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him from his relation of dependence, and left him free to pursue his course alone. He had submitted in sullen silence to neglect, and had battled bravely against the whole haggard train of poverty, without the loss of self-respect; but he could not now endure this patronizing condescension of his lordship. For once his wounded pride got the better of his judgment. He addressed a private letter to his noble friend-such a one as only insulted greatness in distress could address to supercilious meanness, strutting in empty show and swelling with vanity. Probably he afterward regretted this step; but having uttered nothing more than he fully believed, neither his pride nor his love of truth would permit him to retract any part of it. His own account of the matter, when the whole had become an old story, was :-"After making great professions, he had, for many years, taken no notice of me; but when my 'Dictionary' was coming out, he fell a scribbling in 'The World' about it. Upon which, I wrote him a letter expressed in civil terms, but such as might show him that I did not mind what he said or wrote, and that I had done with him."

The letter itself is so highly characteristic, and so intrinsically valuable, that no biography of its writer would be complete without it. It is therefore given in full:—

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"TO THE RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. February 7, 1775. "MY LORD, I have been lately informed by the proprietor of The World,' that two papers, in which my 'Dictionary' is recommended to the public, were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an honor which, being very little accustomed to favors from the great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.

"When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself Le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre; that I might obtain that regard for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so little encouraged that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your lordship in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man is well-pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

"Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through diffi.

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"Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it;f till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity, not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself.

"Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope in which I once boasted myself with so

much exultation.

"My lord, your lordship's most humble,
"Most obedient servant,
"SAM. JOHNSON."

Several minor points in this letter require a passing notice. The reader will perceive what amount of evidence it affords in favor of Hawkins's account of the immediate occasion of the rupture between the parties; something equivalent to this was necessary to justify the statement in an offensive form, "I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door." The suspicion that pecuniary assistance was expected is greatly strengthened by the complaint that he had not received "one act of assistance."

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The following note is subjoined by Mr. Langton:-"Dr. Johnson, when he gave me this copy of his letter, desired that I would annex to it his information to me, that whereas it is said in the letter that no assistance has been received,' he did once receive from Lord Chesterfield the sum of ten pounds; but as that was so inconsiderable a sum, he thought the mention of it could not properly find a place in a letter of the kind that this was."-Boswell.

In this passage Dr. Johnson evidently alludes to the loss of his wife. We find the same tender recollection recurring to his mind upon innumerable occasions; and, perhaps, no man ever more forcibly felt the truth of the sentiment so elegantly expressed Jephson's tragedy of "Julia:"by my friend Mr. Malone, in his Prologue to Mr.

"Vain-wealth, and fame, and fortune's fostering care, If no fond breast the splendid blessings share; And, each day's bustling pageantry once past, There, only there, our bliss is found at last."-Boswell. Upon comparing this copy with that which Dr. Johnson dictated to me from recollection, the variations are found to be so slight that this must be added to the many other proofs which he gave of the wonderful extent and accuracy of his memory. To gratify the curious in composition, I have deposited both the copies in the British Museum.-Boswell.

was this strictly true; for, as already stated, he had received a largess of ten pounds; but this was so different, both in amount and in form, from the assistance he needed and expected, that he wholly omitted any account of it. The complaint as to the untimeliness of the favors now shown by his lordship may seem less reasonable; but Johnson asked no favor for his work, but only the means of subsistence, not as a pauper, but a public servant, while occupied with its production.

But this noble independence of spirit was not equally highly appreciated by some others of Johnson's friends. Dr. Adams, whose reverence for learning and personal regard for Johnson, were tempered with no small share of worldly prudence, greatly regretted this rupture. He earnestly expostulated with his friend for the course he had taken, and attempted to apologize for the apparent neglect with which he had been treated. Johnson was slow to believe that the slights he had received were not intentional, and added to the expression The confidence that he entertained of his doubts, "Lord Chesterfield is the of the sufficiency of his "Dictionary" to proudest man this day living;" to which sustain itself, is much more fully stated in Adams replied, half in admiration and another place, which will presently come half in censure,-" No, there is at least under notice. The allusion to his indifferone person prouder." Chesterfield and ence to praise, and his solitariness, forcibly Johnson were both proud men; but their illustrate the state of his mind, arising | pride could never be compared in degree, from the loss of his wife; and his intima- because it was utterly unlike in kind in tion that he is known without the favor of the two persons. In the one it was the a patron, attests the strength of his un- creature of external circumstances; in the broken spirit. other the native dignity of manhood, rising above and triumphing over circumstances. Dodsley, too, was grieved on account of the position things had assumed; but he felt and spoke only as a man of business. When Dr. Adams said to him that he was sorry Johnson had written that letter, he replied very coolly, that "he was sorry too, for he had a property in the 'Dictionary,' to which his lordship's patronage might have been of consequence."

