The salon and English letters

by Chauncey Brewster Tinker

Because of this lack of pliability in Johnson, Boswell deserves far more credit than he has ever received for his success in making him talk. Boswell, though not a profound thinker, was of a mind curious and alert. He is entirely misjudged by those readers—if, indeed, they are ever readers—who join Macaulay in thinking him a fool. Boswell said foolish things, to be sure, and asked the foolishest questions, as what proportion of their wages housemaids might properly spend on their attire, how hogs were slaughtered in the Tahiti Islands, and what Dr. Johnson would do if he were shut up in a tower alone with a new-born baby; but under the silliest of them there is always a keen experimentalist, an amused observer tickling a giant with a straw. Boswell introduced a valuable amount of friction into Johnson’s life, arranged that he should meet men whose views were wholly opposed to his own, carried him off to dine with Whigs, got him to call on Lord Monboddo (who held the most offensive opinions about primitive man), introduced him to General Paoli, and to Beattie and Sir Adam Fergusson (of the infamous race of Scots), and dragged him across all Scotland to Mull and Icomkill. No one else so mastered the art of managing Johnson as this same wily Scot. Mrs. Thrale could not do it. Neither Goldsmith nor Dr. Taylor could do it. Topham Beauclerk might perhaps have done it, had he thought it worth while. Fanny Burney had the subtle combination of grace and ability which appealed to Johnson, but was lacking in force. When she attempted to show Johnson to her ‘Daddy Crisp,’ or to engage him in conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Greville, her failure was conspicuous. The great man’s placid self-absorption gave a deeper offence than any tirade could have done.

Johnson had at times so serene a manner that, in an affable moment, he declared to Boswell that ‘that is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments.’ Such is the general strain of his conversation at Streatham, as recorded by Miss Burney.[408] Here we detect a playfulness, even a frivolity, of manner which is a pleasant contrast to the more professional tone with which Boswell has familiarized us. There is in it no hint of dress parade. It is a very human conversation, containing most of the faults that disgrace our own. Johnson gossips. He talks of the weather; he talks of his friends behind their back—what true comrade ever failed to do that?—and will even indulge in a bit of scandal. He talks of Sheridan’s marriage with the beautiful prima donna, Elizabeth Linley, and of Goldsmith’s fracas with his Welsh publisher, Evans; and censures or defends Garrick or Foote as the mood impels. There are even moments when he emulates Goldsmith and makes himself a laughing-stock for the delectation of his friends.

‘Our roasting,’ he once remarked, when describing the state of his kitchen, ‘is not magnificent, for we have no jack.... Small joints, I believe, they manage with a string, and larger are done at the tavern. I have some thoughts (with profound gravity) of buying a jack, because I think a jack is some credit to a house’

‘Well,’ remarked Mr. Thrale, ‘but you’ll have a spit, too?’

‘No, sir, no; that would be superfluous; for we shall never use it; and if a jack is seen, a spit will be presumed!’

This feature of the Johnsonian manner, which might almost be compared with Goldsmith’s fondness for the rôle of fool, has been generally overlooked. One may doubt whether even Boswell was more than dimly aware of it. Yet there can be little doubt that Johnson enjoyed assuming and playing a part. He was certainly not a bear, but he enjoyed playing the bear, and hugged his victims to death that the world might laugh. It was his peculiar misfortune to play the rôle too well, as it was Goldsmith’s misfortune to play the fool too well. Again, Johnson was assuredly not at heart a pompous man; yet he could in a moment assume pomposity and drop into the rôle of Gargantua. But he sometimes created such consternation in the part that the world did not dare to laugh. Thus, in the trite old illustration of his remark about Buckingham’s Rehearsal, he revised the crisp sentence, ‘It has not wit enough to keep it sweet,’ into the crazy pomposity of, ‘It has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction.’ It is amazing that Macaulay and the world of readers after him could delude themselves into thinking that Johnson was seriously attempting to improve this sentence. It was, on the contrary, a pose worthy of Laurence Sterne. It was a favourite device of a true humourist putting forth a caricature of himself. Instances of it could be multiplied indefinitely. Remarking on the morality of the Beggars’ Opera, for example, he said, ‘It may have some influence for evil by making the character of a rogue familiar, and in some degree pleasing’; then with the familiar shift of style, ‘There is in it such a labefactation of all principles as to be injurious to morality.’ Gibbon and Cambridge, who were present, could regard this stylistic somersault as an attempt at critical dignity, and even Boswell felt that he must smother his mirth. Fanny Burney, had she been there, would, I imagine, have smiled confidently in Johnson’s face, for she appreciated this aspect of his talk better than others. It is to her that we owe Johnson’s delicious criticism of his pensioners, and, in particular of the mysterious Miss Poll Carmichael: ‘I could make nothing of her; she was wiggle-waggle, and I could never persuade her to be categorical.’

