JOHNSON.
Samuel Johnson was born September 18, 1709, in the city of Lichfield, where his father, a man well respected for sense and learning, carried on the trade of a bookseller, and realized an independence, which he afterwards lost by an unsuccessful speculation. His mother also possessed a strong understanding. From these parents Johnson derived a powerful body, and a mind of uncommon force and compass. Unfortunately both mind and body were tainted by disease: the former by a melancholy, of which he said that it had “made him mad all his life—at least not sober;” the latter by that scrofulous disorder called the king’s evil, for which, in compliance with a popular superstition, recommended by the Jacobite principles of his family, he was touched by Queen Anne. By this disease he lost the sight of one eye, and the other was considerably injured: a calamity which combined with constitutional indolence to prevent his joining in the active sports of his school-fellows. Tardy in the performance of his appointed tasks, he mastered them with rapidity at last, and he early displayed great fondness for miscellaneous reading, and a remarkably retentive memory. After passing through several country schools, and spending near two years in a sort of busy idleness at home, he went to Pembroke College, Oxford, about the age of sixteen. There he made himself more remarkable by wit and humour, and negligence of college discipline, than by his labours for University distinction: his translation of Pope’s Messiah into Latin hexameters was the only exercise on which he bestowed much pains, or by which he obtained much credit. But his high spirits, unless the recollections of his earlier years were tinctured by his habitual despondency, were but the cloak of a troubled mind. “Ah! Sir,” he said to Boswell, “I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolic. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit, so I disregarded all power and all authority.” His poverty during this period was indeed extreme: and the scanty remittances by which he was supported, in much humiliation and inconvenience, were altogether stopped at last by his father’s insolvency. He had the mortification to be compelled to quit Oxford in the autumn of 1731, after three years’ residence, without taking a degree; and his father’s death in the December following threw him on the world, with twenty pounds in his pocket.
He first attempted to gain a livelihood in the capacity of usher to a school at Market-Bosworth, in Leicestershire. For that laborious and dreary task he was eminently unfit, except by talent and learning, and he soon quitted a situation which he ever remembered with a degree of aversion amounting to horror. After his marriage he tried the experiment of keeping a boarding-house, near Lichfield, as principal, with little better success. From Bosworth he went to Birmingham, in 1733, where he composed his first work, a translation of the Jesuit Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia. He gained several kind and useful acquaintance in the latter town, among whom was Mr. Porter, a mercer, whose widow he married in 1735. She was double his age, and possessed neither beauty, fortune, nor attractive manners, yet she inspired him with an affection which endured, unchilled by the trials of poverty, unchanged by her death, even to the end of his own life, as his private records fully testify. She died in 1752.
In March, 1737, Johnson set out for the metropolis, in hopes of mending his fortunes, as a man of letters, and especially of bringing on the stage his tragedy of Irene. It was long before his desires were gratified in either respect. Irene was not performed till 1749, when his friend and former pupil, Garrick, had the management of Drury-Lane. Garrick’s zeal carried it through nine nights, so that the author, in addition to one hundred pounds from Dodsley for the copyright, had the profit of three nights’ performance, according to the mode of payment then in use. The play however, though bearing the stamp of a vigorous and elevated mind, and by no means wanting in poetical merit, was unfit for acting, through its want of pathos and dramatic effect: and Johnson perhaps perceived his deficiency in these qualities, for he never again wrote for the stage. Garrick said of his friend, that he had neither the faculty to produce, nor the sensibility to receive the impressions of tragedy: and his annotations upon Shakspeare confirm this judgment.
His first employment after his arrival in London, was as a frequent contributor to the Gentleman’s Magazine, from which, during some years, he derived his chief support. This was a period of labour, poverty, and often of urgent want. Sometimes without a lodging, sometimes without a dinner, he became acquainted with the darker phases of a London life; and among other singular characters, a similarity of fortunes made him acquainted with the notorious Richard Savage, whom he regarded with affection, and whose life is one of the most powerful productions of Johnson’s pen.
