Deformities of Samuel Johnson, Selected from His Works

'Gray's reputation was now so high that he had the honour of refusing the laurel[77 - Ibid.].' No man's reputation has ever yet acquired him the laurel, without some particular application from a courtier. What honour is acquired by refusing the laurel? An hundred pounds a-year would have enabled an œconomist like Mr Gray to preserve his independence and exert his generosity. The office of laureat is only ridiculous in the hands of a fool. Mr. Savage in that character produced nothing which would dishonour an Englishman and a poet. It is probable that Mr. Gray, a very costive writer, could hardly have made a decent number of verses within the limited time. From the passage now quoted the reader will not fail to remark, that the Rambler 'nurses in his mind a foolish disesteem of kings[78 - Life of Pope.].'

Mr. Gray 'had a notion not very peculiar, that he could not write but at certain times, or at happy moments; a fantastic foppery to which my kindness for a man of learning and of virtue wishes him to have been superior[79 - Gray's life.].' Milton, who was no doubt a shallow fellow compared with the Reformer of our language, had the same 'fantastic foppery.' Mr Hume remarks that Milton had not leisure 'to watch the returns of genius.' – Every man feels himself at some times less capable of intellectual effort, than at others. The Rambler himself has, in the most express terms, contradicted his present notion. In Denham's life he quotes four lines which must, he says, have been written 'in some hour propitious to poetry.' In another place in the same lives his tumid and prolix eloquence disembogues itself to prove, what no man ever doubted, viz. 'That a tradesman's hand is often out, he cannot tell why.' And an inference is drawn, That this is still more apt to be the case with a man straining his mental abilities.

In Gray's ode on spring, 'The thoughts have nothing new, the morality is natural, but too stale[80 - Ibid.].' Read the poem, and then esteem the critic if you can. Speaking of the Bard he says, 'Of the first stanza the abrupt beginning has been celebrated; but technical beauties can give praise only to the inventor[81 - Gray's life.].' The question here is, What he means by a technical beauty? That word he explains, 'Belonging to arts; not in common or popular use' – How can this word in either of these senses apply here with propriety?

What he says of 'these four stanzas[82 - Ibid.]' – conveys, I think, no sentiment. Every word may be understood separately, but in their present arrangement they seem to have no meaning, or they mean nonsense, and perhaps, contradiction; but this passage I leave to the supreme tribunal of all authors – to the reason and common sense of the reader. He can best determine whether he has 'never seen the notions in any other place, yet persuades himself that he always felt them.' These ideas are very beautifully expressed in many passages of Gaelic poetry: and Mr. Gray, let it be remembered, to the honour of his taste and candour, was the warm admirer of Fingal.

Comparing Gray's ode with an ode of Horace[83 - Pastor cum traheret per freta navibus, &c.], he says, 'there is in the Bard more force, more thought, and more variety' – as indeed there very well may, for in the one there are thirty-six lines only, and in the other one hundred and forty-four. His whole works are full of such trifling observations. 'But to copy is less than to invent, theft is always dangerous.' If he means to insinuate that Gray's Bard is a copy of Horace, (and this is the plain inference from his words) I charge him in direct terms as an atrocious violator of Truth.

'The fiction of Horace was to the Romans credible; (NO) but its revival disgusts us with apparent and unconquerable falsehood, Incredulus odi[84 - Gray's life. Dr. Beattie of Aberdeen differs very widely from Dr. Johnson on the merit of this poem. He says, 'I have heard the finest Ode in the world (meaning Gray's Bard) blamed for the boldness of its figures, and for what the critic was pleased to call obscurity.' Beattie's Essays on poetry and musick, 3d edit. p. 269. This is, certainly very strong; yet he seems in some danger of contradicting himself, when he says in another place, That 'for energy of words, vivacity of description, and apposite variety of numbers, Dryden's Feast of Alexander is superior to any ode of Horace or Pindar now extant.' Ibid, p. 17. One would have been apt to suppose that the Lyrick Poem which eclipsed Horace, if not the finest, is at least one of 'the finest in the world.' – But an author has novelty to recommend him, when he affirms that Gray is superior to Dryden, and Dryden to all Antiquity.].' How will the Doctor's verdict be digested at Aberdeen by 'a poet, a philosopher, and a good man[85 - Gray's life.].' It is diverting to remark how these mutual admirers clash on the clearest point, with not a possibility of reconcilement.

