author's facility of writing in a very artificial style, as soon as we are informed, by external evidence, of the whole having been written in a few nights. He, perhaps, had some kind of misgiving that it was not a successful effort, for he had never looked at it till two-and-twenty years after it was written, when a friend happening to have it who was travelling with him, Johnson read it with some eagerness.-BROUGHAM, HENRY LORD, 1845, Lives of Men of Letters of the time of George III.

So on the story rolls, poetic and gloomy, like a bit of the Black Sea!-MASSON, DAVID, 1859, British Novelists and Their Styles, p. 151.

All the sterner traits of Johnson's character, his uncompromising rectitude, his steadiness of outlook on unrelieved gloom, his hatred of sentimental and unthinking optimism, have left their mark on "Rasselas."—RALEIGH, WALTER, 1894, The English Novel, p. 205.

This elephantine novelette has a host of excellent and eloquent moral reflections in it, shouldering and elbowing themselves out from its flimsy dress of fiction. MITCHELL, DONALD G., 1895, English Lands Letters and Kings, Queen Anne and the Georges, p. 106.

"Rasselas," struck off at a heat when his mother lay dying, tells in prose what. the "Vanity of Human Wishes" tells in verse. It is little known to the modern reader, who is not easily reconciled to its style. At no time could it have been a favorite with the young and thoughtless. Nevertheless, as years steal over us, we own, as we lay it down with a sigh, that it gives a view of life as profound and true as it is sad.—HILL, GEORGE BIRKBECK, 1897, Library of the World's Best Literature, ed. Warner, vol. XIV, p. 8288.

EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE

1765

The praise is due of having first adopted and carried into execution Dr. Johnson's admirable plan of illustrating Shakspeare by the study of writers of his own time. By following this track, most of the difficulties of the author have been overcome, his meaning (in many instances apparently lost) has been recovered, and much wild unfounded conjecture has been

happily got rid of. By perseverance in this plan, he effected more to the elucidation of his author than any if not all his predecessors, and justly entitled himself to the distinction of being confessed the best editor of Shakspeare.-REED, ISAAC, 1785-1803, ed. Shakspeare, vol. 1, p. 3.

Johnson compares him who should endeavour to recommend this poet by passages unconnectedly torn from his works, to the pedant in Hierocles who exhibited a brick as a sample of his house. And yet how little, and how very unsatisfactorily, does he himself speak of the pieces considered as a whole! Let any man, for instance, bring together the short characters which he gives at the close of each play, and see if the aggregate will amount to that sum of admiration which he himself, at his outset, has stated as the cor

rect standard for the appreciation of the poet.-SCHLEGEL, AUGUSTUS WILLIAM, 1809, Dramatic Art and Literature, Lec

ture xii.

Johnson explained much well, but there is something magisterial in the manner wherein he dismisses each play like a boy's exercise, that irritates the reader. His criticism is frequently judicious, but betrays no ardent admiration for Shakspeare.-HALLAM, HENRY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. iii, ch. vi, par. 54.

Garrick got a better hold of Shakespeare's thought than Dr. Johnson, the John Bull of erudition on whose nose Queen Mab must have skipped about queerly enough, whilst he was writing about the "Midsummer Night's Dream." He certainly did not know why Shakespeare occasioned him more involuntary irritation and desire to sneeze than any other of the poets he criticised.-HEINE, HEINRICH, 1838-95, Notes on Shakespeare Heroines, tr. Benecke, p. 34.

When Johnson had issued his proposals twenty years before for an edition of Shakespeare, he pointed to a great novelty for the elucidation of the poet. His intuitive sagacity had discerned that a poet so racy and native required a familiarity both with the idiom and the manners of his age. He was sensible that a complete explanation of an author, not systematic and consequential, but desultory and vagrant, abounding in casual allusions and slight hints, is not to be expected from any single

scholiast. He enumerates, however, the desiderata for this purpose; among which we find that of reading the books which Shakespeare read, and to compare his works with those of writers who lived at the same time, or immediately preceded, or immediately followed him. This project, happily conceived, inferred comprehensive knowledge in the proposer; but it was only a reverie, -a dim Pisgah view which the sagacity of the great critic had taken of that future Canaan, which he himself never entered. With this sort of knowledge, and these forgotten writers, which the future commentators of Shakespeare revelled in, Johnson remained wholly unacquainted. But what proved more fatal to the editorial ability of Johnson than this imperfect knowledge of the literature and the manners of the age of Shakespeare, was that the commentator rarely sympathized with the poet; for his hard-witted and unpliant faculties, busied with the more palpable forms of human nature, when thrown amid the supernatural and the ideal, seemed suddenly deserted of their powers: the magic knot was tied which cast our Hercules into helpless impotence; and, in the circle of imaginative creation, we discover the baffled sage resisting the spell by apologizing for Shakespeare's introduction of his mighty preternatural beings!-DISRAELI, ISAAC, 1841, Shakespeare, Amenities of Literature.

