Johnson

“ The peculiarities of Johnson, it is true, are conspicuous; his portrait has been powerfully drawn, and they stand in bold relief; but other men have no fewer, as any man may learn who will consult, not the faded records of other lives, but his knowledge of himself. ”

“ No such searching ordeal has ever been applied to any human character with the same result. Everything that Johnson said in conversation during the later part of his life was liable to be recorded for posterity. A merely clever man, talking for reputation, would have crumpled under the test; Johnson has emerged from it unscathed. His truth and his humanity were a match for all they met; so that to lose a year of his commentary on life is to lose a year, not of talk, but of life itself. ”

“ Johnson could break out in conversation as well as in his books into a noble eloquence all his own; such a phrase as "poisoning the sources of eternal truth," rises spontaneously to his lips when his indignation is aroused. His free language disdained to be confined within any park palings of pedantry. Some of his most characteristic utterances owe their flavour to combining the language of the schools with the language of the tavern: as when he said of that strange inmate of his house, Miss Carmichael, "Poll is a stupid slut. ”

“ Johnson, it may be remarked, does not answer Soame Jenyns’s argument; he concentrates on it the heat of his imagination, and it shrivels under the glow. He felt no respect for a structure of theory, however ingenious and elaborate, which is built up from facts imperfectly realized. ‘Life,’ he says, ‘must be seen before it can be known.’ Because he had seen much of life, his last and greatest work, The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, is more than a collection of facts: it is a book of wisdom and experience, a treatise on the conduct of life, a commentary on human destiny. ”

“ Johnson knew better. Both his melancholy and his common sense taught him that "language is the work of man, of a being from whom permanence and stability cannot be derived." He knew that words coming from human mouths must follow the law of life: "when they are not gaining strength they are losing it." ”

“ Johnson when you come to read it, as you will be sure to do by and by, has left a living picture of this great and good man for all future generations to enjoy, extenuating nothing to his quaintness, directness, and proneness to contradiction for its own sake, yet unveiling everywhere the deep piety and fine magnanimity of his character. He suffered much, but never complained, and certainly must be numbered among the great men of letters who have found true consolation and support in every circumstance of life in an earnest and fervent faith. ”

“ Johnson's character would be imperfectly described if some attention were not paid to his conscience, the purity of which is a favorite subject of his own discourse, and the perversity of which is the wonder of the rest of mankind. ”

“ All Johnson's gifts are seen at their best in it: the lucidity, the virile energy, the individuality of his style: the unique power of first placing himself on the level of the plain man and then lifting the plain man to his: the resolute insistence on life and reason, not learning or ingenuity, as the standard by which books are to be judged. ”

“ In all Johnson's works you see the traces of the triumphant conversationalist—of one who has met with few to contradict, and scarcely one to rival him. Hence the dogmatic strength and certainty, and hence, too, the one-sidedness and limitation of much of his writings. ”

“ JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, you must shun the subject as to which you disagree. For instance, I can live very well with Burke: I love his knowledge, his genius, his diffusion, and affluence of conversation; but I would not talk to him of the Rockingham party.' GOLDSMITH. 'But, Sir, when people live together who have something as to which they disagree, and which they want to shun, they will be in the situation mentioned in the story of Bluebeard: "You may look into all the chambers but one." ”

“ The sonorous and ponderous rotundity of Johnson’s style, and the unfailing respect that he pays to law and decorum, have partly concealed from view the wilfulness of his native temper. Obedience to law imposed from without can never be the soul of a man or of a writer. It is the converted rebels who give power to the arm of government. ”

“ Thrale, quite unaware of any cause in herself, and her flow of pleasant chatter, for Johnson’s reproof, took it as a gratuitous display of surliness and rudeness, showing how a great philosopher can be deficient in humane feeling. She does not even mention that she was eating larks, so that the larks, which were her own supper, become, under her light hand, a merely rhetorical adornment of Johnson’s invective. ”

“ Johnson practised no such leniency; in his judgement the poetical profession is of no more avail than a mechanical trade to exonerate a man from the common obligations of humanity. Yet when he deals with weakness, inconsistency, and error, where these have not been made the subjects of foolish praise he will always be found quick to understand, and reluctant to condemn. No one knew better than Johnson that if men have much to strive for, they have more to suffer. ”

“ The note of his writings had been common sense and rugged veracity; the dominant notes of theirs were picturesqueness, eloquence, emotion, even sentimentalism. Both the exaggerated hopes and the exaggerated fears aroused by the French Revolution disinclined their victims to listen to the middling sanity of Johnson. The hopes built themselves fancy castles of equality and fraternity which instinctively shrunk from the broadsides of Johnsonian ridicule. ”

“ By those who have been taught to look upon Johnson as a man of a harsh and stern character, let this tender and affectionate scene be candidly read; and let them then judge whether more warmth of heart, and grateful kindness, is often found in human nature. ”

“ In every work regard the writer's end. Johnson went to see men and manners, modes of life, and the progress of civilization. His remarks are so artfully blended with the rapidity and elegance of his narrative, that the reader is inclined to wish, as Johnson did, with regard to Gray, that to travel, and to tell his travels, had been more of his employment. ”

“ However dogmatic and fierce Johnson’s conversation may have been, it was always extraordinarily free from egotism. He takes the floor with all comers, and does not make for himself a place apart, sheltered and superior. He has no exquisite reasons, and looks at life, not from a delicate angle of his own, but from the broad standing-ground of common humanity. A very large number of his most famous sayings are cast in a single mould ”

“ Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given [1] , that every man's life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited. ”

“ The best proof that Johnson was really an extraordinary man is that his character, instead of being degraded, has, on the whole, been decidedly raised by a work in which all his vices and weaknesses are exposed more unsparingly than they ever were exposed by Churchill or by Kenrick.
Johnson grown old, Johnson in the fulness of his fame and in the enjoyment of a competent fortune, is better known to us than any other man in history. ”

“ Mark, too, how little Johnson boasts of his 'sincerity.' He has no suspicion of his being particularly sincere,—of his being particularly anything! A hard-struggling, weary-hearted man, or 'scholar' as he calls himself, trying hard to get some honest livelihood in the world, not to starve, but to live,—without stealing! A noble unconsciousness is in him. ”

“ Among all the daring souls, who left honor, comfort, and independence, for the sake of worshipping God according to the dictates of their own consciences, there was no one more highly or more deservedly respected than Mr. Johnson. In the bloom of life, a gentleman, a scholar, and nearly allied to a noble family, he left his own wise, wealthy, and happy land, to join a poor, despised, and almost discouraged remnant in this western wilderness. ”

“ When Johnson is verbose and languid, it is often because his subject is slight, and does not yield him matter enough to fill his capacious style. The syntax is still a stately organ, fitted to discourse great music, but the bellows are poor and weak. When his mind gets to work on a subject that calls forth all his powers, his vigour and versatility, displayed within a narrow compass, are amazing. ”

“ Johnson says of him “There is no science of which he does not discover some skill; and scarce any kind of knowledge profane or sacred, obstruse or elegant, which he does not appear to have cultivated with success.” ”

“ Alike to the new Liberalism ever more and more drenched in sentiment, to the new Conservatism ever more and more looking for a base in history, to Romanticism in literature with its stir, colour and emotion, to science with its new studies and new methods, the works of Johnson almost inevitably appeared as the dry bones of a dead age. ”

“ Johnson, is an elegant composition; but this was likewise unavailing, as the danger was increased in a greater proportion than his age. He now sat down a quiet spectator of the revolution, in which most of his family acquiesced; and resolving to lay aside all thoughts of pushing his fortune either in the court or the camp, he endeavoured to divert his melancholy in the company and conversation of the softer sex. ”

“ To obviate all the reflections which have gone round the world to Johnson's prejudice, by applying to him the epithet of a BEAR, let me impress upon my readers a just and happy saying of my friend Goldsmith, who knew him well: 'Johnson, to be sure, has a roughness in his manner; but no man alive has a more tender heart. ”

“ The eighteenth century had not come to see what the more prosperous classes can and ought to do towards making the lives of the poor brighter; but the feeling which moved Johnson when he met with misery in the London streets was as keen as stirs any worker at the East End to-day, and his benevolence, if less systematic and less refined, was as practical in spirit. Johnson's large sympathies are seen again in his warm appreciation of his friends. Men of the most diverse characters and abilities have received from him a tribute of praise which sets forth some shining quality in each of them. ”

“ That, on the other hand, is one of the three great qualities in which Johnson's talk is supreme. Without often aiming at being instructive it is not only nearly always interesting but with an amazing variety of interest. The theologian, the moral philosopher, the casuist, the scholar, the politician, the economist, the lawyer, the clergyman, the schoolmaster, the author, above all the amateur of life, all find in it abundance of food for their own particular tastes. Each of them—notably for instance, the political economist—may sometimes find Johnson mistaken; not one will ever find him dull. ”

“ This indolence, which would be a sin in an archaeologist or an historian, is almost a virtue in Johnson. His Lives make a single great treatise, defining and illustrating the critical system which he had built up during long years of reading and writing. He writes at ease, in the plenitude of his power, and with a full consciousness of his acknowledged authority. His work closes an age ”

“ When I called upon Dr. Johnson next morning, I found him highly satisfied with his colloquial prowess the preceding evening. 'Well, (said he,) we had good talk [196] .' BOSWELL. 'Yes, Sir; you tossed and gored several persons [197] .'
The late Alexander, Earl of Eglintoune [198] , who loved wit more than wine, and men of genius more than sycophants, had a great admiration of Johnson; ”

“ for if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like WHALES.'
Johnson, though remarkable for his great variety of composition, never exercised his talents in fable, except we allow his beautiful tale [677] published in Mrs. ”

“ Johnson's personality, too, cannot be fairly judged by its more grotesque expression. Beneath the rough surface he was a man not only of very vigorous intellect and great learning, but of sincere piety, a very warm heart, unusual sympathy and kindness, and the most unselfish, though eccentric, generosity. Fine ladies were often fascinated by him, and he was no stranger to good society. ”

“ If you put a tub full of blood into a stable, the horses are like to go mad.' JOHNSON. 'I doubt that.' GOLDSMITH. 'Nay, Sir, it is a fact well authenticated.' THRALE. 'You had better prove it before you put it into your book on natural history. You may do it in my stable if you will.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, I would not have him prove it. If he is content to take his information from others, he may get through his book with little trouble, and without much endangering his reputation. ”

“ They bring us back from the first man of letters of the day to that Johnson who sheltered ‘whole nests of people in his house;’ who, when he was asked by a lady why he so constantly gave money to beggars, replied, with great feeling, ‘Madam, to enable them to beg on;’ and who, when he found children asleep at night on bulks in the street, would put a penny in their hands, so that they might be able to get a breakfast in the morning. ”