I pass by five or six lines, which are not worth contradiction, though they cannot resist it. 'I do not see that the Bard promotes any truth moral or political[86 - Ibid.].' The Rambler's intellect is blind. – He seems to have stared a great deal, to have seen little or nothing. The Bard very forcibly impresses this moral, political, and important truth, that eternal vengeance would pursue the English Tyrant and his posterity, as enemies to posterity, and exterminators of mankind. Dr Johnson, a stickler for the jus divinum, did not relish this idea.

He commends the 'Ode on Adversity,' but the hint was at 'first taken from Horace[87 - Ibid.].' The poem referred to has almost no resemblance to Mr Gray's. And if we go on at this rate, where will we find any thing original? He mistakes the title of this poem, which is not an 'Ode on,' but a 'Hymn to' Adversity. This is a clear though trifling proof of his inattention. As he dare not condemn this piece, it is dismissed in six lines, to make room for 'The wonderful wonder of wonders, the two Sister Odes, by which many have been persuaded to think themselves delighted[88 - Gray's life.].' He chews them through four tedious octavo pages. We come then to Gray's Elegy, which occupies an equal share of a paragraph containing only fourteen lines. So much more plentiful is the critic in gall than honey! And in reading this fragment we may remark that nonsense is not panegyric.

Speaking of Welsh Mythology, he says, 'Attention recoils from the repetition of a tale that, even when it was first heard, was heard with scorn[89 - Gray's life.].' There is no reason to think that the Welsh disbelieved these fictions. It is much more likely that many believe them at this day. Shakespeare has from this superstition made a whimsical picture of Owen Glendower: He painted nature. This is one of those assertions which our dictator should have qualified with a perhaps, an adverb, which, wherever it ought to be met with in the Doctor's pages, 'will not easily be found[90 - A favourite phrase of the Rambler's.].'

'But I will no longer look for particular faults; yet let it be observed that the ode might have been concluded with an action of better example; but suicide is always to be had without expence of thought[91 - Gray's life.].'

The lines objected to are these:

'He spoke, and headlong from the mountains height,
Deep in the roaring tide, he plung'd to endless night.'

Let the Doctor, if he can, give us a better conclusion.

'The Prospect of Eaton College suggests nothing to Gray, which every beholder does not equally think and feel[92 - Ibid.].' He might as well have said, that every man in England is capable of producing Paradise Lost.

We have seen with what tenderness Dr Johnson speaks of the dead, we shall now see his tenderness to the living. 'Let us give the Indians arms, and teach them discipline, and encourage them now and then to plunder a plantation. Security and leisure are the parents of sedition[93 - Taxation no Tyranny.].' The Doctor seems here to be serious. The proposal must reflect infinite honour on his wisdom and humanity.

'No part of the world has yet had reason to rejoice that Columbus found at last reception and employment[94 - Taxation no Tyranny.].' This wild opinion is fairly disproved by Dr Smith, a philosopher not much afraid of novelty; for he has advanced a greater variety of original, interesting, and profound ideas, than almost any other author since the first existence of books.

'Such is the unevenness of Dryden's compositions that ten lines are seldom found together without something of which the reader is ashamed[95 - Dryden's life.].' This is a very wide aberration from truth. In Dryden's fables we may frequently meet with five hundred lines together, without ten among them, which could have disgraced the most eminent writer. His prologues and epilogues are a never failing fountain of good sense and genuine poetry. But it were insulting the taste of the English nation to insist any farther on this point. We shall presently see how far Dr Johnson's Dictionary will answer the foregoing description.