That Chesterfield felt the force of Johnson's letter, accustomed as he was to little else than cringing and flattery, cannot be doubted; but he was too much a man of the world to show all that he felt, and especially he felt himself too strong in his position to be greatly affected by one so much below him. He permitted the letter to lie open upon his table; he talked of it among his friends, and even pointed out its strong points, and confessed both the strength and the elegance of its language. The affair gave rise to no little gossip in high places; and while, of course, the gay and the great took part with Chesterfield, not a few of the better class, particularly among the learned, sympathized very fully with Johnson. Among those who approved his course, he was especially gratified to find the learned and judicious Dr. Warburton, who, though still personally unacquainted with him, requested Dr. Adams, master of Pembroke College, to carry his compliments to Johnson, and to tell him "that he honored him for his manly behavior in rejecting the condescensions of Lord Chesterfield, and for resenting the treatment he had received from him with a proper spirit." Such a commendation, at such a time, was highly gratifying to the proud but wounded spirit of the prospective lexicographer, and was even more valuable than the willing praise bestowed on a former occasion.

Johnson, no doubt, possessed in a high degree the quality he so much commended in his friend, Dr. Bathurst—he was "a very good hater;" and as his judgment coincided with his feelings toward his noble antagonist, and, more than all, as the recollection of his own humiliation in consenting to sue for his patronage now stung him to revenge, his dislike toward the man whom he declared he had taken to be "a lord among wits," but found him to be only "a wit among lords," became both cordial and intense. He did not hesitate to express himself freely, and with his own peculiar forcibleness on the subject; and when Chesterfield's famous Letters were published, he declared that "they taught the morals of a prostitute, and the manners of a dancing master."

During the latter part of the year 1754 the "Dictionary" may be considered as having passed out of the hands of the author into those of the printer, being now in the transition state technically known

as "in press." The Herculean task of more than seven years' continuance were almost ended, though the oversight of the publication would necessarily require no little labor at his hands. It will, however, be agreeable to turn aside, and contemplate this great artificer of books occupied in more genial occupations than the daily toils of authorship; and as we have carried this part of the narrative ahead of the life history, certain events of the current year may be here noticed.

On the sixth of March of that year were issued from the press of Mallett, the bookseller, the posthumous works of Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke. His lordship's skeptical opinions-if the vagaries of a disordered fancy may be so calledwere no secrets during his lifetime, though he prudently withheld them from the public. He, however, committed them to paper, with the design of having them issued after his death, which was now done according to his purpose. The impression made by these works among all right-minded persons was most painful; and in the literary circles in which Johnson moved only one sentiment prevailed respecting them. It is not certain that he ever honored them with a perusal; but it was not difficult to form a sufficiently accurate opinion of them from common fame. After learning in this manner their character and tendency, he remarked, with characteristic force and aptness of comparison-"Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward-a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; and a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death."

On this occasion Garrick signalized himself somewhat out of his usual line. Though his associations were among the gayest and most frivolous of society, he nevertheless retained at all times a just reverence for religion, which rather increased than declined as he advanced in years. He also aspired in some small degree to the name of a poet; nor were his efforts in the "divine art" altogether contemptible.

He now composed an ode on the death of Mr. Pelham, which occurred on the same day on which Bolingbroke's works were issued; and the coincidence is thus noticed:

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"The same sad morn, to Church and State, (So for our sins 't was fix'd by fate,) A double stroke was given; Black as the whirlwinds of the north, St. John's fell genius issued forth,

And Pelham fled to heaven."

During the summer of this year Johnson made a visit to Oxford-the same already noticed in the account of his acquaintance with Langton and Beauclerk-for the purpose of consulting some of the libraries, to aid him in completing his "Dictionary." His most intimate friends and correspondents at Oxford, at that time, were the brothers Revs. Joseph and Thomas Warton, of Trinity College. He arrived just at the beginning of the long vacation, when many were leaving town; but this rather favored than hindered the object of his visit, his friends were at leisure, and he had a more ready access to them, and whatever else he had occasion to visit. He lodged during his stay, which extended to about five weeks, at Kettell Hall, in the immediate vicinity of Trinity College; and was so well pleased with all things about him, that he seriously meditated removing to Oxford, and residing at Trinity College. The next day after his arrival he visited Pembroke College, in company with Dr. Joseph Warton; and was much pleased to find most of the old servants whom he had left there more than twenty years before. The master, Dr. Radcliffe, received him with only cold civility, which Johnson did not fail to notice and animadvert upon. He was, however, much pleased to meet with an old class-mate, Rev. Mr. Meeke, one of the Fellows, who received his old associate with great cordiality. Johnson spake of Meeke as among the best of his class; and confessed to some envy he used to feel toward him on account of his superiority in the classics. But he seemed to think the seclusion of the college had effectually buried the superior parts and attainments of his former rival. After parting from him, Johnson remarked to Warton:"About the same time of life, Meeke was left behind at Oxford to feed on a fellowship, and I went to London to get my living; now, sir, see the difference in our literary characters." Upon this the learned and copious editor of Boswell very happily remarks: "Poverty was the stimulus which made Johnson exert a genius naturally, it may be supposed, more vigorous than Meeke's; and he was now beginning to

