English Literature For Boys And Girls by H.E. Marshall

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And this queer genius fell in love with a widow lady more than
twenty years older than himself. She, we are told, was coarse,
fat, and unlovely, but she was not without brains, for she saw
beneath the strange outside of her young lover. "This is the
most sensible man that I ever saw in my life," she said, after
talking with him. So this strange couple married. "Sir," said
Johnson afterwards, "It was a love-marriage on both sides." And
there can be no doubt that Samuel loved his wife devotedly while
she lived, and treasured her memory tenderly after her death.

Mrs. Johnson had a little money, and so Samuel returned to his
native town and there opened a school. An advertisement appeared
in the papers, "At Edial, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young
gentlemen are boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages,
by Samuel Johnson." But Johnson was quite unfitted to be a
teacher, and the school did not prosper. "His schoolroom," says
another writer, "must have resembled an ogre's den," and only two
or three boys came to it. Among them was David Garrick, who
afterwards became a famous actor and amused the world by
imitating his friend and old schoolmaster, the great Sam, as well
as his elderly wife.

After struggling with his school for more than a year, Johnson
resolved to give it up and go to London, there to seek his
fortune. Leaving his wife at Lichfield, he set off with his
friend and pupil David Garrick, as he afterwards said, "With
twopence halfpenny in my pocket, and thou, Davy, with three
halfpence in thine."

The days of the later Stuarts and the first of the Georges were
the great days of patronage. When a writer of genius appeared,
noblemen and others, who were powerful and wealthy, were eager to
become his patron, and have his books dedicated to them. So
although the dunces among writers remained terribly poor, almost
every man of genius was sure of a comfortable life. But although
he gained this by his writing, it was not because the people
liked his books, but because one man liked them or was eager to
have his name upon them, and therefore became his patron. The
patron, then, either himself helped his pet writer, or got for
him some government employment. After a time this fashion
ceased, and instead of taking his book to a patron, a writer took
it to a bookseller, and sold it to him for as much money as he
could. And so began the modern way of publishing books.

But when Johnson came to London to try his fortune as a writer,
it was just the time between. The patron had not quite vanished,
the bookseller had not yet taken his place. Never had writing
been more badly paid, never had it been more difficult to make a
living by it. "The trade of author was at about one of its
lowest ebbs when Johnson embarked on it."*

*Carlyle.

Johnson had brought with him to London a tragedy more than half
written, but when he took it to the booksellers they showed no
eagerness to publish it, or indeed anything else that he might
write. Looking at him they saw no genius, but only a huge and
uncouth country youth. One bookseller, seeing his great body,
advised him rather to try his luck as a porter than as a writer.
But, in spite of rebuffs and disappointments, Johnson would not
give in. When he had money enough he lived in mean lodgings,
when he had none, hungry, ragged, and cold, he roamed about the
streets, making friends with other strange, forlorn men of
genius, and sharing their miseries.

But if Johnson starved he never cringed, and once when a
bookseller spoke rudely to him he knocked him down with one of
his own books. A beggar or not, Johnson demanded the respect due
to a man. At school and college he had dominated his fellows, he
dominated now. But the need of fighting for respect made him
rough. And ever after his manner with friend and foe alike was
rude and brusque.

The misery of this time was such that long years after Johnson
burst into tears at the memory of it. But it did not conquer
him, he conquered it. He got work to do at last, and became one
of the first newspaper reporters.

Nowadays, during the debates in Parliament there are numbers of
newspaper reporters who take down all that is said in shorthand,
and who afterwards write out the debates for their various
newspapers. In Johnson's day no such thing had been thought of.
He did not hear the debates, but wrote his accounts of them from
a few notes given to him by some one who had heard them. The
speeches which appeared in the paper were thus really Johnson's,
and had very little resemblance to what had been said in the
House. And being a Tory, Johnson took good care, as he
afterwards confessed, "that the Whig dogs should not have the
best of it." After a time, however, Johnson began to think this
so-called reporting was not quite honest, and gave it up. He
found other literary work to do, and soon, although he was still
poor, he had enough money to make it possible for his wife to
join him in London.

