His brain was as big, or bigger, than his heart; it had made itself felt all over England by long, honest work-by brave, loud speech. He had snubbed the elegant Lord Chesterfield, who would have liked to see his name upon the first page of the great Dictionary. Not an outcast of the neighborhood but had heard of his audacious kindness; not a linkboy but knew him by the chink of his half-pence; not a beggar but had been bettered by his generous dole; not a watchman but knew him by his unwieldly hulk, and his awkward, intrepid walk; and we know him,if we know him at all-not by his "Rambler" and his "Rasselas," so much as by the story of his life.-MITCHELL, DONALD G., 1895, English Lands Letters and Kings, Queen Anne and the Georges, p. 105.

We were engaged at extra-illustrating Boswell's life of Johnson, and had already got together somewhat more than eleven thousand prints when we ran against a snag, an obstacle we never could surmount. We agreed that our work would be incomplete, and therefore vain, unless we secured a picture of the book with which the great lexicographer knocked down. Osborne, the bookseller at Gray's Inn Gate.-FIELD, EUGENE, 1895, The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, p, 149.

"If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.' Such was the deliberate pronouncement of a philosopher verging on seventy; and, despite the ominous hint about futurity, it is surely one of the finest compliments ever paid to the sex.. What is more, it accurately represents, which few compliments do, the honest conviction. of the speaker. We know from his own lips, and the testimony of his friends, that there were two things in which the Doctor's soul delighted-rapid motion, and the society of agreeable young women. Whirling along in a post-chaise was his notion of true enjoyment from a physical point of view; conversing with some sprightly beauty who could understand him and add something to the conversation, his acme of intellectual happiness. For this ordinarily uncouth and quarrelsome old man; this rampaging, browbeating controversialist-who, at other times, betrayed a savage pleasure in flouting the amenities of social intercourse

could change himself into a vastly different monster when in the company of women, could sheathe his claws, smooth his bristles, and moderate his roar, when they patted and fondled him. What is stranger, he was always ready to forsake his predatory pursuits to the patting and fondling in question.-CRAIG, W. H., 1895, Doctor Johnson and the Fair Sex, p. 1.

All competent critics-and he has occupied the most competent-have found it not merely necessary to admit that the man was greater than his works, but not specially easy to indicate the special character of his human greatness.

In mere knowledge he might sometimes go wrong; in mere taste, frequently; in crotchet, perpetually. But he was perfectly honest; there was not an atom or a shred of cant in him; his moral nature in his best moments was of the noblest, the kindest, the sanest ever known or even conceivable. We are sometimes told that his greatness is the creation of Boswell. His own age, the age of Burke and Gibbon, was neither foolish nor credulous; it had not read Boswell, and it made no mistake about Johnson. He is not the greatest or the most universal of our men of letters, but he is by far the most English; and very little shame need we take to ourselves so long as we can point to him as our literary embodiment, if not exactly our literary exemplar or masterpiece--SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1896, Social England, ed. Traill, vol. v, p. 256.

Dr. Samuel Johnson's library, which was sold in 1785, was not a very valuable one. It consisted of 650 lots, which sold for £100. Among them was the second Shakespeare folio, now in the possession of Sir Henry Irving.—WHEATLEY, HENRY B., 1898, Prices of Books, p. 141.

POEMS

Perused Johnson's "London" and "Vanity of Human Wishes." His numbers are strong in sense, and smooth in flow, but want that varied grace and inextinguishable spirit which constitute the essential charm of Pope's.-GREEN, THOMAS, 1779-1810, Diary of a Lover of Litera

ture.

Dr. Johnson, born no doubt with violent passions, yet with the organs of his senses, thro' which the fancy is stored, if not imperfect, surely far from acute, had from

a very early age most cultivated his powers of ratiocination, till by degrees he grew to esteem lightly every other species of excellence: and carrying these ideas into poetry, he was too much inclined to think that to reason in verse, when the harmony of numbers, and especially if something of the ornament of poetical language, was added to the force of truth, was to attain the highest praise of the art.-BRYDGES, SIR SAMUEL EGERTON, 1800, ed. Phillips's Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum, Preface, p. xlii.

