Aetat. 50.] RASSELAS. 395 Hawkins guesses vaguely and idly', instead of having taken the trouble to inform himself with authentick precision. Not to trouble my readers with a repetition of the Knight's reveries, I have to mention, that the late Mr. Strahan the printer told me, that Johnson wrote it, that with the profits he might defray the expence of his mother's funeral, and pay some little debts which she had left. He told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he composed it in the evenings of one week, sent it to the press in portions as it was written, and had never since read it over. Mr. Strahan, Mr. Johnston, and Mr. Dodsley purchased it for a hundred pounds, but afterwards paid him twenty-five pounds more, when it came to a second edition. Considering the large sums which have been received for compilations, and works requiring not much more genius than compilations', we cannot but wonder at the very low price which he was content to receive for this admirable performance; which, though he had written nothing else, would have rendered his name immortal in the world of literature. None of his writings has been so extensively diffused over Europe; for it has been translated into most, if not all, of the modern languages'. This Tale, with all the charms of oriental imagery, and all the force and beauty of which the English language is capable, leads us through the most important scenes of human life, and shews us that this stage of See post, June 2, 1781. Finding it then accidentally in a chaise with Mr. Boswell, he read it eagerly. This was doubtless long after his declaration to Sir Joshua Reynolds. MALone. Baretti told Malone that 'Johnson insisted on part of the money being paid immediately, and accordingly received £70. Any other person with the degree of reputation he then possessed would have got £400 for that work, but he never understood the art of making the most of his productions.' Prior's Malone, p. 160. Some of the other circumstances there related by Baretti are not correct. Hawkesworth received £6000 for his revision of Cook's Voyages; post, May 7, 1773. See post, March 4, 1773. our 396 RASSELAS and CANDIDe. [A.D. 1759. our being is full of 'vanity and vexation of spirit'.' To those who look no further than the present life, or who maintain that human nature has not fallen from the state in which it was created, the instruction of this sublime story will be of no avail. But they who think justly, and feel with strong sensibility, will listen with eagerness and admiration to its truth and wisdom. Voltaire's Candide, written to refute the system of Optimism, which it has accomplished with brilliant success, is wonderfully similar in its plan and conduct to Johnson's Rasselas; insomuch, that I have heard Johnson say3, that if they had not been published so closely one after the other that there was not time for imitation, it would have been in vain to deny that the scheme of that which came latest was taken from the other. Though the proposition illustrated by both these works was the same, namely, that in our present state there is more evil than good, the intention of the writers was very different. Voltaire, I am afraid, meant only by wanton profaneness to obtain a sportive victory over religion, and to discredit the belief of a superintending Providence: Johnson meant, by shewing the unsatisfactory nature of things temporal, to direct the hopes of man to things eternal. Rasselas, as was observed to me by a very accomplished lady, may be considered as a more enlarged and more deeply philosophical discourse in prose, upon the interesting truth, which in his Vanity of Human Wishes he had so successfully enforced in verse. The fund of thinking which this work contains is such, that almost every sentence of it may furnish a subject of long 1 Ecclesiastes, i. 14. See post, May 16, 1778. It should seem that Candide was published in the latter half of February 1759. Grimm in his letter of March 1, speaks of its having just appeared. M. de Voltaire vient de nous égayer par un petit roman.' He does not mention it in his previous letter of Feb. 15. Grimm, Corres. Lit. (edit. 1829), ii. 296. Johnson's letter to Miss Porter, quoted in the Appendix, shows that Rasselas was written before March 23; how much earlier cannot be known. Candide is in the May list of books in the Gent. Mag. (pp. 233-5), price 2s. 6d., and with it two translations, each price 1s. 6d. meditation. |