[CHAPTER XXXI.]
GEORGIAN PROSE.
II.
Samuel Johnson.
We could scarcely understand how Dr. Johnson gained his immense influence and acknowledged chiefship in literature if we had only his works of various kinds before us. But he had a friend and biographer, James Boswell, Esq. (younger of Auchinleck in Ayrshire), and "Bozzy," by showing Johnson as he was and talked, explains his supremacy. In an age when classical learning counted for something, Johnson was, especially in Roman literature, vastly learned. In a time when people who could tear themselves from cards, took little exercise, but sat and talked, over wine or over tea, or as they slowly sauntered, Johnson was probably the best and certainly the best reported of the talkers. While politicians like Burke, and painters like Sir Joshua Reynolds, and musicians like Burney (Fanny Burney's father), were men of letters, critics, talkers, a scholar and author who could talk like Johnson was certain of his reward, was sure to be at the front. Though he confessed himself not specially partial to clean linen; though he did not eat in a neat and cleanly fashion; though he had the strange tricks which we know so well; though if his pistol missed fire in argument he knocked you down with the butt; though he had curious prejudices, was at heart a Jacobite, and could be extremely rude, yet the excellence of his heart, his large sagacity, his immense knowledge and readiness, his humour, all of him that is immortally delightful to read about in Boswell's Life, won his forgiveness and his welcome from the most refined of men and women. He thought himself a lady's man, he said, and a man of the world, and he was thoroughly a man's man, with heart, and tongue, and hands, if that were necessary.
As a playwriter, he had not great success, and his friend Goldsmith's comedies keep the stage, unlike Johnson's tragedy. Johnson's tale "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," has wisdom and humour enough, "wit enough to keep it sweet," but it never did nor ever can share the popularity of Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield".
Johnson's essays, in "The Rambler" and "The Idler," may still be but are seldom read: they are far less alive than the essays of Addison and Steele, and are weighed down by the ponderous harmonies of the Latinised style.
Of his books, "The Lives of the Poets," written in his old age, are, to some, we may hope to many, readers, entrancing. Here we find the Johnson of conversation. He is not, indeed, a scientific biographer, a searcher among old letters and old records. But his memory was rich in anecdotes of the half century before his own; his style contains many a humorous comment, and his criticism is often acute, and always honest, and unaffectedly tinged, especially when he writes of the republican and puritan Milton, or of the dainty, yet, in poetry, revolutionary Gray, with all the literary and political prejudices that gave salt to his conversation. There may have been more enlightened critics, but none was ever more entertaining.
If his literary biographies are not of the most exact, they are occasionally minute enough. "Pope's weakness was so great, that he constantly wore stays, as I have been assured by a waterman (of Twickenham) who, in lifting him into his boat, had often felt them." Again, "Pope once slumbered at his own table while the Prince of Wales was talking of poetry". In his "Life of Swift" Johnson is by no means friendly, and publishes an anecdote which was indignantly denied. His life of his friend, Richard Savage, a most detestable person, is an example of Johnson's loyalty and tolerance. Supposing that Savage was the son of the Countess of Macclesfield, and was persecuted by her with incredible cruelty, yet his conduct in most ways was detestable, though Johnson, who candidly narrates the facts, good-humouredly condones them. The conversation of Savage must, apparently, have won the heart of "the great Lexicographer". Even the Dictionary of the Doctor contains several of his good sayings, and perhaps the learning and persevering industry which Johnson displayed as a "drudge" increased his reputation, and won for him friends and admirers, as much as his more literary works.
The outlines of his life are too well known to need more than a brief summary. His family was matter of interest to the Highlanders when he visited them, was he a MacIan of Glencoe or a Johnston of the Border? He was born at Lichfield (18 September, 1709), his father was a bookseller. His Oxford career, at Pembroke College, was embittered by poverty, but he retained a great affection for his college and University, which delighted to honour him. He kept a school without much profit, and, coming to London with Garrick in 1737, lived the life of Grub Street, doing translations, writing for Cave's "Gentleman's Magazine," compiling parliamentary debates in which he "took care not to let the Whig dogs have the best of it". Of his doings in 1745 Boswell could learn nothing, and there was a fancy that he was inclined to take part in what he called "a gallant enterprise," that of Prince Charles.