Among other things he wrote one or two poems and the life of
Richard Savage, a strange, wild genius with whom he had wandered
the streets in the days of his worst poverty. The tragedy called
Irene which Johnson had brought with him to London was at length
after twelve years produced by Garrick, who had by that time
become a famous actor. Johnson had, however, no dramatic genius.
"When Johnson writes tragedy," said Garrick, "'declamation roars
and passion sleeps':* when Shakespeare wrote, he dipped the pen
in his own heart." Garrick did what he could with the play, but
it was a failure, and although Johnson continued to believe that
it was good, he wrote no more tragedies.

*Garrick is here quoting from one of Johnson's own poems in which
he describes the decline of the drama at the Restoration.

The story of Irene is one of the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
After Mahomet had taken Constantinople he fell in love with a
fair Greek maiden whose name was Irene. The Sultan begged her to
become a Mohammedan so that he might marry her. To this Irene
consented, but when his soldiers heard of it they were so angry
that they formed a conspiracy to dethrone their ruler.

Hearing of this Mahomet resolved to make an end of the conspiracy
and rescue his throne from danger. Calling all his nobles
together he bade Irene appear before him. Then catching her by
the hair with one hand and drawing his sword with the other he at
one blow struck off her head. This deed filled all who saw it
with terror and wonder. But turning to his nobles Mahomet cried,
"Now by this, judge if your Emperor is able to bridle his
affections or not."

It seems as if there were here a story which might be made to
stir our hearts, but Johnson makes it merely dull. In his long
words and fine-sounding sentences we catch no thrill of real
life. The play is artificial and cold, and moves us neither to
wonder nor sorrow.

Johnson's play was a failure, but by that time he had begun the
great work which was to name him and single him out from the rest
of the world as Dictionary Johnson. To make a complete
dictionary of a language is a tremendous work. Johnson thought
that it would take three years. It took, instead, seven.

But during these seven years he also wrote other things and
steadily added to his fame. He started a paper after the model
of the Spectator, called the Rambler. This paper was continued
for about two years, Johnson writing all but five of the essays.
After that he wrote many essays in a paper called the Adventurer,
and, later still, for two years he wrote for another paper a
series of articles called the Idler.

But none of these can we compare with the Spectator. Johnson
never for a moment loses sight of "a grand moral end." There is
in his essays much sound common sense, but they are lumbering and
heavy. We get from them no such picture of the times as we get
from the Spectator, and, although they are not altogether without
humor, it is a humor that not seldom reminds us of the dancing of
an elephant. This is partly because, as Johnson said himself, he
is inclined to "use too big words and too many of them."

In the days when Johnson wrote, this style was greatly admired,
but now we have come back to thinking that the simplest words are
best, or, at least, that we must suit our words to our subject.
And if we tell a fairy tale (as Johnson once did) we must not use
words of five syllables when words of two will better give the
feeling of the tale. Yet there are many pleasant half-hours to
be spent in dipping here and there into the volumes of the
Rambler or the Idler. I will give you in the next chapter, as a
specimen of Johnson's prose, part of one of the essays from the
Idler. It is the story of a man who sets forth upon a very
ordinary journey and who makes as great a tale of it as he had
been upon a voyage of discovery in some untraveled land.

Chapter LXIX JOHNSON--THE END OF THE JOURNEY

"I SUPPED three nights ago with my friend Will Marvel. His
affairs obliged him lately to take a journey into Devonshire,
from which he has just returned. He knows me to be a very
patient hearer, and was glad of my company, as it gave him an
opportunity of disburdening himself, by a minute relation of the
casualties of his expedition.