He would doubtless have admitted that it would be the height of absurdity, in a man who was not familiar with the works of Eschylus and Euripides to publish an edition of Sophocles. Yet he ventured to publish an edition of Shakspeare, without having ever in his life, as far as can be discovered, read a single scene of Massinger, Ford, Decker, Webster, Marlow, Beaumont, or Fletcher.-MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, 1843, Samuel Johnson, Critical and Historical Essays.

The larger portion of Johnson's Preface not only to a certain extent represented the tone of opinion in Johnson's age, but was written with so much pomp of diction, with such apparent candour, and with such abundant manifestations of good sense, that, perhaps more than any other production, it has influenced the public opinion of Shakspere up to this day. That the influence has been, for the most part, evil, we have no hesitation in believing.

-KNIGHT, CHARLES, 1849, Studies of Shakspere.

It is giving the Doctor but little praise to say that he was a better editor than his Reverend predecessor. The majority of his emendations of the text were, nevertheless, singularly unhappy; and his notes, though often learned and sometimes sensible, were generally wanting in just that sort of learning and sense most needful for his task. Strange as it may seem, no one who himself appreciates Shakespeare, can read Johnson's comments and verbal criticisms upon his plays without the conviction that to the "great moralist," the grandest inspirations and most exquisitely wrought fancies of the great dramatist were as a sealed book. Many an humble individual whom the learned bear growled at we do not hesitate to include even "Bozzy" himself-appreciated Shakespeare better than the literary dictator did. WHITE, RICHARD GRANT, 1854, Shakespeare's Scholar, p. 12.

JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND

1775

Dr. Johnson has just published his Journey thro' the western isles; I have read it, and you should read it. It is quite a sentimental Journey, divested of all natural history and antiquities; but full of good sense, and new and peculiar reflections.-WHITE, GILBERT, 1775, Letter to Rev. John White, Feb. 1; Life and Letters of Gilbert White, ed. Holt-White, vol. I, p. 277.

His. "Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland" is a most valuable performance. It abounds in extensive philosophical views of society, and in ingenious sentiment and lively description. A considerable part of it, indeed, consists of speculations, which many years before he saw the wild regions which we visited together, probably had employed his attention, though the actual sight of those scenes undoubtedly quickened and augmented them. Mr. Orme, the very able historian, agreed with me in this opinion, which he thus strongly expressed:"There are in that book thoughts, which, by long revolution in the great mind of Johnson, have been formed and polished like pebbles rolled in the ocean!"-BosWELL, JAMES, 1791-93, Life of Johnson, ed. Hill, vol. II, p. 343.

It is to Johnson that we go to see the life, the houses, the food, the garmentsnay, the very speech and manners of the Scotsmen amongst whom he passed, and who were attracted to his personality by the magnetic force of a master-mind.

Johnson's Journal has the indescribable but irresistible charm of a mon'ument of literary genius.-CRAIK, SIR HENRY, 1901, A Century of Scottish History, vol. II, pp. 40, 41.

TAXATION NO TYRANNY

1775

Of this performance I avoided to talk with him; for I had now formed a clear and settled opinion, that the people of America were well warranted to resist a claim that their fellow-subjects in the mother-country should have the entire command of their fortunes, by taxing them without their own consent; and the extreme violence which it breathed, appeared to me so unsuitable to the mildness of a christian philosopher, and so directly opposite to the principles of peace which he had so beautifully recommended in his pamphlet respecting Falkland's Islands, that I was sorry to see him appear in so unfavourable a light. Besides, I could not perceive in it that ability of argument, or that felicity of expression, for which he was, upon other occasions, so eminent. Positive assertion, sarcastical severity, and extravagant ridicule which he himself reprobated as a test of truth, were united in this rhapsody. That this pamphlet was written at the desire of those who were then in power, I have no doubt; and, indeed, he owned to me, that it had been revised and curtailed by some of them.BOSWELL, JAMES, 1791-93, Life of Johnson, ed. Hill, vol. II, p. 357.

His political tracts must have exercised the very minimum of influence for the productions of so great a writer. He was the last man in the world to conciliate opposition, and his strong powers of argument were warped by prejudice. His "Taxation no Tyranny," written to defend the taxation of the American colonists against their will, is at once overbearing and sophistical. It might inflame and imbitter partisans, but it was too abusive and too unreasonable to make converts.-MINTO, WILLIAM, 1872-80, Manual of English Prose Literature, p. 424.