The fame of Dr. Johnson would not have been less widely diffused if the few poetical productions contained in the following pages had never been written; and yet the "Two Satires," and the "Prologue for the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre," are noble productions; and would have been sufficient to throw no mean lustre on the reputation of an ordinary writer. He, like Pope, chose to be the poet of reason; not because he was deficient in imagination, for his Oriental fictions contain much of the elements of the most fanciful poetry, but his mind was so constituted that "he condemned all that had not a direct practical tendency." That he knew how to appreciate the creative faculty of the poet is evident from the character he has drawn of Shakspeare; and he would have done justice to Milton, if his prejudices against the man had not blinded his judgment to the merits of the poet. He had diligently studied the works of Dryden and Pope, and has caught the spirit, vigour and terseness of his great models. Of his lyric effusions much cannot be said: they want the enthusiasm and feeling which is the soul. of such compositions. When we recollect the imperfection of two of the senses, sight and hearing, in Johnson, we shall not be surprised that he has not a keen perception of the beauties of nature, or of the powers of harmony; his want of relish for descriptive poetry, and pastoral cannot therefore be wondered at; nor his want of success in his "Odes on the Seasons." He does not paint from nature, but from books.-SINGER, S. W., 1822, British Poets, Chiswick, ed. vol. 67, pp. 148, 149.

That his Tragedy ("Irene") was a great failure on the stage has been already related; that it is of extreme dulness, of

a monotony altogether insufferable, and therefore tires out the reader's patience quite as much as it did the auditor's, is true; that most of his lesser pieces are only things of easy and of fairly successful execution is likewise certain, with perhaps the exception of his verses on Robert Levett's death, which have a sweetness and a tenderness seldom found in any of his compositions. But had he never written anything after the "Imitations of Juvenal," his name would have gone down to posterity as a poet of great excellence,-one who only did not reach equal celebrity with Pope, because he came after him, and did not assiduously court the muse. In truth, these two pieces are admirable, both for their matter, their diction, and their versification. Of Johnson's Latin verses it remains to speak, and they assuredly do not rise to the level of his English, nor indeed above mediocrity. The translation of Pope's "Messiah," however, a work of his boyhood, gave a promise not fulfilled in his riper years.-BROUGHAM, HENRY LORD, 1845, Lives of Men of Letters of the Time of George III.

His

He was a poet of no mean order. resonant lines, informed as they often are. with the force of their author's character -his strong sense, his fortitude, his gloom-take possession of the memory, and suffuse themselves through one's entire system of thought.-BIRrell, AuGUSTINE, 1887, Obiter Dicta, Second Series, p. 130.

Dr. Johnson's epitaph on his friend Levett is as prosaic a poem as ever was written, and as strong a one. It is perhaps the only friendly epitaph in the language that contains no compliment to the object of it, in excess of the bare truth, and what Dr. Johnson could do with no other fuel to feed a genius that was never poetic in its essence, than the bare truth, is shown by the splendid culmination of the last four lines. --CRAWFURD, OSWALD, 1896, ed., Lyrical Verse from Elizabeth to Victoria, p. 431, note.

His work in verse is very small, and though all of it is scholarly and some elegant, it is universally composed in obedience to a very narrow and jejune theory of English versification and English poetics generally. Nothing perhaps but the beautiful epitaph on his friend Levett,

and the magnificent statement of his religious pessimism in the "Vanity of Human Wishes," distinctly transcends mediocrity.SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 615.

LONDON

1739

"London" is to me one of those few imitations that have all the ease and all the spirit of an original. The same man's verses on the opening of Garrick's theatre are far from bad.-GRAY, THOMAS, 1751? Letter to Horace Walpole; Works, ed. Gosse, vol. II, p. 220.

This poem of Mr. Johnson's is the best imitation of the original that has appeared in our language, being possessed of all the force and satirical resentment of Juvenal. Imitation gives us a much truer idea of the ancients than ever translation could do. GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, 1767, The Beauties of English Poetry.

Dr. Johnson's "London, a Satire," is a noble poem. But his great moral genius was constrained in composition by the perpetual parody on his powerful prototype, Juvenal. To have shown so much genius and so much ingenuity at one and the same time, to have been so original even in imitation, places him in the highest order of minds. But his range was here circumscribed; for he had to move parallel with the Roman,-finding out in every passage corresponding and kindred sins, and in order to preserve-which he did wondrously-the similitude

"To bridle in his struggling muse with pain, Which long'd to launch into a nobler strain." -WILSON, JOHN, 1828, The Man of Ton, Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 23, p. 835.

"London" is marked by genuine public spirit; at the same time we see quite as much of the man as of the moralist in the poet's characteristic allusions to the penalties of poverty, his antipathy to the Whigs, and his dislike of foreigners. The story that "Thales" was meant for Savage, and that the occasion of the poem was the departure of the latter from London after his trial, is confuted by dates, but we may be sure that the poem gives us a real representation of Johnson's feelings as a struggling author and a political partisan.- COURTHOPE, WILLIAM JOHN, 1880, English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. III, p. 246.