KETTELL HALL.

enjoy the fame, of which so many painful years of distress and penury had laid the foundation. Meeke had lived an easy life of decent competence; and on the whole, perhaps, as little envied Johnson as Johnson him."

In returning from one of these visits to Ellesfield, the friends turned aside to examine the ruins of Oseney and Bewley Abbeys. Johnson was deeply affected by the view of these magnificent ruins, and stood gazing in silence for half-an-bour. He had a high and almost religious reverence for whatever bore the marks of antiquity; and the stately solemnity of these moldering Gothic piles seemed peculiarly

suited to his mind and temper. In speaking of these ruins afterward, he remarked: "I viewed them with indignation." A corresponding remark, in reference to similar ruins in Scotland, gave great offence to the over-sensitive North Britains.

It has been noticed that several years before this date Johnson had been an unsuccessful suitor for the degree of Master of Arts. His changed circumstances now promised a better result should the application be renewed. The matter was accordingly undertaken by his Oxford friends,

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As they were passing out of the college Johnson pointed out the place where he translated Pope's Messiah-a performance of which he spoke with evident satisfaction. At this time the Rev. Francis Wise, keeper of the archives of the University, and Radclivean librarian-a person somewhat distinguished for his zeal and learning-especially the Wartons and Mr. Wise. in the Roman and Anglo-Saxon antiquities of Britain-resided at Ellesfield, a few miles from Oxford; and as he and the Wartons were on terms of intimacy, Johnson also visited him several times, and a warm and lasting friendship grew up between the two scholars.

ELLESFIELD.

Johnson was not indifferent as to the success of the movement; for though he had less need of such favors than formerly, he had not yet reached that point of eminence at which a college degree can afford no additional honor. Both himself and friends were solicitous to have his

name upon the titlepage of the "Dictionary" appear as that of a titled scholar; and for that purpose the printing of the first sheet of the book was delayed for several months. With all his hardy independence, Johnson loved praise; and especially as to literary reputation he was far from being indifferent. By the influence of his friends and the help of his own reputation, especially as the author of

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the "Rambler," and of the expected "Dictionary "--both of which are named in the diploma-the desired degree was obtained with but little difficulty; and by the undivided suffrages of the University.

OSENEY ABBEY.

Early in the spring of 1755 was issued from the press of Andrew Miller, bookseller in the Strand, "A Dictionary of the English Language,

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which are prefixed, a History of the Language, and an English Grammar, by SAMUEL JOHNSON, A. M." This was an event of no ordinary interest to the author and his friends, and probably the publishers had equal cause for rejoicing. When the messenger, who had carried the last sheet to the publisher, returned, Johnson asked what he said to it. The messenger answered, "He thanked God that he was done with you." "I am glad," said JohnVOL. II, No. 6.-LL

son, "that he thanks God for anything." As the work when published fully justified the expectations that had been entertained concerning it, and its accomplishment rolled from the shoulders of the overtasked author a burden under which he had staggered for seven years, its completion was an occasion of much exultation among his friends.

The merits of Johnson's "Dictionary" are too well known to require any statement in this place: and though the subject of English lexicography, on account of Johnson's relation to it, would not be out of place in his biography, yet the magnitude of the subject forbids its introduction. He was usually pretty well satisfied with his own productions, and the "Dictionary" was not excluded from this common paternal favor; though, while he claimed that he had done much to bring order out of the preexisting chaos of words, he confessed that the work was very far from perfection.

The original preface was at once a characteristic and highly valuable essay. The difficulties of the work he had performed are first stated in general terms, and then more specifically, together with his method of obviating them, and the aids of which he had availed himself in the work. His closing remarks are so nobly eloquent and so pathetically impressive that they cannot be abridged, nor yet wholly omitted,-the final paragraph is therefore given entire :

"In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the

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