SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-84)

Few personalities of famous men are so well-known to us as the personality of that great Cham of literature, Samuel Johnson.' The son of a poor Lichfield book-seller, Johnson_had the advantages of the local grammar-school and a few poverty-stricken months at Pembroke College, Oxford; served for a time as usher in a boy's school; married for true love's sake, a woman much his senior; and set up a private academy near his native city. This enterprise proving neither agreeable nor profitable, in his twenty-eighth year, with little in his uncouth person, his ponderous genius, or in the sturdy independence of his character, to recommend him to the rich and fortunate, Johnson had the hardihood to seek a living among the penurious publishers and starving hack writers of London. For nearly a quarter of a century, he earned a precarious subsistence by huge odd jobs' of literature which now have little interest except as a part of his biography. The greatest of these, his Dictionary of the English Language, was published in 1755, after seven years of continuous labor. During a part of this time he had supported himself by writing, The Rambler (1750-52), and, in ensuing years, The Idler (1759-60) and Rasselas (1759) helped to defray expenses while he was preparing his edition of Shakspere (1765). He was now famous. A pension of three hundred pounds, granted by government in 1762, had relieved him from the pressure of necessity. Thereafter he wrote but little, and his social talents expanded. In 1764, he joined with Sir Joshua Reynolds in founding the renowned Literary Club which had the good fortune to gather to its convivial meetings such men as Burke, Goldsmith, Gibbon, Garrick, Adam Smith, the two Wartons, Bishop Percy of ballad fame, and many others whose names are still remembered. The previous year, Boswell had made his acquaintance and had begun to gather materials for the record of those 'nights and suppers of the gods' with which we are regaled in his Life. If we may trust Boswell's vivid and, apparently, accurate account, Johnson inspired in his comrades not only unusual affection, but a degree of respect which approximated reverence. His conversation was witty, powerful, and varied and gives us a higher idea of his genius than anything which he wrote. His eccentricities both of behavior and of opinion were extraordinary; but the prevailing impression left by Boswell's picture of his mind is one of massive common-sense, united with great depth and benignity of soul.

Johnson's most important contribution to literature is his Lives of the Poets, which he undertook toward the end of his life (1779-81), when his powers were in their fullness and after years of polite conversation had favorably affected his style. They are the outpouring of a capacious mind stored by a lifetime of reading, experience, and reflection. His judgments are often marred by his peculiar crochets of opinion or temper; but his sayings are almost always invigorating, for they are the abrupt utterances of an honest and strong man who knew much of the world and of letters.

THE LIFE OF ADDISON

Joseph Addison was born on the Ist of May, 1672, at Milston, of which his father, Lancelot Addison, was then rector, near Ambrosebury, in Wiltshire, and, appearing weak and unlikely to live, he was christened the same day. After the usual domestic education, which from the character of the father may be reasonably supposed to have given him strong impressions of piety, he was committed to the care of Mr. Naish at Ambrosebury, and afterwards of Mr. Taylor at Salisbury.

Not to name the school or the masters of men illustrious for literature, is a kind of historical fraud, by which honest fame is injuriously diminished: I would 5 therefore trace him through the whole process of his education. In 1683, in the beginning of his twelfth year, his father, being made Dean of Lichfield, naturally carried his family to his new residence, and, I believe, placed him for some time, probably not long, under Mr. Shaw, then master of the school at Lichfield, father of the late Dr. Peter Shaw. Of this interval his biographers have given no ac15 count, and I know it only from a story

of a 'barring-out,' told me, when I was a boy, by Andrew Corbet, of Shropshire, who had heard it from Mr. Pigot, his uncle.

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much purpose of repayment; but Addison, who seems to have had other notions of a hundred pounds, grew impatient of delay, and reclaimed his loan by an execution. Steele felt with great sensibility the obduracy of his creditor, but with emotions of sorrow rather than of anger. In 1687 he was entered into Queen's College in Oxford, where, in 1689, the

The practice of barring-out' was a savage license, practiced in many schools to the end of the last century, by which the boys, when the periodical vacation drew near, growing petulant at the approach of liberty, some days before the 10 accidental perusal of some Latin verses

gained him the patronage of Dr. Lancaster, afterwards Provost of Queen's College; by whose recommendation he was elected into Magdalen College as a demy, a term by which that society denominates those who are elsewhere called scholars: young men who partake of the founder's benefaction, and succeed in their order to vacant fellowships. Here

time of regular recess, took possession of the school, of which they barred the doors, and bade their master defiance from the windows. It is not easy to suppose that on such occasions the mas- 15 ter would do more than laugh; yet, if tradition may be credited, he often struggled hard to force or surprise the garrison. The master, when Pigot was a schoolboy, was barred out' at Lichfield; 20 he continued to cultivate poetry and

and the whole operation, as he said, was planned and conducted by Addison.