"Will is not one of those who go out and return with nothing to
tell. He has a story of his travels, which will strike a home-
bred citizen with horror, and has in ten days suffered so often
the extremes of terror and joy, that he is in doubt whether he
shall ever again expose either his body or his mind to such
danger and fatigue.

"When he left London the morning was bright, and a fair day was
promised. But Will is born to struggle with difficulties. That
happened to him, which has sometimes, perhaps, happened to
others. Before he had gone more than ten miles, it began to
rain. What course was to be taken? His soul disdained to turn
back. He did what the King of Prussia might have done; he
flapped his hat, buttoned up his cape, and went forwards,
fortifying his mind by the stoical consolation, that whatever is
violent will be short."

So, with such adventures, the first day passes, and reaching his
inn, after a good supper, Will Marvel goes to bed and sleeps
soundly. But during the night he is wakened "by a shower beating
against his windows with such violence as to threaten the
dissolution of nature." Thus he knows that the next day will
have its troubles. "He joined himself, however, to a company
that was travelling the same way, and came safely to the place of
dinner, though every step of his horse dashed the mud in the
air."

In the afternoon he went on alone, passing "collections of
water," puddles doubtless, the depth of which it was impossible
to guess, and looking back upon the ride he marvels at his rash
daring. "But what a man undertakes he must perform, and Marvel
hates a coward at his heart.

"Few that lie warm in their beds think what others undergo, who
have, perhaps, been as tenderly educated, and have as acute
sensations as themselves. My friend was now to lodge the second
night almost fifty miles from home, in a house which he never had
seen before, among people to whom he was totally a stranger, not
knowing whether the next man he should meet would prove good or
bad; but seeing an inn of a good appearance, he rode resolutely
into the yard; and knowing that respect is often paid in
proportion as it is claimed, delivered his injunctions to the
ostler with spirit, and, entering the house, called vigorously
about him.

"On the third day up rose the sun and Mr. Marvel. His troubles
and dangers were now such as he wishes no other man ever to
encounter." The way was lonely, often for two miles together he
met not a single soul with whom he could speak, and, looking at
the bleak fields and naked trees, he wished himself safe home
again. His only consolation was that he suffered these terrors
of the way alone. Had, for instance, his friend the "Idler" been
there he could have done nothing but lie down and die.

"At last the sun set and all the horrors of darkness came upon
him. . . . Yet he went forward along a path which he could no
longer see, sometimes rushing suddenly into water, and sometimes
encumbered with stiff clay, ignorant whither he was going, and
uncertain whether his next step might not be the last.

"In this dismal gloom of nocturnal peregrination his horse
unexpectedly stood still. Marvel had heard many relations of the
instinct of horses, and was in doubt what danger might be at
hand. Sometimes he fancied that he was on the bank of a river
still and deep, and sometimes that a dead body lay across the
track. He sat still awhile to recollect his thoughts; and as he
was about to alight and explore the darkness, out stepped a man
with a lantern, and opened the turnpike. He hired a guide to the
town, arrived in safety, and slept in quiet.

"The rest of his journey was nothing but danger. He climbed and
descended precipices on which vulgar mortals tremble to look; he
passed marshes like the Serbonian bog,* where armies whole have
sunk; he forded rivers where the current roared like the Egre or
the Severn; or ventured himself on bridges that trembled under
him, from which he looked down on foaming whirlpools, or dreadful
abysses; he wandered over houseless heaths, amidst all the rage
of the elements, with the snow driving in his face, and the
tempest howling in his ears.

*Lake Serbonis in Egypt. Sand being blown over it by the winds
gave it the appearance of solid ground, whereas it was a bog.

"A gulf profound as the Serbonian bog. . . .
Where armies whole have sunk." -- MILTON.

