In every point of view this maxim is 'the baseless fabrick of a vision.' And what had so far obumbrated the Rambler's powers of ratiocination, it is not easy to guess. We sometimes feel it impossible to esteem even our benefactor. 'I have received obligations (said Chatterton) without being obliged.' And of consequence, his benefactors had forfeited his esteem. The father of British literature has in forty other places contradicted his own words. He has proved that esteem is involuntary, and that benefits do not always procure it.
The Doctor says, 'That Cowley having, when very young, read Spenser, became irrecoverably a poet[83].' And he adds a remark that shows his good sense: 'Such are the accidents which, sometimes remembered, and sometimes perhaps forgotten, PRODUCE that particular designation of mind and propensity for some certain science or employment, which is commonly called genius. The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction. The great painter of the present age had the first fondness for his art excited by a perusal of Richardson's treatise.' This drawling definition contradicts common sense. Does the Doctor mean that Cowley would have become a painter by perusing Richardson? or that Reynolds would have become a poet by perusing Spenser? This is the clear inference from his words, and its absurdity is 'too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation[84].' At this rate Garrick might have eclipsed Newton, and Voltaire defeated Frederick. Plato possessed 'a mind of large general powers.' He read Homer. He wrote verses, and he found that he could not be a poet. The Doctor himself has 'large general powers;' but he could never have been made a decent dancing master. Marcel might have broke his heart, before his pupil had acquired three steps of a minuet. In his dictionary the Doctor, without a word of accidental determination, defines genius to be 'disposition of nature, by which any one is qualified for some peculiar employment.' And here I cannot help adding, that 'the great painter' has by stepping out of his own line, discovered the narrowness of even a great man's knowledge. He affirms[85], That scarce a poet from Homer down to Dryden ever felt his fire diminished merely by his advance in years. There is nothing more absurd, says Cicero, than what we hear asserted by some of the philosophers. Even in painting, the President's own profession, that rule does not hold. Cellini tells us, that Michael Angelo's genius decayed with years; and he speaks of it as common to all artists. His notion was perhaps grafted on an opinion of the Doctor's about the durability of Waller's genius[86]. But Waller was a feeble poet; he never had a genius, so that we need not wonder he never lost it. All his verses are hardly worth one of Dr Johnson's imitations of Juvenal.
Rowe (the famous tragic poet) 'seldom moves either pity or terror[87].' Paradise Lost is a work which 'the reader admires, and lays down, and forgets to take up again[88],' But Rowe's Lucan, which is very little read, the Doctor pronounces to be 'one of the greatest productions of English poetry.' Dr Johnson's sycophants have asserted, that 'in the walks of criticism and biography he has long been without a rival.' And they are no doubt willing to support their idol in his infamous assertion, that Swift 'excites neither surprise nor admiration[89].' The Doctor's disregard for the unanimous sentiments of mankind often excites surprize, but never admiration. Let us here apply his own observation, that 'there is often found in commentaries a spontaneous train of invective and contempt, more eager and venemous than is vented by the most furious controvertist in politics, against whom he is hired to defame[90].' We may illustrate the Rambler's remark by his own example: 'Theobald, a man of narrow comprehension, and small acquisitions, with no native and intrinsick splendour of genius, with little of the artificial light of learning—his contemptible ostentation I have frequently concealed[91].' The definer of a fiddlestick proceeds thus: 'I have in some places shewn him, as he would have shewn himself for the reader's diversion, that the inflated emptiness of some notes may justify or excuse the contraction of the rest.'—The advocate for tenderness and decorum goes on to tell us, that 'Theobald, thus weak and ignorant, thus mean and FAITHLESS, thus petulant and ostentatious, by the good luck of having Pope for his enemy, has escaped, and escaped alone with reputation from this undertaking. So easily is he praised whom no man can envy[92].' How does it appear that Theobald was weak and ignorant? The Doctor himself had in the preceding page told us, that 'he (Theobald) collated the antient copies, and rectified many errors.' This assertion our author, with his wonted consistency, has flatly contradicted in the very next line. 'What little he (Theobald) did was commonly right.' Has the Doctor adduced, or has he attempted to adduce evidence, that Theobald was mean and faithless, or what provocation has he to load this man's memory with such injurious epithets? His burst of vulgarity can reflect disgrace on nobody but himself. It is evident, tho' he thinks proper to deny it, that he considered Theobald as an object of envy; yet he is obliged to confess that Theobald 'escaped, and escaped alone, with reputation,' from the talk of amending Shakespeare. In assigning a reason for this applause of Theobald, Dr Johnson pays a very poor compliment to the penetration of the public, for surely to combat a writer of so much merit and popularity as Pope, was not the plainest road to eminence in the literary world.
