Henry Johnson

“ In story John Henry’s deeds often assume magnificent proportions. Indeed, the stories about him are in many respects more interesting than the songs, for the stories usually have more range and reflect more imagination than the songs. Occasionally one can find a Negro who will tell the story simply and without exaggeration, but one usually gets a version which is more or less embellished with the legendary attributes and attainments of John Henry. In the following story, John Henry is credited with such powers as would make him a close rival of Paul Bunyan himself. ”

“ In 1463, in the third year of the reign of John the second, died prince Henry, the first encourager of remote navigation, by whose incitement, patronage and example, distant nations have been made acquainted with each other, unknown countries have been brought into general view, and the power of Europe has been extended to the remotest parts of the world. What mankind has lost and gained by the genius and designs of this prince, it would be long to compare, and very difficult to estimate. Much knowledge has been acquired, and much cruelty been committed ”

“ By his ‘conversion’ he won to his side all Catholics except the most fanatical of the Leaguers, and those who, like the Dukes of Mayenne and of Mercœur, were intent on their personal interests. While, therefore, Henry restrained as far as possible all hostile operations, he steadily pursued a policy which he had long adopted of buying over those whose opposition was still to be dreaded. The governors of provinces were confirmed in their governorships, or offered pensions; the smaller nobility were tempted by subordinate offices and money ”

“ Accordingly, Henry refused. He offered to recognise Catholicism; to grant to the Huguenots no privileges beyond those they had hitherto gained; and to submit ‘to the instruction’ of a National or General Council. In thus acting he was guided by policy, not by conviction; and the interpretation he would put on his favourite phrase ‘receiving instruction’ would depend on his success in the field.
Not feeling strong enough to attack Paris itself, Henry determined to hold Picardy, Champagne, and Normandy, whence the capital drew her supplies.9th and last Civil War. ”

“ Johnson was elected an associate of the Institute of Painters in Water-colours in 1868, and a full member in 1870. He was a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy, where his pictures were much admired; his sketches, however, have more merit than his completed works. He was popular among his brother artists, but suffered for many years from increasing deafness. He died 31 Dec. 1884, leaving a wife and one daughter. There are fair examples of Johnson's art in the South Kensington Museum and in the print room at the British Museum. ”

“ These that were said to be associated were very noble persons, and there were many others no mean men that adhered to them: all these did King Henry cause to be proclaimed outlaws and banished men, without the judgment of his court and of their peers, and gave their lands to the Poitovins, and thereby adding sorrow to sorrow, and redoubling their wounds. He gave commandment likewise that their bodies should be seized wherever they could be found within the realm. ”

“ Johnson said of him that he was not a social man; he never exchanged mind with you. His prevailing foible was a desire of shining in those exterior accomplishments which nature had denied him. Vanity and benevolence had conspired to make him an easy prey to adulation and imposture.
His complaints of the envy by which he found his mind tormented, and especially on the occasion of Johnson's being honoured by an interview with the king, must have made those who heard him, lose all sense of the evil passion, in their amusement at a confession so novel and so pleasant. ”

“ The days of a scholar are frequently not distinguished by varieties even as unimportant as these. Johnson found his mind grow stagnant by a constant residence in the neighbourhood of Charing-cross itself, where he thought human happiness at its flood: and once, when moving rapidly along the road in a carriage with Boswell, cried out to his fellow-traveller, "Sir, life has few things better than this." In the winter of 1766 he went to Oxford, where he resided for a month, and formed an intimacy with Chambers, afterwards one of the judges in India. ”

“ John Henry said to his captain,
“Man ain’t nothin’ but a man.
Befo’ I work from sun to sun
I’d die wid de hammer in my han’.”
John Henry was a steel-drivin’ man,
Carried hammer all time in his han’;
Befo’ he let you beat him down
He’d die wid de hammer in his han’.
John Henry had a little girl,
Name was Polly Ann.
John Henry was on his dyin’ bed, O Lawd,
She drove with his hammer like a man.
John Henry went up to the mountain
To beat that steel drill down;
But John Henry was so small, rock so high,
Laid down his hammer an’ he died.
C
John Henry was a steel-drivin’ man. ”

“ Now that we look back with impartiality and coolness to the subject of dispute between the mother country and her colonies, there are few, I believe, who do not acknowledge the Americans to have been driven into resistance by claims, which, if they were not palpably unlawful, were at least highly inexpedient and unjust. But Johnson was no statist. With the nature of man taken individually and in the detail, he was well acquainted ”

“ Johnson lived in great affluence at Guy Hall, Tryon county, New York, where his intemperate loyalty is said to have precipitated the revolutionary troubles. He returned to Staten Island, after a visit to England, in August 1776. His estates were confiscated by the Americans, but through the war he continued to act as superintendent of the Indian department. ”

“ In the Idler there is more brevity, and consequently more compression.
When Johnson trusts to his own strong understanding in a matter of which he has the full command, and does not aim at setting it off by futile decorations, he is always respectable, and sometimes great. But when he attempts the ornamental, he is heavy and inelegant ”

“ Unfortunately the prejudice occasioned by Johnson's unsightly exterior was not confined to the vulgar, insomuch that it has been thought to be the reason why so few parents committed their children to his care, for he had only three pupils. This unscholarlike appearance it must have been that made the bookseller in the Strand, to whom he applied for literary employment, eye him archly, and recommend it to him rather to purchase a porter's knot. But, as an old philosopher has said, every thing has two handles. ”

“ An’ so when he come to die John Henry had mo’ wimmin, all dressed in red an’ blue an’ all dem fine colors come to see him dead, if it las’ thing they do, an’ wus mighty sad sight, people all standin’ ’roun’, both cullud an’ white. ”