Dryden it is said discovers 'in the preface to his fables, that he translated the first book of the Iliad without knowing what was in the second[96 - Ibid.].' This insinuation revolts against all probability; and whoever peruses that elegant and delightful preface will find it to be NOT TRUE.

'The highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue[97 - Rambler, No. 150.].' And sensitive is defined 'having sense or perception; but not reason.' If I understand the meaning of this passage, it is, that no pleasure communicated through any of the organs of sense is equal to that of rest. This assertion leads to the most absurd consequences. In man, to separate sensitive from rational perception appears to be simply impossible. Even rest is not in strict language any pleasure. It is merely a mitigation of pain. The reader will decide whether I do the Doctor justice, while I say, that he must have been petrified when he composed this maxim. Thirst and hunger had been long forgot. Handel and Titian had no power to charm. We learn that a lover can receive, and his mistress can bestow nothing which is equal to the rapturous enjoyment of an easy chair. The thought is new; no human being ever did, or ever will conceive it, except this immortal Idler.

'Physicians and lawyers are no friends to religion, and many conjectures have been formed to discover the reason of such a combination between men who agree in nothing else, and who seem to be less affected in their own provinces by religious opinions than any other part of the community[98 - Rambler, No. 9.].' He then proceeds in the tone of an author, who has made a discovery to inform us of the cause. 'They have all seen a parson, seen him in a habit different from their own, and therefore declared war against him.' But this can be no motive for peculiar antipathy to parsons, allowing such antipathy to exist; for in habit all other classes differ no less from the clergy, than the lawyer and physician. But the remark itself is frivolous and false. Boerhaave and Hale were men of eminent piety. Physicians and lawyers have as much regard for religion as any other people generally have. Their agreeing in nothing else is another of the blunders crowded into this passage. But I have too much respect for the reader's understanding to insist any farther on this point. The conjecturers, the combination, and the declaration of war, exist no where but in the Doctor's pericranium. He was at a loss what to say, and the position is only to be regarded as a turbid ebullition of amphibological inanity. But while we thus meet with something which is ridiculous in every page, we are not to forget even for a moment, what we have often heard, and what is most unquestionably true, viz. That Dr Johnson is the father of British literature, capital author of his age, and the greatest man in Europe[99 - Vide the life of Garrick by Mr Davies.]!!!

'We are by our occupations, education, and habits of life, divided almost into different species, who regard one another for the most part with scorn and malignity[100 - Rambler, No. 160.].' The Doctor is himself a proof, that a man may look upon almost all of his own profession with scorn and malignity: So that between his precept and his practice, the world seems bad enough. But I hope every heart revolts at this gross insult on the characters of mankind. He brings as an instance the aversion which subsists between soldiers and sailors. There no doubt have been jealousies and bloodshed between these two classes of men, but the same accidents fall out more frequently between soldiers themselves. The scorn and malignity of admirals seldom affect any line of service but their own. His captain of foot[101 - Ibid.], who saw no danger in a sea-fight was a fool, and just such a specimen of English officers, as the Doctor himself is of English travellers. Our repulse at Carthagena was not owing to an antipathy between the common men. Our late victory at Savannah proves with what ardour they can unite. The Doctor has insulted almost every order of society.

Coblers with coblers smoke away the night,
Even players in the common cause, unite.
Authors alone with more than mortal rage,
Eternal war with brother authors wage[102 - Churchill's Apology.].

'To raise esteem we must benefit others,' is an assertion advanced in the same page. But the Doctor, if he knows any thing, must know that esteem is often felt for an enemy. We value for his courage or ingenuity the man who never heard our name, or who would not give a guinea to save us from perdition. We can esteem the hero who butchers nations, and the pedant who perplexes truth. Marlborough's avarice led him to continue the continental war, till he had laid the great foundation of our public debt. He was detested as much as any general now in England, and yet 'he was so great a man (said one of his enemies) that I have forgot his faults.' Posterity, while they suffer for his baseness, pay the due tribute of esteem to his genius and intrepidity.

