Lives of the English Poets / From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of Johnson's Lives

by Henry Francis Cary

His next publication (in 1745) was a pamphlet, called "Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with Remarks on Sir T.H. (Sir Thomas Hanmer's) Edition of Shakspeare," to which were subjoined, proposals for a new edition of his plays. These observations were favourably mentioned by Warburton, in the preface to his edition; and Johnson's gratitude for praise bestowed at a time when praise was of value to him, was fervent and lasting. Yet Warburton, with his usual intolerance of any dissent from his opinions, afterwards complained in a private letter [6] to Hurd, that Johnson's remarks on his commentaries were full of insolence and malignant reflections, which, had they not in them "as much folly as malignity," he should have had reason to be offended with.

In 1747, he furnished Garrick, who had become joint-patentee and manager of Drury Lane, with a Prologue on the opening of the house. This address has been commended quite as much as it deserves. The characters of Shakspeare and Ben Jonson are, indeed, discriminated with much skill; but surely something might have been said, if not of Massinger and Beaumont and Fletcher, yet at least of Congreve and Otway, who are involved in the sweeping censure passed on "the wits of Charles."

Of all his various literary undertakings, that in which he now engaged was the most arduous, a Dictionary of the English language. His plan of this work was, at the desire of Dodsley, inscribed to the Earl of Chesterfield, then one of the Secretaries of State; Dodsley, in conjunction with six other book-sellers, stipulated fifteen hundred and seventy-five pounds as the price of his labour; a sum, from which, when the expenses of paper and transcription were deducted, a small portion only remained for the compiler. In other countries, this national desideratum has been supplied by the united exertions of the learned. Had the project for such a combination in Queen Anne's reign been carried into execution, the result might have been fewer defects and less excellence: the explanation of technical terms would probably have been more exact, the derivations more copious, and a greater number of significant words now omitted [7], have been collected from our earliest writers; but the citations would often have been made with less judgment, and the definitions laid down with less acuteness of discrimination.

From his new patron, whom he courted without the aid of those graces so devoutly worshipped by that nobleman, he reaped but small advantage; and, being much exasperated at his neglect, Johnson addressed to him a very cutting, but, it must be owned, an intemperate letter, renouncing his protection, though, when the Dictionary was completed, Chesterfield had ushered its appearance before the public in two complimentary papers in the World; but the homage of the client was not to be recalled, or even his resentment to be appeased. His great work is thus spoken of at its first appearance, in a letter from Thomas Warton to his brother [8]. "The Dictionary is arrived; the preface is noble. There is a grammar prefixed, and the history of the language is pretty full; but you may plainly perceive strokes of laxity and indolence. They are two most unwieldy volumes. I have written to him an invitation. I fear his preface will disgust, by the expressions of his consciousness of superiority, and of his contempt of patronage." In 1773, when he gave a second edition, with additions and corrections, he announced in a few prefatory lines that he had expunged some superfluities, and corrected some faults, and here and there had scattered a remark; but that the main fabric continued the same. "I have looked into it," he observes, in a letter to Boswell, "very little since I wrote it, and, I think, I found it full as often better as worse than I expected."

To trace in order of time the various changes in Johnson's place of residence in the metropolis, if it were worth the trouble, would not be possible. A list of them, which he gave to Boswell, amounting to seventeen, but without the correspondent dates, is preserved by that writer. For the sake of being near his printer, while the Dictionary was on the anvil, he took a convenient house in Gough Square, near Fleet-street, and fitted up one room in it as an office, where six amanuenses were employed in transcribing for him, of whom Boswell recounts in triumph that five were Scotchmen. In 1748, he wrote, for Dodsley's Preceptor, the Preface, and the Vision of Theodore the Hermit, to which Johnson has been heard to give the preference over all his other writings. In the January of the ensuing year, appeared the Vanity of Human Wishes, being the Tenth Satire of Juvenal imitated, which he sold for fifteen guineas; and, in the next month, his Irene was brought on the stage, not without a previous altercation between the poet and his former pupil, concerning some changes which Garrick's superior knowledge of the stage made him consider to be necessary, but which Johnson said the fellow desired only that they might afford him more opportunity of tossing his hands and kicking his heels. He always treated the art of a player with illiberal contempt; but was at length, by the intervention of Dr. Taylor, prevailed on to give way to the suggestions of Garrick. Yet Garrick had not made him alter all that needed altering; for the first exhibition of Irene shocked the spectators with the novel sight of a heroine who was to utter two verses with the bow-string about her neck. This horror was removed from a second representation; but, after the usual course of ten nights, the tragedy was no longer in request. Johnson thought it requisite, on this occasion, to depart from the usual homeliness of his habit, and to appear behind the scenes, and in the side boxes, with the decoration of a gold-laced hat and waistcoat. He observed, that he found himself unable to behave with the same ease in his finery, as when dressed in his plain clothes. In the winter of this year, he established a weekly club, at the King's Head, in Ivy Lane, near St. Paul's, of which the other members were Dr. Salter, a Cambridge divine; Hawkesworth; Mr. Ryland, a merchant; Mr. John Payne, the bookseller; Mr. John Dyer, a man of considerable erudition, and a friend of Burke's; Doctors Macghie, Baker, and Bathurst, three physicians; and Sir John Hawkins.