But however dull the eighteenth century may have been in apprehending this type of humour, it did full justice to the more serious side of Johnson’s conversation. It was chiefly impressed, as every age must be, with the scope and versatility of the man’s mind. It is of course the merest platitude to remark that Johnson’s conversation is characterized by breadth of interest and accuracy of information; yet, like many platitudes, it is essential to an examination of the subject. It is most significant of the man and of the age in which he lived—so far removed from the narrowness of our own age of specialization—simply to turn the pages of Boswell’s Life and note the number of topics upon which Johnson talked with that easy mastery which distinguishes the scholar and philosopher from the promiscuously well-informed man of the world. Take, for example, the topics touched upon in a dozen consecutive pages of the book, chosen at random; evidence for supernatural appearances, the Roman Church, the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England, the Royal Marriage Bill, the respect due to old families, the art of mimicry, the word civilisation (‘shop’ was evidently not an excluded topic), vitriol, the question, Was there one original language? the relation of Erse to Irish, the rights of schoolmasters, in the infliction of punishment, the Lord Chancellors, the Scotch accent, the future state of the soul, prayers for the dead, the poet Gray, Akenside, Elwal the heretic, the question, Is marriage natural to man? (it seems that it is not), the philosophy of beauty, swearing, the philosophy of biography, the proper use of riches, the philosophy of philanthropy. Here surely is a sufficiently varied list. But no mere enumeration can give any notion of the novelty of Johnson’s thinking. His remarks are no echo, no quotation. They are the natural up-welling of an original mind, showing us that Johnson was a philosopher; but they also reveal a fund of accurate detail and an ability to quote chapter and verse, showing us that Johnson was a scholar. These two offices may be quickly illustrated from the topics enumerated above. When Boswell introduced the subject of the future state of the soul, he made the highly conventional observation that ‘one of the most pleasing thoughts is that we shall see our friends again.’ Whereupon Johnson replied:

Yes, Sir; but you must consider, that when we are become purely rational, many of our friendships will be cut off. Many friendships are formed by a community of sensual pleasures: all these will be cut off. We form many friendships with bad men, because they have agreeable qualities, and they can be useful to us; but, after death, they can no longer be of use to us. We form many friendships by mistake, imagining people to be different from what they really are. After death, we shall see every one in a true light. Then, Sir, they talk of our meeting our relations: but then all relationship is dissolved; and we shall have no regard for one person more than another, but for their real value. However, we shall either have the satisfaction of meeting our friends, or be satisfied without meeting them.

There is Johnson the philosopher. Five minutes later, Boswell was saying, ‘I have been told that in the Liturgy of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, there was a form of prayer for the dead,’ to which Johnson replied, ‘Sir, it is not in the liturgy which Laud framed for the Episcopal Church of Scotland; if there is a liturgy older than that, I should be glad to see it.’ There is Johnson the scholar.

It would be rash to assert that Johnson was always on safe ground, and ludicrous to assert that he was always right. He enjoyed a random shot at the truth as well as any other man whose chief interest is in the vitality of his thinking rather than in the literalness of his conclusions; but it was a diversion which he seldom permitted to others, and a tendency in himself which was generally restrained by the specialists about him. Here we have a truly formative element in the social life of the time.