In every point of view this maxim is 'the baseless fabrick of a vision.' And what had so far obumbrated the Rambler's powers of ratiocination, it is not easy to guess. We sometimes feel it impossible to esteem even our benefactor. 'I have received obligations (said Chatterton) without being obliged.' And of consequence, his benefactors had forfeited his esteem. The father of British literature has in forty other places contradicted his own words. He has proved that esteem is involuntary, and that benefits do not always procure it.

The Doctor says, 'That Cowley having, when very young, read Spenser, became irrecoverably a poet[103 - Vide Life of Cowley. His impressions had been very slight, for Crowley has nothing of the melody, or magnificence of the Fairy Queen. Of its great author we know little but that he was praised, and neglected, unfortunate, and poor: and, from his epitaph, that he died young. His subject is not happy, his words are often obsolete, and his stanza can hardly please us long. But we may presume that he wanted leisure to study the great models of antiquity: That he wanted that tranquillity of mind so requisite to the success of a poet: And that his defects are owing to the bad taste of his age, and the hardships of his life. Had he lived longer, and had he enjoyed that competence which a prudent shoeblack seldom fails to enjoy, Spenser would have been second in fame to Shakespeare only.].' And he adds a remark that shows his good sense: 'Such are the accidents which, sometimes remembered, and sometimes perhaps forgotten, PRODUCE that particular designation of mind and propensity for some certain science or employment, which is commonly called genius. The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction. The great painter of the present age had the first fondness for his art excited by a perusal of Richardson's treatise.' This drawling definition contradicts common sense. Does the Doctor mean that Cowley would have become a painter by perusing Richardson? or that Reynolds would have become a poet by perusing Spenser? This is the clear inference from his words, and its absurdity is 'too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation[104 - Dr Johnson on Cymbeline. The same sentiment is started in his account of Pope, 'To the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet, or predominant humour, but by the first book which they read, some early conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and emulation.' – The Doctor is in this passage censuring Pope's ignorance of human nature – while his own marvellous and extreme stupidity makes him almost beneath censure. The reader will not realize Montesquieu's remark, That when we attempt to prove things so evident we are sure never to convince.].' At this rate Garrick might have eclipsed Newton, and Voltaire defeated Frederick. Plato possessed 'a mind of large general powers.' He read Homer. He wrote verses, and he found that he could not be a poet. The Doctor himself has 'large general powers;' but he could never have been made a decent dancing master. Marcel might have broke his heart, before his pupil had acquired three steps of a minuet. In his dictionary the Doctor, without a word of accidental determination, defines genius to be 'disposition of nature, by which any one is qualified for some peculiar employment.' And here I cannot help adding, that 'the great painter' has by stepping out of his own line, discovered the narrowness of even a great man's knowledge. He affirms[105 - Annual Register 1779, Part II. p. 148. I abridge his words, but give their full meaning.], That scarce a poet from Homer down to Dryden ever felt his fire diminished merely by his advance in years. There is nothing more absurd, says Cicero, than what we hear asserted by some of the philosophers. Even in painting, the President's own profession, that rule does not hold. Cellini tells us, that Michael Angelo's genius decayed with years; and he speaks of it as common to all artists. His notion was perhaps grafted on an opinion of the Doctor's about the durability of Waller's genius[106 - Life of Waller.]. But Waller was a feeble poet; he never had a genius, so that we need not wonder he never lost it. All his verses are hardly worth one of Dr Johnson's imitations of Juvenal.

