it has no resemblance to Johnson’s composition, and is well known to have been written by Mr. Murphy, who has acknowledged it to me and many others.

  It is worthy of remark, in justice to Johnson’s political character, which has been misrepresented as abjectly submissive to power, that his ‘Observations on the present State of Affairs’ glow with as animated a spirit of constitutional liberty as can be found any where. Thus he begins:

  ‘The time is now come, in which every Englishman expects to be informed of the national affairs; and in which he has a right to have that expectation gratified. For, whatever may be urged by Ministers, or those whom vanity or interest make the followers of ministers, concerning the necessity of confidence in our governours, and the presumption of prying with profane eyes into the recesses of policy, it is evident that this reverence can be claimed only by counsels yet unexecuted, and projects suspended in deliberation. But when a design has ended in miscarriage or success, when every eye and every ear is witness to general discontent, or general satisfaction, it is then a proper time to disentangle confusion and illustrate obscurity; to shew by what causes every event was produced, and in what effects it is likely to terminate; to lay down with distinct particularity what rumour always huddles in general exclamation, or perplexes by indigested narratives; to shew whence happiness or calamity is derived, and whence it may be expected; and honestly to lay before the people what inquiry can gather of the past, and conjecture can estimate of the future.’

  Here we have it assumed as an incontrovertible principle, that in this country the people are the superintendants of the conduct and measures of those by whom government is administered; of the beneficial effect of which the present reign afforded an illustrious example, when addresses from all parts of the kingdom controuled an audacious attempt to introduce a new power subversive of the crown.

  A still stronger proof of his patriotick spirit appears in his review of an ‘Essay on Waters, by Dr. Lucas;’ of whom, after describing him as a man well known to the world for his daring defiance of power, when he thought it exerted on the side of wrong, he thus speaks:

  ‘The Irish ministers drove him from his native country by a proclamation, in which they charged him with crimes of which they never intended to be called to the proof, and oppressed him by methods equally irresistible by guilt and innocence.

  ‘Let the man thus driven into exile, for having been the friend of his country, be received in every other place as confessor of liberty; and let the tools of power be taught in time, that they may rob, but cannot impoverish.’

  Some of his reviews in this Magazine are very short accounts of the pieces noticed, and I mention them only that Dr. Johnson’s opinion of the works may be known; but many of them are examples of elaborate criticism, in the most masterly style. In his review of the ‘Memoirs of the Court of Augustus,’ he has the resolution to think and speak from his own mind, regardless of the cant transmitted from age to age, in praise of the ancient Romans. Thus,

  ‘I know not why any one but a school-boy in his declamation should whine over the Common-wealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.’

  Again, – ‘A people, who, while they were poor, robbed mankind; and as soon as they became rich, robbed one another.’

  In his review of the Miscellanies in prose and verse, published by Elizabeth Harrison, but written by many hands, he gives an eminent proof at once of his orthodoxy and candour:

  ‘The authours of the essays in prose seem generally to have imitated, or tried to imitate, the copiousness and luxuriance of Mrs. Rowe. This, however, is not all their praise; they have laboured to add to her brightness of imagery, her purity of sentiments. The poets have had Dr. Watts before their eyes; a writer, who, if he stood not in the first class of genius, compensated that defect by a ready application of his powers to the promotion of piety. The attempt to employ the ornaments of romance in the decoration of religion, was, I think, first made by Mr. Boyle’s Martyrdom of Theodora; but Boyle’s philosophical studies did not allow him time for the cultivation of style; and the completion of the great design was reserved for Mrs. Rowe. Dr. Watts was one of the first who taught the Dissenters to write and speak like other men, by shewing them that elegance might consist with piety. They would have both done honour to a better society, for they had that charity which might well make their failings be forgotten, and with which the whole Christian world might wish for communion. They were pure from all the heresies of an age, to which every opinion is become a favourite that the universal church has hitherto detested!

  ‘This praise, the general interest of mankind requires to be given to writers who please and do not corrupt, who instruct and do not weary. But to them all human eulogies are vain, whom I believe applauded by angels, and numbered with the just.’

  His defence of tea against Mr. Jonas Hanway’s violent attack upon that elegant and popular beverage, shews how very well a man of genius can write upon the slightest subject, when he writes, as the Italians say, con amore:134 I suppose no person ever enjoyed with more relish the infusion of that fragrant leaf than Johnson. The quantities which he drank of it at all hours were so great, that his nerves must have been uncommonly strong, not to have been extremely relaxed by such an intemperate use of it. He assured me, that he never felt the least inconvenience from it; which is a proof that the fault of his constitution was rather a too great tension of fibres, than the contrary. Mr. Hanway wrote an angry answer to Johnson’s review of his Essay on Tea, and Johnson, after a full and deliberate pause, made a reply to it; the only instance, I believe, in the whole course of his life
, when he condescended to oppose any thing that was written against him. I suppose when he thought of any of his little antagonists, he was ever justly aware of the high sentiment of Ajax in Ovid:

  ‘Iste tulit pretium jam nunc certaminis hujus,

  Qui, cùm victus erit, mecum certasse feretur.’135

  But, indeed, the good Mr. Hanway laid himself so open to ridicule, that Johnson’s animadversions upon his attack were chiefly to make sport.

  The generosity with which he pleads the cause of Admiral Byng is highly to the honour of his heart and spirit. Though Voltaire affects to be witty upon the fate of that unfortunate officer, observing that he was shot ‘pour encourager les autres,’136 the nation has long been satisfied that his life was sacrificed to the political fervour of the times. In the vault belonging to the Torrington family, in the church of Southill, in Bedfordshire, there is the following Epitaph upon his monument, which I have transcribed:

  ‘To the perpetual Disgrace

  of public Justice,

  The Honourable John Byng, Esq.

  Admiral of the Blue,

  Fell a Martyr to political

  Persecution,

  March 14, in the Year, 1757;

  when Bravery and Loyalty

  were insufficient Securities

  for the Life and Honour of

  a Naval Officer.’

  Johnson’s most exquisite critical essay in the Literary Magazine, and indeed any where, is his review of Soame Jenyns’s Inquiry into the Origin of Evil. Jenyns was possessed of lively talents, and a style eminently pure and easy, and could very happily play with a light subject, either in prose or verse; but when he speculated on that most difficult and excruciating question, the Origin of Evil, he ‘ventured far beyond his depth,’ and, accordingly, was exposed by Johnson, both with acute argument and brilliant wit. I remember when the late Mr. Bicknell’s humourous performance, entitled The Musical Travels of Joel Collyer, in which a slight attempt is made to ridicule Johnson, was ascribed to Soame Jenyns, ‘Ha! (said Johnson) I thought I had given him enough of it.’