“ Johnson is distinguished in his notes from the other commentators, chiefly by the acute remarks on many of the characters, and on the conduct of some of the fables, which he has subjoined to the different plays. In other respects he is not superior to the rest; in some, particularly in illustrating his author from antecedent or contemporary writers, he is inferior to them. A German critic of our own days, Schlegel, has surpassed him even in that which he has done best. ”

“ To Johnson he had already rendered a material service by his exertions to procure him the degree of Master of Arts, by diploma; and he increased the obligation, by contributing some notes to his edition of Shakspeare, and three papers to The Idler. The imputation cast on one, from whom such kindness had been received, of his "being the only man of genius without a heart," must have been rather the effect of spleen in Johnson, than the result of just observation ”

“ We dined at Smedley Cottage; and, after having, for a length of time, resisted the most urgent intreaties, I was at last, though still very much against my inclination, and quite in opposition to my own judgment, prevailed upon to yield to the pleadings of Mr. Johnson and his friends, to remain with him till the following Monday, in order that I might take the chair at the intended meeting. Had Johnson's life depended upon the result, he could not have been more anxious to detain me. He begged, he prayed, he implored me to stay; urging that without my presence the people would not be satisfied ”

“ Thrale, at Streatham, an opulent brewer, with whom his acquaintance had begun in 1765. With this open-hearted man he was always sure of a welcome reception for as long a time as he chose; and the mistress of the house, though after the death of her first husband and her subsequent marriage to an Italian she somewhat ungraciously remembered the petty annoyances which Johnson's untoward habits had occasioned her, was evidently pleased by his hearty expressions of regard, and flattered by his conversation on subjects of literature, in which she was herself well able to take a part. ”

“ His patient, whose name was Inge, was, I believe, the same whom Johnson, in his life of Ambrose Phillips, has termed a gentleman of great eminence in Staffordshire. Part of the wealth that now flowed in upon him, from an extensive and opulent circle, was employed with that liberality which in this country is perhaps oftener exercised by men of his profession than by those of any other. ”

“ In the fourth edition, we find Johnson added to the list. This compliment met with a handsome requital; for Johnson, soon after, having occasion to speak of Beattie, in his Life of Gray, called him a poet, a philosopher, and a good man.
In his Essay, he comforts himself with the belief "that he had enabled every person of common sense to defeat the more important fallacies of the sceptical metaphysicians, even though he should not possess acuteness, or metaphysical knowledge, sufficient to qualify him for a logical refutation of them." ”

“ Huddesford, then Vice Chancellor; in assisting Colman and Thornton in the Connoisseur; and in publishing his Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser, which he afterwards enlarged from one to two volumes. Johnson complimented him "for having shewn to all, who should hereafter attempt the study of our ancient authors, the way to success, by directing them to the perusal of the books which their author had read;" a method of illustration which since, certainly, has not wanted imitators. ”

“ In the natural manner of telling a short and humorous story, he is perhaps surpassed by no writer of prose except Addison. In his Essays, the style preserves a middle way between the gravity of Johnson and the lightness of Chesterfield; but it may often be objected to them, as to the moral writings of Johnson, that they present life to us under a gloomy aspect, and leave an impression of despondence on the mind of the reader.
In his poetry there is nothing ideal. It pleases chiefly by an exhibition of nature in her most homely and familiar views. ”

“ One of my friends, who inhabited it for the same purpose, has told me that an old countryman who lived near it, and remembered Johnson and his pupil Garrick, said to him, "that Johnson was not much of a scholar to look at, but that master Garrick was a strange one for leaping over a stile." It is amusing to observe the impressions which such men make on common minds. ”

“ The mother's love is strengthened by the constant attention which she must so long give to her child, and this is shared, in a degree, by the father. At the same time, their common interest in the same object draws them closer together. Before the first-born is able to find its own food and shelter other children come, and so the process is continually extended. Thus arises the family, the corner-stone of all life that is above that of brutes. ”

“ Instead of the fifteen thousand warriors who were expected to march with them to the conquest of New Biscay, the squalid savages in their neighborhood annoyed them in every possible way, set fire to the prairie when the wind blew toward them, stole their goods, ambushed a party that came in quest of the missing articles, and killed two of them. ”

“ Moreover, the chiefs were not the only men who could originate a movement. Any warrior might put on his war-paint and feathers and sing his war-song. As many as were willing might join him, and the party file away on the war-path without a single chief. If such a voluntary leader showed prowess and skill, he was sure to be some day elected a chief. ”

“ In time, however, through the marriage of the daughters—for in savage life the young men usually roam off and take wives elsewhere, while the young women stay at home—instead of the original single family, we have the grown daughters, with their husbands, living still with their parents and rearing children, thus forming a group of families, closely united by kinship. ”

“ This is no doubt the reason why among savages it seems the universal practice to trace kinship through the mother. Again, in such a little community as we have supposed, the women, being all united by close ties of blood, are the ruling element. The men may beat their wives, but, after all, the women, if they join together against any one man, can put him out and remain in possession. ”

“ Wishing to know what ideas had made Johnson popular, he turned over the pages of his Dictionary, his eight volumes of essays, his biographies, his numberless articles, his conversation so carefully collected, and he yawned. ‘His truths,’ says this critic, ‘are too true, we already know his precepts by heart. We learn from him that life is short, and we ought to improve the few moments granted us; that a mother ought not to bring up her son as a fop; that a man ought to repent of his faults and yet avoid superstition; that in everything we ought to be active and not hurried. ”