Rowe (the famous tragic poet) 'seldom moves either pity or terror[107 - Life of Rowe.].' Paradise Lost is a work which 'the reader admires, and lays down, and forgets to take up again[108 - Life of Milton.],' But Rowe's Lucan, which is very little read, the Doctor pronounces to be 'one of the greatest productions of English poetry.' Dr Johnson's sycophants have asserted, that 'in the walks of criticism and biography he has long been without a rival.' And they are no doubt willing to support their idol in his infamous assertion, that Swift 'excites neither surprise nor admiration[109 - Life of Swift.].' The Doctor's disregard for the unanimous sentiments of mankind often excites surprize, but never admiration. Let us here apply his own observation, that 'there is often found in commentaries a spontaneous train of invective and contempt, more eager and venemous than is vented by the most furious controvertist in politics, against whom he is hired to defame[110 - Preface to Shakespeare.].' We may illustrate the Rambler's remark by his own example: 'Theobald, a man of narrow comprehension, and small acquisitions, with no native and intrinsick splendour of genius, with little of the artificial light of learning – his contemptible ostentation I have frequently concealed[111 - Ibid.].' The definer of a fiddlestick proceeds thus: 'I have in some places shewn him, as he would have shewn himself for the reader's diversion, that the inflated emptiness of some notes may justify or excuse the contraction of the rest.' – The advocate for tenderness and decorum goes on to tell us, that 'Theobald, thus weak and ignorant, thus mean and FAITHLESS, thus petulant and ostentatious, by the good luck of having Pope for his enemy, has escaped, and escaped alone with reputation from this undertaking. So easily is he praised whom no man can envy[112 - Preface to Shakespeare.].' How does it appear that Theobald was weak and ignorant? The Doctor himself had in the preceding page told us, that 'he (Theobald) collated the antient copies, and rectified many errors.' This assertion our author, with his wonted consistency, has flatly contradicted in the very next line. 'What little he (Theobald) did was commonly right.' Has the Doctor adduced, or has he attempted to adduce evidence, that Theobald was mean and faithless, or what provocation has he to load this man's memory with such injurious epithets? His burst of vulgarity can reflect disgrace on nobody but himself. It is evident, tho' he thinks proper to deny it, that he considered Theobald as an object of envy; yet he is obliged to confess that Theobald 'escaped, and escaped alone, with reputation,' from the talk of amending Shakespeare. In assigning a reason for this applause of Theobald, Dr Johnson pays a very poor compliment to the penetration of the public, for surely to combat a writer of so much merit and popularity as Pope, was not the plainest road to eminence in the literary world.

'In his (Shakespeare's) tragic scenes there is always something wanting' – NO[113 - 'He has scenes of undoubted and perpetual excellence.' Ibid. Is there not some inconsistency in these various assertions.]– 'In his comic scenes he is seldom very successful, when he engages his characters in reciprocations of smartness, and contests of sarcasms; their ideas are commonly gross, and their pleasantry licentious.' This accusation is cruel and unjust, as all the world knows already. But a great part of that preface is an incoherent jumble of reproach and panegyrick[114 - See in the same style his observations on Prior, Akenside, and others.]. If any thing can be yet more faulty than what we have just now seen, it is what follows: 'Whenever he (Shakespeare) solicits his invention, or strains his faculties[115 - Quere. Did ever Shakespeare, or any other man, compose a single page, or even a single line, on any subject, without either straining his faculties, or at least soliciting his invention. It is very possible that the Doctor did not suspect the full extent of his expression.], the offspring of his throes is tumour (i. e. puffy grandeur[116 - Vide Dictionary.]), meanness, tediousness, and obscurity. His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak.' The set speeches (as the Doctor elegantly terms them) of Petruchio, of Jacques, of Wolsey, and of Hamlet, are perhaps neither cold nor weak. The conclusion of this period is worthy of such a beginning; he mentions certain attempts from which Shakespeare 'seldom escapes without the pity or resentment of his reader.' The Doctor himself is an object of pity. Shakespeare has been in his grave near two centuries – His life was innocent – His writings are immortal. To feel resentment against so great a man because his works are not every where equal, is an idea highly becoming the generosity of Dr Johnson.

What 'truth, moral or political,' is promoted by telling us, that, when Thomson came to London, his first want was a pair of shoes; that Pope 'wore a kind of fur doublet, under a shirt of very coarse warm linen, with fine sleeves[117 - Life of Pope.];' and a long string of such tiresome and disgusting trifles, which make his narrative seem ridiculous. Had Dr Johnson been Pope's apothecary, we would certainly have heard of the frequency of his pulse, the colour of his water, and the quantity of his stools.

