‘Queeney has been a good girl, and wrote me a letter. If Burney said she would write, she told you a fib. She writes nothing to me. She can write home fast enough. I have a good mind not to tell her that Dr. Bernard, to whom I had recommended her novel, speaks of it with great commendation, and that the copy which she lent me has been read by Dr. Lawrence three times over. And yet what a gipsy it is. She no more minds me than if I were a Branghton. Pray, speak to Queeney to write again. . . . Now you think yourself the first writer in the world for a letter about nothing. Can you write such a letter as this? So miscellaneous, with such noble disdain of regularity, like Shakspeare’s works; such graceful negligence of transition, like the ancient enthusiasts. The pure voice of Nature and of Friendship. Now, of whom shall I proceed to speak? of whom but Mrs. Montague? Having mentioned Shakspeare and Nature, does not the name of Montague force itself upon me? Such were the transitions of the ancients, which now seem abrupt, because the intermediate idea is lost to modern understandings.’
But the extract had better end, for there are, (I fear) ‘modern understandings who will not perceive the intermediate idea’ between Shakspeare and Mrs. Montague, and to whom even the name of Branghton will suggest no meaning.
Johnson’s literary fame is, in our judgment, as secure as his character. Like the stone which he placed over his father’s grave at Lichfield, and which, it is shameful to think,
has been removed, it is ‘too massy and strong’ to be ever much affected by the wind and weather of our literary atmosphere. ‘Never,’ so he wrote to Mrs. Thrale, ‘let criticisms operate upon your face or your mind; it is very rarely that an author is hurt by his critics. The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out; but it often dies in the socket. From the author of Fitzosborne’s Letters I cannot think myself in much danger. I met him only once, about thirty years ago, and in some small dispute soon reduced him to whistle.’ Dr. Johnson is in no danger from anybody. None but Gargantua could blow him out, and he still burns brightly in his socket.
How long this may continue who can say? It is a far cry to 1985. Science may by that time have squeezed out literature, and the author of the Lives of the Poets may be dimly remembered as an odd fellow who lived in the Dark Ages, and had a very creditable fancy for making chemical experiments. On the other hand, the Spiritualists may be in possession, in which case the Cock Lane Ghost will occupy more of public attention than Boswell’s hero, who will, perhaps, be reprobated as the profane utterer of these idle words: ‘Suppose
I know a man to be so lame that he is absolutely incapable to move himself, and I find him in a different room from that in which I left him, shall I puzzle myself with idle conjectures, that perhaps his nerves have by some unknown change all at once become effective? No, sir, it is clear how he got into a different room—he was carried.’
We here part company with Johnson, bidding him a most affectionate farewell, and leaving him in undisturbed possession of both place and power. His character will bear investigation, and some of his books perusal. The latter, indeed, may be submitted to his own test, and there is no truer one. A book, he wrote, should help us either to enjoy life or to endure it. His frequently do both.
EDMUND BURKE.
A Lecture delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical Society.
Mr. John Morley, who amongst other things has written two admirable books about Edmund Burke, is to be found in the Preface to the second of them apologizing for having introduced into the body of the work extracts from his former volume—conduct which he seeks to justify by quoting from the Greek (always a desirable thing to do when in difficulty), to prove that, though you may say what you have to say well once, you cannot so say it twice.