To judge better of the probability of this story, I have inquired when he was sent to the Chartreux; but, as he was 25 not one of those who enjoyed the founder's benefaction, there is no account preserved of his admission. At the school of the Chartreux, to which he was removed either from that of Salis- 30 bury or Lichfield, he pursued his juvenile studies under the care of Dr. Ellis, and contracted that intimacy with Sir Richard Steele which their joint labors have so effectually recorded.

Of this memorable friendship the greater praise must be given to Steele. It is not hard to love those from whom nothing can be feared; and Addison never considered Steele as a rival; but Steele lived, as he confesses, under an habitual subjection to the predominating genius of Addison, whom he always mentioned with reverence, and treated with obsequiousness.

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criticism, and grew first eminent by his Latin compositions, which are indeed entitled to particular praise. He has not confined himself to the imitation of any ancient author, but has formed his style from the general language, such as a diligent perusal of the productions of different ages happened to supply. His Latin compositions seem to have had much of his fondness, for he collected a second volume of the Musae Anglicanae, perhaps for a convenient receptacle, in which all his Latin pieces are inserted, and where his poem on the Peace has the first place. He afterwards presented the collection to Boileau, who from that time conceived,' says Tickell, 'an opinion of the English genius for poetry.' Nothing is better known of Boileau than that he had an injudicious and peevish contempt of modern Latin, and therefore his profession of regard was probably the effect of his civility rather than approbation.

Three of his Latin poems are upon subAddison, who knew his own dignity, jects on which perhaps he would not have could not always forbear to show it, by ventured to have written in his own lanplaying a little upon his admirer; but guage: The Battle of the Pigmies and he was in no danger of retort; his jests Cranes, The Barometer, and A Bowlingwere endured without resistance or re- 5o green. When the matter is low or scanty. sentment. But the sneer of jocularity was not the worst. Steele, whose imprudence of generosity, or vanity of profusion, kept him always incurably necessitous, upon some pressing exigence, in an evil hour, borrowed an hundred pounds of his friend probably without

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a dead language, in which nothing is mean because nothing is familiar, affords great conveniences; and by the sonorous magnificence of Roman syllables, the writer conceals penury of thought, and want of novelty, often from the reader and often from himself.

some

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In 1697 appeared his Latin verses on the Peace of Ryswick, which he dedicated to Montague, and which was afterwards called, by Smith, the best Latin poem since the Aeneid. Praise must not be too rigorously examined; but the performance cannot be denied to be vigorous and elegant. Having yet no public employment, he obtained (in 1699) a pen10 sion of three hundred pounds a year, that he might be enabled to travel. He stayed a year at Blois, probably to learn the French language; and then proceeded in his journey to Italy, which he surveyed with the eyes of a poet. While he was traveling at leisure, he was far from being idle for he not only collected his observations on the country, but found time to write his Dialogues on Medals, and four acts of Cato. Such, at least, is the relation of Tickell. Perhaps he only collected his materials and formed his plan. Whatever were his other employments in Italy, he there wrote the letter to Lord Halifax which is justly considered as the most elegant, if not the most sublime, of his poetical productions. But in about two years he found it necessary to hasten home; being, as Swift informs us, distressed by indigence, and compelled to become the tutor of a traveling squire, because his pension was not remitted.