There was, indeed, one matter in which

Johnson showed such a monstrous perversity that even the faithful Boswell fell away from him. He could not away with. the claims of America. "Taxation no Tyranny" is indeed a lamentable pamphlet, but it is not Toryism. In fact, much of the argument of his pamphlet is not so much wrong in itself as hopelessly beside the mark; and it is beside the mark not because Johnson was a Tory, but just because he was indifferent to the forms of government. Thus he was distracted from the main issue to subsidiary points, and at such a crisis subsidiary points could have no weight.— SARGEAUNT, JOHN, 1898, Dr. Johnson's Politics, The Bookman, vol. 6, pp. 421, 422.

LIVES OF THE POETS
1779-81

Johnson, to occasional felicity of diction, great purity of moral, and energy of thought, united a very considerable portion of critical acumen, and his Lives of Dryden and Pope are noble specimens of his powers of discrimination; yet, notwithstanding this rare combination of striking qualities, he was deficient in that sensibility to, and enthusiasm for, the charms of nature, in that relish for the simple and pathetic, so absolutely necessary to just criticism in poetry. To these defalcations were superadded an unreasonable antipathy to blank verse, a constitutional ruggedness of temper, and a bigoted, though well-meant, adhesion to some very extravagant political and religious tenets. His biographical details have suffered much from these peculiarities of temper and of taste; and a Milton, an Akenside, a Collins, a Dyer, and a Gray, might upbraid the Literary Dictator for his bitter and illiberal invective, his churlish and parsimonious praise, his great and various misrepresentations. DRAKE, NATHAN, 1798-1820, Literary Hours, vol. 1, No. xii, p. 160.

There are parts of the "Lives of the Poets" which every lover of literary or moral justice would be glad to see stamped with an indelible brand of reprobation, with a disgrace so signal and conspicuous as to be a perpetual warning against the perversion of criticism and private history by political and religious bigotry and personal spleen.-FOSTER, JOHN, 1808, Criticism on the English Poets, Essays.

Throughout his "Lives of the Poets, he constantly betrays a want of relish for the more abstracted graces of the art. When strong sense and reasoning were to be judged of, these he was able to appreciate justly. When the passions or characters were described, he could to certain extent decide whether they were described truly or no. But as far as poetry has relation to the kindred arts of music and painting, to both of which he was confessedly insensible, it could not be expected that he should have much perception of its excellences. When he is most strong, he gives us some good reason for his being so. He is often mistaken, but never trivial and insipid. It is more safe to trust to him when he commends than when he dispraises; when he enlarges the boundaries of criticism which his predecessors had contracted, than when he sets up new fences of his own.-CARY, HENRY FRANCIS, 1821-24-45, Lives of English Poets, pp. 84, 88.

Dr. Johnson's "Lives of the Poets" are necessarily a prominent ornament of every library; as they have been the common theme of admiration of all countries. The style and the reflections are the chief charm of this popular work. Many of the Not facts must be cautiously admitted. Not that Johnson designedly falsified; but he always wanted time, diligence, and patience, in the collection of his materials; and, he rejoiced to find the fact as he wished to find it: without sufficiently weighing it in the balance of impartiality. He hugged every thing which he thought might throw a shade on a republican, a whig, or a dissenter; and spared no pains in executing such a picture in his most powerful and overwhelming colours. But toryism and orthodoxy neither require nor recommend such intemperate conduct. Even the very loose reports which had reached him of Dryden's funeral, were inserted without a suspicion of their veracity; and it remained for Mr. Malone (in his admirable edition of Dryden's prose works, to which a biography of the poet is prefixed) to dispel and dissipate this idle story as a barefaced fiction. Johnson, had he been living, would not have surrendered it without a growl. Much that he has inserted in the life of Pope, and more in that of Milton, has been, and will continue to be, corrected

and disproved: but who that reads Johnson's criticisms on certain portions of the "Paradise Lost," is not convinced that he is reading one of the most masterly performances of the human intellect? exhibiting an extent of power of conception-a vigour and felicity of diction-such as one knows not where to find equalled in any modern production. His life of Savage, the first in the order of execution, is considered to be the chef-d'œuvre; but this may be because it was the first; and because we have long known that Sir Joshua Reynolds read it with such intense. interest, as to be unconscious that he was nearly dislocating his arm against a chimney piece, all the time! In consequence, he sought Johnson's acquaintance, and respected and loved the great philologist to his dying day. Still, the lives of Dryden and Pope abound with some of the happiest specimens of Johnson's powers of narrative and criticism. The whole set of Lives is indeed charming: fraught with wisdom and excellent taste.-DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL, 1824, The Library Companion, p. 510, note.

We could find no pleasure in sacrificing one great man to the manes of another.