'Though Pope seemed angry when a dram was offered him, he did not forbear to drink it[118 - Ibid.].' And who the Devil cares whether he did or not? The Doctor needed hardly to have told us, that 'his petty peculiarities were communicated by a female domestic;' for no gentleman would have confessed that they came within the reach of his observation.

The truly illustrious author of the Rambler, has exerted his venemous eloquence, through several pages, in order to convince us, that 'never were penury of knowledge and vulgarity of sentiment so happily disguised,' as in Pope's Essay on Man. For this purpose, the Doctor celebrates the character of Crousaz, whose intentions 'were always right, his opinions were solid, and his religion pure[119 - Pope's life.].' In opposition to such authorities, let us hear the great and immortal citizen of Geneva.

'M. de Crousaz has lately given us a refutation of the ethic epistles of Mr Pope, which I have read; but it did not please me. I will not take upon me to say, which of these two authors is in the right; but I am persuaded, that the book of the former will never excite the reader to do any one virtuous action, whereas our zeal for every thing great and good is awakened by that of Pope[120 - Eloisa, Letter 83.].'

The Essay on Man, he says, 'affords an egregious instance of the predominance of genius, the dazzling splendour of imagery, and the seductive powers of eloquence. The reader feels his mind full, though he learns NOTHING; and when he meets it in its new array, no longer knows the talk of his mother, and his nurse[121 - Pope's life.].' If the conversations of Dr Johnson's mother and his nurse were equal to Mr Pope's verses, it is a pity the Doctor had not preserved them. He could hardly have spent his time so well. And it is a wonder that with so many rare opportunities of improvement, the Doctor has never yet eclipsed his nurse. Voltaire pronounces Pope's Essay to be the finest didactick poem in the world, and he would no doubt have replied to the Doctor's objections in that tone of contempt with which the Doctor replied to some of his – 'These are the petty cavils of petty minds[122 - Preface to Shakespeare.].'

In the Essay on Man 'so little was any evil tendency discovered, that, as innocence is unsuspicious, many read it for a manual of piety[123 - Pope's life.];' – and will continue to read it, when the cavils of Dr Johnson are forgotten or despised.

'He (Pope) nursed in his mind a foolish disesteem of Kings.' And again, 'He gratified that ambitious petulance with which he affected to insult the great[124 - Ibid.].'

Dr Johnson himself is by no means remarkable for his respect to the great. In the preface to his folio Dictionary, he tells us, that it was written 'without any patronage of the great,' which is a mistake; for he had published a pamphlet, some years before, wherein he acknowledges, that Chesterfield had patronized him; and why the Doctor should retract his own words, it is hard to say; for Chesterfield continued his friend to the last; and such a man was very likely the strongest spoke in the Doctor's wheel. But his Lordship is now dead, and the Doctor is always and eminently grateful.

'It has been maintained by some, who love to talk of what they do not know, that pastoral is the most antient poetry.' But in the next period, 'pastoral poetry was the first employment of the human imagination[125 - Rambler, No. 36.].' The Doctor, therefore, by his own account, is one of those, who love to talk of (and what is yet worse, to assert) what they do not know. In North America, the natives have no conception of pastoral life among themselves, and their poetry, such as it is, hath no relation to that state of society.

Pastoral poetry 'is generally pleasing, because it entertains the mind with representations of scenes, familiar to almost every imagination, and of which all can equally judge whether they are well described, or not[126 - Ibid.].'

This period is so closely interwoven with nonsense, that it will take some pains to disentangle it. Rural scenes are not familiar to almost every imagination. In England half the people are shut up in large towns, and such is the gross ignorance of some of them, that an old woman in London once asked, whether potatoes grew on trees. Neither is every man an equal judge even of what is familiar to him. Observe how the Rambler confounds the distinction between all, and almost every. The whole number is in the same stile.

'At this time a long course of opposition to Sir Robert Walpole had filled the nation with clamours for liberty, of which no man felt the want, and with care for liberty which was not in danger[127 - Thomson's life.].'

