Although it contains some lively reading (with the author himself being the center of our interest about as often as his subject) and should certainly be readily accessible to students of eighteenth-century literature, the Deformities merits only restricted attention as a valid critique of Johnson's character and writings. Ostensibly employing, by and large, an inductive argument, it professes to demonstrate the pronounced ethical and mental flaws of the Great Cham, who enjoys, so Callender freely confesses, an unrivalled reputation among his contemporaries for his achievements in letters and lexicography. Besides the deplorable qualities mentioned above and excluding for the moment a consideration of those most evident in the Dictionary, Johnson's faults are alleged to include dishonesty, pride, vulgarity, slovenliness, dullness, contempt for other persons, prejudice (especially against the Scots), ingratitude, "gross expressions," turgid language, and, above all, ignorance, "nonsense," and countless inconsistencies. To this sweeping broadside of invective, the modern reader must respond with steady, sometimes amused, sometimes annoyed disbelief. He recognizes, to be sure, certain points of likeness between Callender's abusive imputations and (say) Boswell's highly laudatory portrait. But the former's accusations are so irresponsible and intemperate, so obviously the outburst of a quivering Scotsman's intense indignation, and the evidence adduced is so often wrenched from its context and misapplied, that the reader inevitably finds himself a partisan of Johnson even when he might be occasionally inclined to admit the tenability of Callender's criticism.
Among Johnson's works, the Dictionary, as already indicated, bears the brunt of Callender's heaviest, most sustained assault. Its principal "deformities," to judge from the amount of space devoted to them, occur in its definitions and word-list. In Callender's opinion, "most of the definitions ... may be divided into three classes; the erroneous, œnigmatical, and superfluous" (p. 58); many of them explicate "indecent," "blackguard" expressions (pp. 54, 74); and some, exemplifying the lexicographer's "political tenets," are downright "seditious and impudent" (p. 13). Of the word-list itself, probably "two thousand" members, comprising a "profusion of trash," are "not to be found at all in any other book" (p. 70).
A short introduction is scarcely the place to examine the presumed existence of these defects in the Dictionary. Nevertheless, a few facts, based on a random sampling of passages in the Deformities, may provide a partial historical perspective for Callender's censures. Of the group of 210 words on pages 71-72 whose real currency he doubts or denies, 190 also appear in the second edition (1736) of Nathan Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum, a copy of which Johnson interleaved and used as he compiled his own Dictionary. Equally revealing, the OED includes 204 of the 210, the second edition of Webster's International 158, and the third edition 108. Again, of the 65 words on pages 51-53 whose definitions Callender objects to, 48 also appear, with comparable explanations, in Bailey's dictionary. Finally, an unsystematic comparison of Bailey's and Johnson's works reveals a much higher incidence of so-called "indecent"—at least sexual—terms in the former than in the latter. The author of the Deformities, it is quite obvious, knew what he disliked about the Dictionary; when pressing his strictures against the book, however, as when mounting his other attacks on Johnson, his violent passions rode roughshod over his faint pretensions to fairness and objectivity.
University of Chicago
Findlay College
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
1. The DNB and the DAB both contain accounts of Callender (complete, of course, with lists of their primary sources) to which we are indebted for various details in our own sketch of his life. However, neither mentions his pamphlets on Johnson.
2. Quoted from Hamilton by David Loth in Alexander Hamilton: Portrait of a Prodigy (New York, 1939), p. 249.
3. From the Richmond Recorder as printed in the New York Evening Post, 10 September 1802; quoted from Jefferson Reader, ed. Francis Coleman Rosenberger (New York, 1953), pp. 109-111.
4. There were apparently three editions of A Critical Review: (1) Edinburgh: Printed for J. Dickson, and W. Creech, 1783. (2) Second Edition. London. Printed for the Author, and sold by T. Cadell and J. Stockdale; at Edinburgh, by J. Dickson and W. Creech, 1783. (3) London. Printed for R. Rusted, 1787. We are indebted to the Pierpont Morgan Library for a photographic reproduction of its copy of the first edition of the pamphlet.
5. Brit. Mus. Addit. MS 6401, f. 175 b. Part of this letter is quoted by L. F. Powell in Boswell's Life of Johnson, IV, 499 (cited hereafter as Life).