LIFE OF SAVAGE 1744

No finer specimen of literary biography existed in any language, living or dead; and a discerning critic might have confidently predicted that the author was destined to be the founder of a new school of English eloquence.-MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, 1843, Samuel Johnson, Critical and Historical Essays.

In its early days Johnson was the chief contributor to its pages. [The Gentleman's Magazine]. He had a room set apart for him at St. John's Gate, where he wrote as fast as he could drive his pen, throwing the sheets off, when completed, to the "copy" boy. The "Life of Savage" was written anonymously, in 1744, and Mr. Harte spoke in high terms of the book, while dining with Cave. The publisher told him afterwards: "Harte, you made a man very happy the other day at my house by your praise of 'Savage's Life." " "How so? none were present but you and I." Cave replied, "You might observe I sent a plate of victuals behind the screen; there lurked one whose dress was too shabby for him to appear; WEN, HENRY, 1873, A History of Bookyour praise pleased him much."-CURsellers, p. 59.

The best extant illustration of the life of the struggling authors of the time.STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1879, Samuel Johnson (English Men of Letters), p. 29.

It is the longest and most elaborate of Johnson's essays in biography, and may still be read with great pleasure, in spite of various patent faults. It recounted, with all detail, a scandal, into the truth of which Johnson had not taken the pains to inquire; it was but careless in the statement of fact which lay easily within the writer's circle of experience; and it treated with extreme indulgence a character which, in a stranger, would have called down the moralist's sternest reproof. The critical passages now escape censure only because so few in the present day read the works examined. But the little book was undeniably lively; it contained several anecdotes admirably narrated, and its graver parts displayed the development of Johnson's studied magnificence of language. Good biography was still rare in England, and "The Account of Savage" attracted

a great deal of notice.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 285.

VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES

1749

"The Vanity of Human Wishes" is, in the opinion of the best judges, as high an effort of ethick poetry as any language can shew. The instances of variety of disappointment are chosen so judiciously and painted so strongly, that, the moment they are read, they bring conviction to every thinking mind. That of the scholar

must have depressed the too sanguine expectations of many an ambitious student. That of the warrior, Charles of Sweden, is, I think, as highly finished a picture as can possibly be conceived.BOSWELL, JAMES, 1791-93, Life of Samuel Johnson, ed. Hill, vol. I, p. 225.

The "Vanity of Human Wishes," the subject of which is in a great degree founded on the Alcibiades of Plato, possesses not the point and fire which animates the "London." It breathes, however, a strain of calm and dignified philosophy, much more pleasing to the mind, and certainly much more consonant to truth, than the party exaggeration of the prior satire. The poet's choice of modern examples, in place of those brought forward by the ancient bard, is happy and judicious; and he has everywhere availed himself, and in a style the most impressive, of the solemnity, the pathos, and sublime morality of the christian code. In consequence of this substitution of a purer system of ethics, and of a striking selection of characters, among which that of Charles of Sweden is conspicuously eminent, the whole has the air of an original, and, to be understood, requires not to be collated with its prototype.- DRAKE, NATHAN, 1809, Essays Illustrative of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler, vol. 1, p. 135.

Read Johnson's "Vanity of Human Wishes," all the examples and mode of giving them sublime, as well as the latter part, with the exception of an occasional couplet. I do not so much admire the opening. I remember an observation of Sharpe's (the Conversationist, as he was called in London, and a very clever man), that the first line of his poem was superfluous, and that Pope (the very best of

poets, I think), would have begun at once, only changing the punctuation,

"Survey mankind from China to Peru." The former line, "Let observation," &c., is certainly heavy and useless. But 'tis a grand poem-and so true! true as the tenth of Juvenal himself. The lapse of ages changes all things,-time-language the earth-the bounds of the sea -the stars of the sky, and every thing "about, around, and underneath" man, except man himself, who has always been, and always will be, an unlucky rascal. The infinite variety of lives conduct but to death, and the infinity of wishes lead but to disappointment.-BYRON, LORD, 1821, Diary, Ravenna, Jan. 9.

The deep and pathetic morality of which has often extracted tears from those whose eyes wander dry over pages professedly sentimental.-SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1823, Samuel Johnson.

Tennyson admired Samuel Johnson's grave earnestness, and said that certain of his couplets, for these qualities and for their "high moral tone," were not surpassed in English satire. However, he ventured to make merry over:

"Let observation, with extensive view,

Survey mankind, from China to Peru." "Why did he not say 'Let observation, with extended observation, observe extensively?" TENNYSON, ALFRED LORD, 1869, A Memoir by His Son, vol. II, p. 73.