In his twenty-second year he first showed his power of English poetry by verses addressed to Dryden; and soon afterwards published a translation of the greater part of the Fourth Georgic upon Bees; after which, says Dryden, my latter swarm is hardly worth the hiving.' About the same time he composed the arguments prefixed to the several books of Dryden's Virgil; and produced an Essay on the Georgics, juvenile, superficial, and uninstructive, without much either of the scholar's learning or the critic's penetration. His next paper of verses contained a char- 15 acter of the principal English poets, inscribed to Henry Sacheverell, who was then, if not a poet, a writer of verses; as is shown by his version of a small part of Virgil's Georgics, published in the 20 Miscellanies; and a Latin encomium on Queen Mary, in the Musae Anglicanae. These verses exhibit all the fondness of friendship; but, on one side or the other, friendship was afterwards too weak for 25 the malignity of faction. In this poem is a very confident and discriminative character of Spenser, whose work he had then never read; so little sometimes is criticism the effect of judgment. It is 30 necessary to inform the reader that about this time he was introduced by Congreve to Montague, then chancellor of the exchequer Addison was then learning the trade of a courtier, and subjoined Mon- 35 tague as a poetical name to those of Cowley and of Dryden. By the influence of Mr. Montague, concurring, according to Tickell, with his natural modesty, he was diverted from his original design of en- 40 tering into holy orders. Montague alleged the corruption of men who engaged in civil employments without liberal education; and declared that, though he was represented as an enemy to the church, 45 he would never do it any injury but by withholding Addison from it.

Soon after (1695) he wrote a poem to King William, with a riming introduction addressed to Lord Somers. King 50 William had no regard to elegance or literature; his study was only war; yet by a choice of ministers, whose disposition was very different from his own, he procured, without intention, a very lib- 55 eral patronage to poetry. Addison was caressed both by Somers and Montague.

At his return he published his Travels, with a dedication to Lord Somers. As his stay in foreign countries was short, his observations are such as might be supplied by a hasty view, and consist chiefly in comparisons of the present face of the country with the descriptions left us by the Roman poets, from whom he made preparatory collections, though he might have spared the trouble had he known that such collections had been made twice before by Italian authors.

The most amusing passage of his book is his account of the minute republic of San Marino; of many parts it is not a very severe censure to say that they might have been written at home. His elegance of language, and variegation of prose and verse, however, gain upon the reader; and the book, though awhile neglected, became in time so much the favorite of the public that before it was reprinted it rose to five times its price.

When he returned to England (in

somewhat advanced by The Tender Husband, a comedy which Steele dedicated to him, with a confession that he owed to him several of the most successful 5 scenes. To this play Addison supplied a prologue.

1702), with a meanness of appearance which gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had been reduced, he found his old patrons out of power, and was therefore, for a time, at full leisure for the cultivation of his mind; and a mind so cultivated gives reason to believe that little time was lost. But he remained not long neglected or useless. The victory at Blenheim (1704) spread triumph 10 and confidence over the nation; and Lord Godolphin, lamenting to Lord Halifax that it had not been celebrated in a manner equal to the subject, desired him to propose it to some better poet. Halifax 15 told him that there was no encouragement for genius; that worthless men were unprofitably enriched with public money, without any care to find or employ those whose appearance might do honor 20 to their country. To this Godolphin replied that such abuses should in time be rectified; and that, if a man could be found capable of the task then proposed, he should not want an ample recom- 25 pense. Halifax then named Addison, but required that the treasurer should apply to him in his own person. Godolphin sent the message by Mr. Boyle, afterwards Lord Carlton; and Addison, 30 to refuse benefits from a bad man when

When the Marquis of Wharton was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland, Addison attended him as his secretary; and was made keeper of the records, in Birmingham's tower, with a salary of three hundred pounds a year. The office was little more than nominal, and the salary was augmented for his accommodation. Interest and faction allow little to the operation of particular dispositions or private opinions. Two men of personal characters more opposite than those of Wharton and Addison could not easily be brought together. Wharton was impious, profligate, and shameless; without regard. or appearance of regard, to right and wrong. Whatever is contrary to this may be said of Addison; but as agents of a party they were connected, and how they adjusted their other sentiments we cannot know.

Addison, must, however, not be too hastily condemned. It is not necessary

the acceptance implies no approbation of his crimes; nor has the subordinate officer any obligation to examine the opinions or conduct of those under whom he acts,

having undertaken the work, communicated it to the treasury while it was yet advanced no farther than the simile of the angel, and was immediately rewarded by succeeding Mr. Locke in the 35 except that he may not be made the inplace of commissioner of appeals.

strument of wickedness. It is reasonable to suppose that Addison counteracted, as far as he was able, the malignant and blasting influence of the lieutenant; and