He did not and he could not appreciate Milton. We doubt whether two other minds, having so little in common as those of which we are now speaking, can be found in the higher walks of literature. Johnson was great in his own sphere, but that sphere was comparatively "of the earth," whilst Milton's was only inferior to that of angels. It was customary, in the day of Johnson's glory, to call him. a Giant, to class him with a mighty but still an earth-born race. Milton we should rank among Seraphs.-CHANNING, WILLIAM ELLERY, 1826, Remarks on the Character and Writings of John Milton.

A life of Milton is yet a desideratum in our literature. Johnson hated his democratic principles, and despised his impracticable philosophy: the severity with which he handled him was only restrained by a veneration for his piety, and perhaps ignorance of his ariaism.-SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 1827, Todd's ed. of Milton, Quarterly Review, vol. 36, p. 42.

He had his prejudices, and his partialities, and his bigotries, and his blindnesses, but on the same fruit-tree you see shrivelled pears or apples on the same branch

with jargonelles or golden pippins worthy of Paradise. Show me the critique that beats his on Pope and on Dryden, nay, even on Milton; and hang me if you may not read his "Essay on Shakspeare" even after having read Charles Lamb, or heard Coleridge, with increased admiration of the powers of all three, and of their insight through different avenues, and as it might seem, almost with different bodily and mental organs, into Shakspeare's "old exhausted" and his "new imagined worlds." He was a critic and a moralist who would have been wholly wise had he not been partly constitutionally insane.-WILSON, JOHN, 1829, Noctes Ambrosianæ, April.

"The Lives of the Poets" has been by far the most popular of his works, and is doubtless the one for which he will be reverenced in future times. It afforded room for the display of every kind of talent; of his critical sagacity, his burning imagination, his learned research, and that memory by which he retained many curious. anecdotes and traits of character, which would otherwise have been lost. No doubt a prejudiced air is given to the work by his political prepossessions, and he has done injustice to some distinguished names; but he wrote what he thought, and treated his subjects as he believed they deserved. It is now clear that he was wrong in some respects; but he did not err in malice, and how was it reasonable to expect, that he should follow the prejudices of others in preference to his own. -PEABODY, W. B. O., 1832, Croker's Boswell, North American Review, vol. 34, p. 103.

A production more discreditable to the author is not to be found in the whole of his voluminous works; equally discreditable, whether regarded in an historical light or as a sample of literary criticism.

.. His "Life of Milton" is a humiliating testimony of the power of political and religious prejudices to warp a great and good mind from the standard of truth, in his estimation not merely of contemporary excellence, but of the great of other years, over whose frailties Time might be supposed to have drawn his friendly mantle.-PRESCOTT, WILLIAM HICKLING, 1839, Chateaubriand's Sketches of English Literature, North American Review, vol. 49, pp. 337, 338.

The critic was certainly deficient in

sensibility to the more delicate, the minor beauties of poetic sentiment. He analyzes verse in the cold-blooded spirit of a chemist, until all the aroma, which constituted its principal charm, escapes in the decomposition. By this kind of process, some of the finest fancies of the Muse, the lofty dithyrambics of Gray, the ethereal effusions of Collins, and of Milton too, are rendered sufficiently vapid. In this sort of criticism, all the effect that relies on impressions goes for nothing. Ideas are alone taken into the account, and all is weighed in the same hard, matter-of-fact scales of common sense, like so much solid prose.-PRESCOTT, WILLIAM HICKLING, 1839, Chateaubriand's Sketches of English Literature, Biographical and Critical Miscellanies.

Wrote the lives of the poets and left out the poets.-BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT, 1842-63, The Book of the Poets.

The

The lives of the Poets are, on the whole, the best of Johnson's works. The narratives are as entertaining as any novel. The remarks on life and on human nature are eminently shrewd and profound. criticisms are often excellent, and, even when grossly and provokingly unjust, well deserve to be studied. For, however erroneous they may be, they are never silly. They are the judgments of a mind trammelled by prejudice and deficient in sensibility, but vigorous vigorous and acute. They therefore generally contain a portion of valuable truth which deserves to be separated from the alloy; and, at the very worst, they mean something, a praise to which much of what is called criticism in our time has no pretensions.-MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, 1843, Samuel Johnson, Critical and Historical Essays.

You know, of course, that Swift has had many biographers; his life has been told by the kindest and most good-natured of men, Scott, who admires but cannot bring himself to love him, and by stout old Johnson, who, forced to admit him into the company of poets, receives the famous Irishman, and takes off his hat to him with a bow of surly recognition, scans him from head to foot, and passes over to the other side of the street. Johnson truly admires Swift: Johnson does not quarrel with Swift's change of politics, or doubt his sincerity of religion about the famous Stella and