He next became a candidate for public favour, as the writer of a periodical work, in the manner of the Spectator; and, in March, 1750, published the first number of the Rambler, which was continued for nearly two years; but, wanting variety of matter, and familiarity of style, failed to attract many readers, so that the largest number of copies that were sold of any one paper did not exceed five hundred. The topics were selected without sufficient regard to the popular taste. The grievances and distresses of authors particularly were dwelt on to satiety; and the tone of eloquence was more swelling and stately than he had hitherto adopted. The papers allotted to criticism are marked by his usual acumen; but the justice of his opinions is often questionable. In the humourous pieces, when our laughter is excited, I doubt the author himself, who is always discoverable under the masque of whatever character he assumes, is as much the object as the cause of our merriment; and, however moral and devout his more serious views of life, they are often defective in that most engaging feature of sound religion, a cheerful spirit. The only assistance he received was from Richardson, Mrs. Chapone, Miss Talbot, and Mrs. Carter, the first of whom contributed the 97th number; the second, four billets in the 10th; the next, the 30th; and the last, the 44th and 100th numbers.

Three days after the completion of the Rambler (March 17, 1752), he was deprived of his wife, whom, notwithstanding the disparity in their age, and some occasional bickerings, he had tenderly loved. Those who are disposed to scrutinize narrowly and severely into the human heart, may question the sincerity of his sorrow, because he was collected enough to write her funeral sermon. But the shapes which grief puts on in different minds are as dissimilar as the constitution of those minds. Milton, in whom the power of imagination was predominant, soothed his anguish for the loss of his youthful friend, in an irregular, but most beautiful assemblage of those poetic objects which presented themselves to his thoughts, and consecrated them to the memory of the deceased; and Johnson, who loved to act the moralizer and the rhetorician, alleviated his sufferings by declaiming on the instability of human happiness.

During this interval he also wrote the Prologue to Comus, spoken by Garrick, for the benefit of Mrs. Elizabeth Foster, grand-daughter to Milton; the Prologue and Postscript to Lander's impudent forgeries concerning that poet, by which Johnson was imposed on, as well as the rest of the world; a letter to Dr. Douglas, for the same impostor, after he had been detected, acknowledging and expressing contrition for the fraud; and the Life of Cheynel, in the Student.

Soon after his wife's death, he became intimate with Beauclerk and Langton, two young men of family and distinction, who were fellow collegians at Oxford, and much attached to each other; and the latter of whom admiration of the Rambler had brought to London with the express view of being introduced to the author. Their society was very agreeable to him; and he was, perhaps, glad to forget himself by joining at times in their sallies of juvenile gaiety. One night, when he had lodgings in the Temple, he was roused by their knocking at his door; and appearing in his shirt and nightcap, he found they had come together from the tavern where they had supped, to prevail on him to accompany them in a nocturnal ramble. He readily entered into their proposal; and, having indulged themselves till morning in such frolics as came in their way, Johnson and Beauclerk were so well pleased with their diversion, that they continued it through the rest of the day; while their less sprightly companion left them, to keep an engagement with some ladies at breakfast, not without reproaches from Johnson for deserting his friends "for a set of unidea'd girls."

In 1753, he gave to Dr. Bathurst, the physician, whom he regarded with much affection, and whose practice was very limited, several essays for the Adventurer, which Hawkesworth was then publishing; and wrote for Mrs. Lenox a Dedication to the Earl of Orrery, of her Shakspeare illustrated; and, in the following year, inserted in the Gentleman's Magazine a Life of Cave, its former editor.