In the following year he was at Hanover with Lord Halifax: and the year after he was made under secretary of state, first to Sir Charles Hedges, and 40 that at least by his intervention some

good was done, and some mischief prevented. When he was in office he made a law to himself, as Swift has recorded, never to remit his regular fees in civility to his friends: 'for,' said he, 'I may have a hundred friends; and if my fee be two guineas, I shall, by relinquishing my right, lose two hundred guineas, and no friend gain more than two; there is 50 therefore no proportion between the good imparted and the evil suffered.' He was in Ireland when Steele, without any communication of his design, began the publication of The Tatler; but he was not long concealed; by inserting a remark on Virgil which Addison had given him he discovered himself. It is, indeed, not

in a few months more to the Earl of
Sunderland. About this time the prev-
alent taste for Italian operas inclined him
to try what would be the effect of a
musical drama in our own language. He 45
therefore wrote the opera of Rosamond,
which, when exhibited on the stage, was
either hissed or neglected; but, trusting
that the readers would do him more jus-
tice, he published it with an inscription
to the Duchess of Marlborough — a
woman without skill, or pretensions to
skill, in poetry or literature. His dedica-
tion was therefore an instance of servile
absurdity, to be exceeded only by Joshua 55
Barnes's dedication of a Greek Anacreon
to the Duke. His reputation had been

easy for any man to write upon literature or common life so as not to make himself known to those with whom he familiarly converses, and who are acquainted with his track of study, his favorite topic, his peculiar notions, and his habitual phrases.

If Steele desired to write in secret, he was not lucky; a single month detected him. His first Tatler was published April 22 (1709); and Addison's contri- 10 bution appeared May 26. Tickell observes that The Tatler began and was concluded without his concurrence. This is doubtless literally true; but the work did not suffer much by his unconscious- 15 ness of its commencement, or his absence at its cessation; for he continued his assistance to December 23, and the paper stopped on January 2, 1710-11. He did not distinguish his pieces by any signa- 20 ture; and I know not whether his name was not kept secret till the papers were collected into volumes.

than criminal, and remove those grievances which, if they produce no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation, was first attempted by Casa in his book of 5 Manners, and Castiglione in his Courtier; two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance, and which, if they are now less read, are neglected only because they have effected that reformation which their authors intended, and their precepts now are no longer wanted. Their usefulness to the age in which they were written is sufficiently attested by the translations which almost all the nations of Europe were in haste to obtain.

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This species of instruction was tinued, and perhaps advanced, by the French; among whom La Bruyère's Manners of the Age (though, as Boileau remarked, it is written without connection) certainly deserves great praise for liveliness of description and justness of observation.

Before The Tatler and Spectator, if

To The Tatler, in about two months, succeeded The Spectator: a series of es- 25 the writers for the theater are excepted, says of the same kind, but written with less levity, upon a more regular plan, and published daily. Such an undertaking showed the writers not to distrust their own copiousness of materials or facility 30 of composition, and their performance justified their confidence. They found, however, in their progress many auxiliaries. To attempt a single paper was no terrifying labor; many pieces were 35 offered, and many were received.

Addison had enough of the zeal of party; but Steele had at that time almost nothing else. The Spectator, in one of the first papers, showed the political 40 tenets of its authors; but a resolution was soon taken of courting general approbation by general topics, and subjects on which faction had produced no diversity of sentiments; such as literature, moral- 45 ity, and familiar life. To this practice they adhered with few deviations. The ardor of Steele once broke out in praise of Marlborough; and when Dr. Fleetwood prefixed to some sermons a preface 50 overflowing with whiggish opinions, that it might be read by the Queen, it was reprinted in The Spectator.

To teach the minuter decencies and inferior duties, to regulate the practice 55 of daily conversation, to correct those depravities, which are rather ridiculous

England had no masters of common life. No writers had yet undertaken to reform: either the savageness of neglect, or the impertinence of civility; to show when to speak, or to be silent; how to refuse, or how to comply. We had many books to teach us our more important duties, and to settle opinions in philosophy or politics; but an arbiter elegantiarum, a judge of propriety, was yet wanting, who should survey the track of daily conversation, and free it from thorns and prickles, which tease the passer, though they do not wound him. For this purpose nothing is so proper as the frequent publication of short papers, which we read, not as study, but amusement. If the subject be slight, the treatise likewise is short. The busy may find time, and the idle may find patience. This mode of conveying cheap and easy knowledge began among us in the civil war, when it was much the interest of either party to raise and fix the prejudices of the people. At that time appeared Mercurius Aulicus, Mercurius Rusticus, and Mercurius Civicus. It is said that when any title grew popular, it was stolen by the antagonist, who by this stratagem conveyed his notions to those who would not have received him had he not worn the appearance of a friend. The tumult of those unhappy