English Literature for Boys and Girls

by H. E. Marshall

He had by this time founded a club of literary men which met at "a famous beef-steak house," and here he lorded it over his fellows as his bulky namesake had done more than a hundred years before. In many ways there was a great likeness between these two. They were both big and stout (for Sam was now stout). They were loud-voiced and dictatorial. They both drank a great deal, but Ben, alas, drank wine overmuch, as was common in his day, while Sam drank endless cups of tea, seventeen or eighteen it might be at a sitting, indeed he called himself a hardened and shameless tea-drinker. But, above all, their likeness lies in the fact that they both dominated the literary men of their period; they were kings and rulers. They laid down the law and settled who was great and who little among the writers of the day. And it was not merely the friends around Johnson who heard him talk, who listened to his judgments about books and writers. The world outside listened, too, to what he had to say, and you will remember that it was he who utterly condemned Macpherson's pretended poems of Ossian, "that pious three-quarters fraud"* of which you have already read in chapter IV.

*A. Lang.

Johnson had always spent much of his time in taverns, and was now more than ever free to do so. For while he was still working at his dictionary he suffered a great grief in the death of his wife. He had loved her truly and never ceased to mourn her loss. But though he had lost his wife, he did not remain solitary in his home, for he opened his doors to a queer collection of waifs and strays—three women and a man, upon whom he took pity because no one else would. They were ungrateful and undeserving, and quarreled constantly among themselves, so that his home could have been no peaceful spot. "Williams hates everybody," he writes; "Levett hates Desmoulins and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll loves none of them." It does not sound peaceful or happy.

Some years after the death of Johnson's wife his mother died at the age of ninety, and although he had not been with her for many years, that too was a grief. The poor lady had had very little to live on, and she left some debts. Johnson himself was still struggling with poverty. He had no money, so to pay his mother's few debts, and also the expenses of her funeral, he sat down to write a story. In a week he had finished Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

The story of Rasselas is that of a prince who is shut up in the Happy Valley until the time shall come for him to ascent the throne of his father. Everything was done to make life in the Happy Valley peaceful and joyful, but Rasselas grew weary of it; to him it became but a prison of pleasure, and at last, with his favorite sister, he escaped out into the world. The story tells then of their search for happiness. But perfect happiness they cannot find, and discovering this, they decide to return to the Happy Valley.

There is a vein of sadness throughout the book. It ends as it were with a big question mark, with a "conclusion in which nothing is concluded." For the position of the prince and his sister was unchanged, and they had not found what they sought. Is it to be found at all? The story is a revelation of Johnson himself. He never saw life joyously, and at times he had fits of deep melancholy which he fought against as against a madness. "I inherited," he said, "a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober," and his long struggle with poverty helped to deepen this melancholy.

But a year or two after Rasselas was written, a great change came in Johnson's life, which gave him comfort and security for the rest of his days. George III had come to the throne. He thought that he would like to do something for literature, and offered Johnson a pension of three hundred pounds a year.

Johnson was now a man of fifty-four. He was acknowledged as the greatest man of letters of his day, yet he was still poor. Three hundred pounds seemed to him wealth, but he hesitated to accept it. He was an ardent Tory and hated the House of Hanover. In his dictionary he had called a pension "an allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country." A pensioner he had said was "A slave of state hired by a stipend to obey his master." Was he then to become a traitor to his country and a slave of state?

But after a little persuasion Johnson yielded, as the pension would be given to him, he was told, not for anything that he would do, but for what he had done. "It is true," he said afterwards, with a smile, "that I cannot now curse the House of Hanover; nor would it be decent for me to drink King James's health in the wine that King George gives me money to pay for. But, sir, I think that the pleasure of cursing the House of Hanover, and drinking King James's health, are amply overbalanced by three hundred pounds a year."

Johnson had always been indolent. It was perhaps only poverty that had forced him to write, and now that he was comfortably provided for he became more indolent still. He reproached himself, made good resolutions, and prayed over this fault, but still he remained slothful and idle. He would lie abed till two o'clock, and sit up half the night talking, and an edition of Shakespeare which he had promised years before got no further on. An edition of another man's works often means a great deal of labor in making notes and comments. This is especially so if hundreds of years have passed since the book was first written and the language has had time to change, and Johnson felt little inclined for this labor. But at length he was goaded into working upon his Shakespeare by some spiteful verses on his idleness, written by a political enemy, and after long delay it appeared.