Boswell's Life of Johnson
such multiplication than Boswell's Life of Johnson. It adds a new world
to one's own, it increases one's acquaintance among people who think, it
gives intimate companionship with a great and friendly man.
The Life of Johnson is not a book on first acquaintance to be read
through from the first page to the end. 'No, Sir, do YOU read books
through?' asked Johnson. His way is probably the best one of undertaking
this book. Open at random, read here and there, forward and back, wholly
according to inclination; follow the practice of Johnson and all good
readers, of 'tearing the heart' out of it. In this way you most readily
come within the reach of its charm and power. Then, not content with
a part, seek the unabridged whole, and grow into the infinite
possibilities of it.
But the supreme end of education, we are told, is expert discernment in
all things--the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from
the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and
the counterfeit. This is the supreme end of the talk of Socrates, and
it is the supreme end of the talk of Johnson. 'My dear friend,' said he,
'clear your mind of cant; . . . don't THINK foolishly.' The effect of
long companionship with Boswell's Johnson is just this. As Sir Joshua
said, 'it brushes away the rubbish'; it clears the mind of cant; it
instills the habit of singling out the essential thing; it imparts
discernment. Thus, through his friendship with Boswell, Johnson will
realize his wish, still to be teaching as the years increase.
THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion
which he has given, 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. But although he
at different times, in a desultory manner, committed to writing many
particulars of the progress of his mind and fortunes, he never had
persevering diligence enough to form them into a regular composition.
Of these memorials a few have been preserved; but the greater part was
consigned by him to the flames, a few days before his death.
As I had the honour and happiness of enjoying his friendship for upwards
of twenty years; as I had the scheme of writing his life constantly in
view; as he was well apprised of this circumstance, and from time to
time obligingly satisfied my inquiries, by communicating to me the
incidents of his early years; as I acquired a facility in recollecting,
and was very assiduous in recording, his conversation, of which the
extraordinary vigour and vivacity constituted one of the first features
of his character; and as I have spared no pains in obtaining materials
concerning him, from every quarter where I could discover that they were
to be found, and have been favoured with the most liberal communications
by his friends; I flatter myself that few biographers have entered
upon such a work as this, with more advantages; independent of literary
abilities, in which I am not vain enough to compare myself with some
great names who have gone before me in this kind of writing.
Instead of melting down my materials into one mass, and constantly
speaking in my own person, by which I might have appeared to have more
merit in the execution of the work, I have resolved to adopt and enlarge
upon the excellent plan of Mr. Mason, in his Memoirs of Gray. Wherever
narrative is necessary to explain, connect, and supply, I furnish it to
the best of my abilities; but in the chronological series of Johnson's
life, which I trace as distinctly as I can, year by year, I produce,
wherever it is in my power, his own minutes, letters or conversation,
being convinced that this mode is more lively, and will make my readers
better acquainted with him, than even most of those were who actually
knew him, but could know him only partially; whereas there is here an
accumulation of intelligence from various points, by which his character
is more fully understood and illustrated.
Indeed I cannot conceive a more perfect mode of writing any man's life,
than not only relating all the most important events of it in their
order, but interweaving what he privately wrote, and said, and thought;
by which mankind are enabled as it were to see him live, and to 'live
o'er each scene' with him, as he actually advanced through the several
stages of his life. Had his other friends been as diligent and ardent
as I was, he might have been almost entirely preserved. As it is, I will
venture to say that he will be seen in this work more completely than
any man who has ever yet lived.
And he will be seen as he really was; for I profess to write, not his
panegyrick, which must be all praise, but his Life; which, great and
good as he was, must not be supposed to be entirely perfect. To be as he
was, is indeed subject of panegyrick enough to any man in this state of
being; but in every picture there should be shade as well as light, and
when I delineate him without reserve, I do what he himself recommended,
both by his precept and his example.
I am fully aware of the objections which may be made to the minuteness
on some occasions of my detail of Johnson's conversation, and how
happily it is adapted for the petty exercise of ridicule, by men of
superficial understanding and ludicrous fancy; but I remain firm
and confident in my opinion, that minute particulars are frequently
characteristick, and always amusing, when they relate to a distinguished
man. I am therefore exceedingly unwilling that any thing, however
slight, which my illustrious friend thought it worth his while to
express, with any degree of point, should perish.
Of one thing I am certain, that considering how highly the small portion
which we have of the table-talk and other anecdotes of our celebrated
writers is valued, and how earnestly it is regretted that we have not
more, I am justified in preserving rather too many of Johnson's sayings,
than too few; especially as from the diversity of dispositions it cannot
be known with certainty beforehand, whether what may seem trifling to
some, and perhaps to the collector himself, may not be most agreeable to
many; and the greater number that an authour can please in any degree,
the more pleasure does there arise to a benevolent mind.