"Such are the colours in which Marvel paints his adventures. He
has accustomed himself to sounding words and hyperbolical images,
till he has lost the power of true description. In a road,
through which the heaviest carriages pass without difficulty, and
the post-boy every day and night goes and returns, he meets with
hardships like those which are endured in Siberian deserts, and
missed nothing of romantic danger but a giant and a dragon. When
his dreadful story is told in proper terms, it is only that the
way was dirty in winter, and that he experienced the common
vicissitudes of rain and sunshine."

I am afraid you will find a good many "too big" words in that.
But if I changed them to others more simple you would get no idea
of the way in which Johnson wrote, and I hope those you do not
understand you will look up in the dictionary. It will not be
Johnson's own dictionary, however, for that has grown old-
fashioned, and its place has been taken by later ones. For some
of Johnson's meanings were not correct, and when these mistakes
were pointed out to him he was not in the least ashamed. Once a
lady asked him how he came to say that the pastern was the knee
of a horse, and he calmly replied, "Ignorance, madam, pure
ignorance." "Dictionaries are like watches," he said, "the worst
is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite
true."

With some words, instead of giving the original meaning, he gave
a personal meaning, that is he allowed his own sense of humor,
feelings or politics, to color the meaning. For instance, he
disliked the Scots, so for the meaning of Oats he gave, "A grain
which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland
supports the people." He disliked the Excise duty, so he called
it "A hateful tax levied by wretches hired by those to whom
excise is paid." For this last meaning he came very near being
punished for libel.

When Johnson thought of beginning the dictionary he wrote about
it to Lord Chesterfield, a great man and fine gentleman of the
day. As the fashion was, Johnson had chosen this great man for
his patron. But Lord Chesterfield, although his vanity was
flattered at the idea of having a book dedicated to him, was too
delicate a fine gentleman to wish to have anything to do with a
man he considered poor. "He throws anywhere but down his
throat," he said, "whatever he means to drink, and mangles what
he means to carve. . . . The utmost I can do for him is to
consider him a respectable Hottentot." So, when Johnson had
called several times and been told that his lordship was not at
home, or had been kept waiting for hours before he was received,
he grew angry, and marched away never to return, vowing that he
had done with patrons for ever.

The years went on, and Johnson saw nothing of his patron. When,
however, the dictionary was nearly done, Lord Chesterfield let it
be known that he would be pleased to have it dedicated to him.
But Johnson would have none of it. He wrote a letter which was
the "Blast of Doom, proclaiming into the ear of Lord
Chesterfield, and, through him, of the listening world, that
patronage would be no more!"*

*Carlyle.

"Seven years, my Lord, have now passed," wrote Johnson, "since I
waited in your outward rooms and was repulsed from your door;
during which time I have been pushing on my work through
difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought
it at last to the verge of publication without one act of
assistance, one word of encouragement, and one smile of favour.
Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before.
. . .

"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 the
ground cumbers him with help? The notice which you have been
pleased to take of my labours, 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; till I am known,
and do not want it."

There was an end of patronage so far as Johnson was concerned,
and it was the beginning of the end of it with others. Great Sam
had roared, he had asserted himself, and with the publication of
his dictionary he became "The Great Cham* of literature."**

*A Tartar word for prince or chief.
**Smollett.

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.

Just a little before this a young Scotsman named James Boswell
got to know the great man. He worshiped Johnson and spent as
much time with him as he could. It was a strange friendship
which grew up between these two. The great man bullied and
insulted yet loved the little man, and the little man accepted
all the insults gladly, happy to be allowed to be near his hero
on any conditions whatever. He treasured every word that Johnson
spoke and noted his every action. Nothing was too small or
trivial for his loving observation. He asked Johnson questions
and made remarks, foolish or otherwise, in order to draw him out
and make him talk, and afterwards he set down everything in a
notebook.

And when Johnson was dead Boswell wrote his life. It is one of
the most wonderful lives ever written--perhaps the most
wonderful. And when we have read it we seem to know Johnson as
well as if we had lived with him. We see and know him in all his
greatness and all his littleness, in all his weakness and all his
might.