In the thoughts suggested, and the knowledge taught, by this rough collision with the world, we may conjecture his imitation of the third satire of Juvenal, entitled London, to have originated. To the majority of the nation it was recommended by its strong invectives against the then unpopular ministry of Sir Robert Walpole, as well as by the energy of thought and style, the knowledge of his subject, and the lively painting in which it abounds: it reached a second edition in the course of a week, and Boswell tells us, on contemporary authority, that “the first buz of the literary circles was, ‘here is an unknown poet, greater even than Pope.’” Yet this admired poem produced only ten guineas to its author, and appears to have done nothing towards improving his prospects, or giving a commercial value to his name: his chief employment was still furnished by the Gentleman’s Magazine; and in November, 1740, he undertook to report, or rather to write, the Parliamentary debates for that publication. At that time the privileges of Parliament were very strictly interpreted, and the avowed publication of debates would have been rigorously suppressed. Such a summary however as could be preserved in the memory, was carried away by persons employed for the purpose, and the task which Johnson undertook was to expand and adorn their imperfect hints from the stores of his own eloquence: in doing which he took care, as he afterwards acknowledged, that “the Whig dogs should not have the best of it.” The speeches of course were referred to fictitious names, and were published under the title, Debates of the Senate of Lilliput: but in February, 1743, Johnson, on finding that they were esteemed genuine, desisted from the employment, declaring that he would not be accessary to the propagation of falsehood. So scrupulous was he on this score, that forty years after, not long before his death, he expressed his regret at having been the author of fictions that had passed for realities.
For a detailed account of this early portion of Johnson’s literary history, we refer the reader to Boswell’s Life, and the list of Johnson’s works thereto prefixed, and pass on at once to those greater performances, to which he owes his eminent rank among British writers. Of these the earliest and most celebrated is his Dictionary of the English Language. How long the plan of this work had been meditated, before it was actually commenced, is uncertain: he told Boswell, that his knowledge of our language was not the effect of particular study, but had grown up insensibly in his mind. That he under-rated the time and labour requisite for such a work, is evident from his promising in his prospectus, issued in 1747, to complete it in three years: he probably had also under-rated the needful knowledge, and amount of preparatory study. In fact it was not published till 1755. He received for it 1575l., of which however a very considerable portion was spent in expenses. The prospectus was addressed to Lord Chesterfield; who expressed himself warmly in favour of the design, and from that time forward treated the author with neglect until the time of publication drew nigh, when he again assumed the character of a patron. Fired at this, Johnson repudiated his assistance in a dignified but sarcastic letter, which is printed by Boswell. The transaction merits notice, for it is characteristic of Johnson’s independent spirit, and excited at the time much curiosity and comment.
The Dictionary was justly esteemed a wonderful work: it established at once the author’s reputation among his contemporaries, and was long regarded as the supreme standard by which disputed points in the English language were to be tried. Johnson’s chief qualification for the task lay in the accuracy of his definitions, and the extent of his various and well-remembered reading; his chief disqualification lay in his ignorance of the cognate Teutonic languages, the stock from which the bulk and strength of our own is derived: and in proportion as the history and philosophy of the English language have been more extensively studied, has the need of a more learned and philosophical work of reference been felt. The verbose style of his definitions is rather a fruitful theme of ridicule than an important fault. Shortly before its publication he received from the University of Oxford, which through life he regarded with great affection and veneration, the honorary degree of M.A., a mark of respect by which he was highly gratified.
That his labour in composing this work was not severe, may be inferred from the variety of literary employments in which, during its progress, he found time and inclination to engage: among which we may select for mention the imitation of Juvenal’s tenth satire, entitled Vanity of Human Wishes, and the periodical paper called the Rambler, which was published twice a week, from March 20, 1750, to March 17, 1752. Of the whole series, according to Boswell, only four papers, and a part of a fifth, were contributed by other pens: and it is remarkable, considering the general gravity of the subjects, and the elaboration of the style, that most of them were struck off at a heat, when constitutional indolence could procrastinate no longer, without even being read over before they were printed. The circulation of the work was small; for its merits, which lie chiefly in moral instruction and literary criticism, were of too grave a cast to ensure favour: the lighter parts, and the attempts at humour, are the least successful. But its popularity increased as the author’s fame rose, and fashion recommended his grandiloquent style; and before his death it went through numerous editions in a collected form.