Its strong Stoical morality, its profound and melancholy illustrations of the old and ever new sentiment, Vanitas Vanitatum, make it perhaps the most impressive poem of the kind in the language.-STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1879, Samuel Johnson (English Men of Letters), p. 35.

IRENE

1749

Though uninteresting on the stage, was universally admired in the closet, for the propriety of the sentiments, the richness of the language, and the general harmony of the whole composition. -MURPHY, ARTHUR, 1792, An Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson.

In his tragedy, the dramatis personæ are like so many statues "stept from their pedestal to take the air." They come on the stage only to utter pompous sentiments of morality, turgid declamation, and frigid similes. Yet there is

throughout, that strength of language, that heavy mace of words, with which, as with the flail of Talus, Johnson lays everything prostrate before him. CARY, HENRY FRANCIS, 1821-24-45, Lives of English Poets, p. 90.

Even the mighty intellect, the eloquent morality, and lofty style of Johnson, which gave too tragic and magnificent a tone to his ordinary writing, failed altogether to support him in his attempt to write actual tragedy; and "Irene" is not only unworthy of the imitator of "Juvenal" and the author of "Rasselas" and the "Lives of the Poets," but is absolutely, and in itself, nothing better than a tissue of wearisome and unimpassioned declamations. JEFFREY, FRANCIS LORD, 1822-44, Contributions to the Edinburgh Review, vol. II, p. 334.

One of the heaviest and most unreadable of dramatic performances, interesting now, if interesting at all, solely as a curious example of the result of bestowing great powers upon a totally uncongenial task. STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1879, Samuel Johnson (English Men of Letters), p. 36. There are several accounts extant by those who were present on the first night, but that which Dr. Adams gave Boswell is perhaps the most trustworthy. "Before the curtain drew up there were catcalls whistling which alarmed Johnson's friends. The prologue, which was written by himself in a manly strain, soothed the audience, and the play went off tolerably till it came to the conclusion, when Mrs. Pritchard, the heroine of the piece, was to be strangled on the stage, and was to speak two lines with the bow-string round her neck. The audience cried out 'Murder! Murder!' She several times attempted to speak, but in vain. At last she was obliged to go off the stage alive." The author's annoyance at this interruption must have been a good deal alleviated by the triumph it gave him over Garrick, at whose suggestion the strangling scene had been arranged. Dr. Burney's version is more favourable, but he speaks of a curious story circulated at the time of the author's being "observed at the representation to be dissatisfied with some of the speeches and conduct of the play himself, and, like La Fontaine, expressing his disapprobation aloud." Old Aaron Hill, one of the heroes of "The Dunciad," who

had composed much bad poetry and worse prose, and whose critical judgment may be estimated by his prediction of his own posthumous fame and of Pope's speedy oblivion, wrote to Mallet: "I was at the anomalous Mr. Johnson's benefit, and found the play his proper representative; strong sense, ungraced by sweetness or decorum."

Though Irene was not a great success, it escaped positive failure, and Johnson received from copyright and "author's nights," very nearly three hundred pounds.-GRANT, FREDERICK RICHARD CHARLES, 1887, Samuel Johnson (Great Writers), p. 56.

THE RAMBLER 1750-52

I am inexpressibly pleased with them. I hope the world tastes them; for its own sake I hope the world tastes them.. I would not, for any consideration, that they should be laid down through discouragement.-RICHARDSON, SAMUEL, 1750, Letter to Cave, Aug. 9.

"The Rambler," is certainly a strong misnomer he always plods in the beaten road of his predecessors, following the "Spectator" (with the same pace as a packhorse would do a hunter) in the style that is proper to lengthen a paper. These writers may, perhaps, be of service to the public, which is saying a great deal in

their favour. There are numbers of both sexes who never read anything but such productions, and cannot spare time, from doing nothing, to go through a sixpenny pamphlet. Such gentle readers may be improved by a moral hint, which, though repeated over and over, from generation to generation, they never heard in their lives. I should be glad to know the name of this laborious author.-MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY, 1754, Letter to the Countess of Bute, June 23; Works, ed. Dallaway, vol. IV, p. 220.

I have lately been reading one or two volumes of "The Rambler;" who, excepting against some few hardnesses in his manner, and the want of more examples to enliven, is one of the most nervous, most perspicuous, most concise (and) most harmonious prose writers I know. A learned diction improves by time.-SHENSTONE, WILLIAM, 1760, Letter to Mr. Graves, Feb. 9.

The "Rambler" may be considered as