Samuel Johnson was born at Lichfield, in Staffordshire, on the 18th of
September, N. S., 1709; and his initiation into the Christian Church was
not delayed; for his baptism is recorded, in the register of St. Mary's
parish in that city, to have been performed on the day of his birth. His
father is there stiled Gentleman, a circumstance of which an ignorant
panegyrist has praised him for not being proud; when the truth is, that
the appellation of Gentleman, though now lost in the indiscriminate
assumption of Esquire, was commonly taken by those who could not boast
of gentility. His father was Michael Johnson, a native of Derbyshire,
of obscure extraction, who settled in Lichfield as a bookseller and
stationer. His mother was Sarah Ford, descended of an ancient race of
substantial yeomanry in Warwickshire. They were well advanced in years
when they married, and never had more than two children, both sons;
Samuel, their first born, who lived to be the illustrious character
whose various excellence I am to endeavour to record, and Nathanael, who
died in his twenty-fifth year.
Mr. Michael Johnson was a man of a large and robust body, and of a
strong and active mind; yet, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound
substance are often discovered, there was in him a mixture of that
disease, the nature of which eludes the most minute enquiry, though the
effects are well known to be a weariness of life, an unconcern about
those things which agitate the greater part of mankind, and a general
sensation of gloomy wretchedness. From him then his son inherited,
with some other qualities, 'a vile melancholy,' which in his too strong
expression of any disturbance of the mind, 'made him mad all his life,
at least not sober.' Michael was, however, forced by the narrowness of
his circumstances to be very diligent in business, not only in his shop,
but by occasionally resorting to several towns in the neighbourhood,
some of which were at a considerable distance from Lichfield. At that
time booksellers' shops in the provincial towns of England were very
rare, so that there was not one even in Birmingham, in which town old
Mr. Johnson used to open a shop every market-day. He was a pretty good
Latin scholar, and a citizen so creditable as to be made one of the
magistrates of Lichfield; and, being a man of good sense, and skill in
his trade, he acquired a reasonable share of wealth, of which however
he afterwards lost the greatest part, by engaging unsuccessfully in a
manufacture of parchment. He was a zealous high-church man and royalist,
and retained his attachment to the unfortunate house of Stuart, though
he reconciled himself, by casuistical arguments of expediency and
necessity, to take the oaths imposed by the prevailing power.
Johnson's mother was a woman of distinguished understanding. I asked
his old school-fellow, Mr. Hector, surgeon of Birmingham, if she was not
vain of her son. He said, 'she had too much good sense to be vain,
but she knew her son's value.' Her piety was not inferiour to her
understanding; and to her must be ascribed those early impressions
of religion upon the mind of her son, from which the world afterwards
derived so much benefit. He told me, that he remembered distinctly
having had the first notice of Heaven, 'a place to which good people
went,' and hell, 'a place to which bad people went,' communicated to him
by her, when a little child in bed with her; and that it might be the
better fixed in his memory, she sent him to repeat it to Thomas Jackson,
their man-servant; he not being in the way, this was not done; but there
was no occasion for any artificial aid for its preservation.
There is a traditional story of the infant Hercules of toryism,
so curiously characteristick, that I shall not withhold it. It was
communicated to me in a letter from Miss Mary Adye, of Lichfield:
'When Dr. Sacheverel was at Lichfield, Johnson was not quite three years
old. My grandfather Hammond observed him at the cathedral perched upon
his father's shoulders, listening and gaping at the much celebrated
preacher. Mr. Hammond asked Mr. Johnson how he could possibly think of
bringing such an infant to church, and in the midst of so great a crowd.
He answered, because it was impossible to keep him at home; for, young
as he was, he believed he had caught the publick spirit and zeal for
Sacheverel, and would have staid for ever in the church, satisfied with
beholding him.'
Nor can I omit a little instance of that jealous independence of
spirit, and impetuosity of temper, which never forsook him. The fact
was acknowledged to me by himself, upon the authority of his mother. One
day, when the servant who used to be sent to school to conduct him
home, had not come in time, he set out by himself, though he was then so
near-sighted, that he was obliged to stoop down on his hands and knees
to take a view of the kennel before he ventured to step over it. His
school-mistress, afraid that he might miss his way, or fall into the
kennel, or be run over by a cart, followed him at some distance. He
happened to turn about and perceive her. Feeling her careful attention
as an insult to his manliness, he ran back to her in a rage, and beat
her, as well as his strength would permit.