'In his (Shakespeare's) tragic scenes there is always something wanting'——NO[93]——'In his comic scenes he is seldom very successful, when he engages his characters in reciprocations of smartness, and contests of sarcasms; their ideas are commonly gross, and their pleasantry licentious.' This accusation is cruel and unjust, as all the world knows already. But a great part of that preface is an incoherent jumble of reproach and panegyrick[94]. If any thing can be yet more faulty than what we have just now seen, it is what follows: 'Whenever he (Shakespeare) solicits his invention, or strains his faculties[95], the offspring of his throes is tumour (i. e. puffy grandeur[96]), meanness, tediousness, and obscurity. His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak.' The set speeches (as the Doctor elegantly terms them) of Petruchio, of Jacques, of Wolsey, and of Hamlet, are perhaps neither cold nor weak. The conclusion of this period is worthy of such a beginning; he mentions certain attempts from which Shakespeare 'seldom escapes without the pity or resentment of his reader.' The Doctor himself is an object of pity. Shakespeare has been in his grave near two centuries—His life was innocent—His writings are immortal. To feel resentment against so great a man because his works are not every where equal, is an idea highly becoming the generosity of Dr Johnson.
What 'truth, moral or political,' is promoted by telling us, that, when Thomson came to London, his first want was a pair of shoes; that Pope 'wore a kind of fur doublet, under a shirt of very coarse warm linen, with fine sleeves[97];' and a long string of such tiresome and disgusting trifles, which make his narrative seem ridiculous. Had Dr Johnson been Pope's apothecary, we would certainly have heard of the frequency of his pulse, the colour of his water, and the quantity of his stools.
'Though Pope seemed angry when a dram was offered him, he did not forbear to drink it[98].' And who the Devil cares whether he did or not? The Doctor needed hardly to have told us, that 'his petty peculiarities were communicated by a female domestic;' for no gentleman would have confessed that they came within the reach of his observation.
The truly illustrious author of the Rambler, has exerted his venemous eloquence, through several pages, in order to convince us, that 'never were penury of knowledge and vulgarity of sentiment so happily disguised,' as in Pope's Essay on Man. For this purpose, the Doctor celebrates the character of Crousaz, whose intentions 'were always right, his opinions were solid, and his religion pure[99].' In opposition to such authorities, let us hear the great and immortal citizen of Geneva.
'M. de Crousaz has lately given us a refutation of the ethic epistles of Mr Pope, which I have read; but it did not please me. I will not take upon me to say, which of these two authors is in the right; but I am persuaded, that the book of the former will never excite the reader to do any one virtuous action, whereas our zeal for every thing great and good is awakened by that of Pope[100].'
The Essay on Man, he says, 'affords an egregious instance of the predominance of genius, the dazzling splendour of imagery, and the seductive powers of eloquence. The reader feels his mind full, though he learns NOTHING; and when he meets it in its new array, no longer knows the talk of his mother, and his nurse[101].' If the conversations of Dr Johnson's mother and his nurse were equal to Mr Pope's verses, it is a pity the Doctor had not preserved them. He could hardly have spent his time so well. And it is a wonder that with so many rare opportunities of improvement, the Doctor has never yet eclipsed his nurse. Voltaire pronounces Pope's Essay to be the finest didactick poem in the world, and he would no doubt have replied to the Doctor's objections in that tone of contempt with which the Doctor replied to some of his—'These are the petty cavils of petty minds[102].'
In the Essay on Man 'so little was any evil tendency discovered, that, as innocence is unsuspicious, many read it for a manual of piety[103];'—and will continue to read it, when the cavils of Dr Johnson are forgotten or despised.