Johnson’s tragedy, Irene, need not detain us. It is unreadable, and to quote his own sensible words, ‘It is useless to criticise what nobody reads.’ It was indeed the expressed opinion of a contemporary called Pot that Irene was the finest tragedy of modern times; but on this judgment of Pot’s being made known to Johnson, he was only heard to mutter, ‘If Pot says so, Pot lies,’ as no doubt he did.
Johnson’s Latin Verses have not escaped the condemnation of scholars. Whose have? The true mode of critical approach to copies of Latin verse is by the question—How bad are they? Croker took the opinion of the Marquess Wellesley as to the degree of badness of Johnson’s Latin Exercises. Lord Wellesley, as became so distinguished an Etonian, felt the solemnity of the occasion, and, after bargaining for secrecy, gave it as his opinion that they were all very bad, but that some perhaps were worse than others. To this judgment I have nothing to add.
As a writer of English prose, Johnson has
always enjoyed a great, albeit a somewhat awful reputation. In childish memories he is constrained to be associated with dust and dictionaries, and those provoking obstacles to a boy’s reading—‘long words.’ It would be easy to select from Johnson’s writings numerous passages written in that essentially vicious style to which the name Johnsonese has been cruelly given; but the searcher could not fail to find many passages guiltless of this charge. The characteristics of Johnson’s prose style are colossal good sense, though with a strong sceptical bias, good humour, vigorous language, and movement from point to point, which can only be compared to the measured tread of a well-drilled company of soldiers. Here is a passage from the preface to Shakspeare:
‘Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. Let him that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakspeare, and who desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read every play from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let it not stoop at correction or explanation. When his attention is strongly engaged, let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theobald and of Pope. Let him read on, through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his comprehension of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness and read the commentators.’
Where are we to find better sense, or much better English?
In the pleasant art of chaffing an author Johnson has hardly an equal. De Quincey too often overdoes it. Macaulay seldom fails to excite sympathy with his victim. In playfulness Mr. Arnold perhaps surpasses the Doctor, but then the latter’s playfulness is always leonine, whilst Mr. Arnold’s is surely, sometimes, just a trifle kittenish. An example, no doubt a very good one, of Johnson’s humour must be allowed me. Soame Jenyns, in his book on the Origin of Evil, had imagined that, as we have not only animals for food, but choose some for our diversion, the same privilege may be allowed to beings above us, ‘who may deceive, torment, or destroy us for the ends only of their own pleasure.’
On this hint writes our merry Doctor as follows:
‘I cannot resist the temptation of contemplating this analogy, which I think he might have carried farther, very much to the advantage of his argument. He might have shown that these “hunters, whose game is man,” have many sports analogous to our own. As we drown whelps or kittens, they amuse themselves now and then with sinking a ship, and stand round the fields of Blenheim, or the walls of Prague, as we encircle a cockpit. As we shoot a bird flying, they take a man in the midst of his business or pleasure, and knock him down with an apoplexy. Some of them perhaps are virtuosi, and delight in the operations of an asthma, as a human philosopher in the effects of the air-pump. Many a merry bout have these frolick beings at the vicissitudes of an ague, and good sport it is to see a man tumble with an epilepsy, and revive and tumble again, and all this he knows not why. The paroxysms of the gout and stone must undoubtedly make high mirth, especially if the play be a little diversified with the blunders and puzzles of the blind and deaf. . . . One sport the merry malice of these beings has found means of enjoying, to which we have nothing equal or similar. They now and then catch a mortal, proud of his parts, and flattered either by the submission of those who court his kindness, or the notice of those who suffer him to court theirs. A head thus prepared for the reception of false opinions, and the projection of vain designs, they easily fill with idle notions till, in time, they make their plaything an author; their first diversion commonly begins with an ode or an epistle, then rises perhaps to a political irony, and is at last brought to its height by a treatise of philosophy. Then begins the poor animal to entangle himself in sophisms and to flounder in absurdity.’
The author of the philosophical treatise, A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil, did not at all enjoy this ‘merry bout’ of the ‘frolick’ Johnson.