No man was more violent than Dr Johnson in abusing Walpole. We have already seen some of those political definitions, which at this hour deform the Doctor's Dictionary. His late zeal for government could arise from self interest only. And to take his own words, he comes under suspicion as a wretch hired to vindicate the late measures of the Court[128 - The author has no intention here to disseminate political opinions – His only meaning is to prove, that somebody has neither principle, nor consistency, nor shame.]. He accuses Milton as a tool of authority, as a forger hired to assassinate the memory of Charles I. These charges came with a very bad grace from the Rambler. They are long since refuted in a separate publication, and yet they will be reprinted in every future edition of his book.

Will any man be the wiser, the better, or the merrier, by reading what follows – 'Lyttleton was his (Shenstone's) neighbour, and his rival, whose empire, spacious and opulent, looked with disdain on the petty state that appeared behind it. For a while the inhabitants of Hagley affected to tell their acquaintance of the little fellow that was trying to make himself admired; but when by degrees the Leasowes forced themselves into notice, they took care to defeat the curiosity which they could not suppress, by conducting their visitants perversely to inconvenient points of view, and introducing them at the wrong end of a walk to detect a deception; injuries of which Shenstone would heavily complain[129 - Life of Shenstone.].' The paragraph closes with a deep observation.

As the Doctor's own associates[130 - Gentleman's Magazine.] have lamented the existence of this beautiful and important passage, I have only to say, that Poor Lyttleton (as the Doctor calls him) patronized Fielding, and that the Rambler patronizes William Shaw: That his Lordship was an elegant writer: That he did not adopt Johnson's new words: That Lexiphanes was dedicated to him: That he was a great and an amiable man: And that he is dead.

With all his affectation of hard words, the Doctor becomes at once intelligible when he wishes to reprobate a rival genius, or insult the ashes of a benefactor. In defiance of Addison, and a thousand other shallow fellows, he asserts that Milton 'both in prose and verse had formed his stile by a perverse and pedantick principle[131 - Vide life of Milton.].'

Speaking of Mr Walmsley, he says, 'At this man's table I enjoyed many chearful and agreeable hours, with companions such as are not often to be found. – I am not able to name a man of equal knowledge. He never received my notions with contempt. – He was one of the first friends whom literature procured me, – and I hope that at least my gratitude made me worthy of his notice. It may be doubted whether a day now passes, in which I have not some advantage from his friendship[132 - Life of Smith.].' But then, 'He was a Whig with ALL the virulence and malevolence of his party.' This is a most beautiful conclusion; and quite in the Doctor's stile. His accusation is incredible. A monster, such as he draws here, can seldom deform existence.

We are told that at St. Andrews Cardinal Beaton 'was murdered by the ruffians of Reformation[133 - Tour, p. 8, 12mo edit.].' And it seems to be the fashion of the day, to censure that action. Yet it is allowed on all hands that Wishart's doctrine, in spite of its incomprehensibilities, was better than Popery – that Beaton, a profligate usurping Priest, had committed every human vice – that, without civil authority, he dragged our Apostle to the stake – and that his avowed design was to expell or exterminate the whole Protestant party. Had the Cardinal been permitted to complete his plan, we durst not at this day have disputed, 'Whether it is better to worship a piece of rotten wood[134 - The Crucifix – Gulliver's Travels.], or throw it in the fire?' It is therefore evident that to kill this tyrant was highly proper and laudable. We may just as well censure the centurion who slew Caligula. When a philosopher, who truly deserves that title, was once in conversation reprobating Melvil, he was interrupted by this, simple question, Whether if his own antagonist had conducted him to the stake, he would not have pardoned a pupil for avenging his blood? 'I would most certainly,' he replied, and such must be the real sentiments of all men, whatever they may chuse to print. When we attempt to hide the feelings of nature, that we may support a favourite system, we never fail to become ridiculous. In this age and nation, if a magistrate shall rise above the law; if he rob us of life with the most barbarous exulation; if his guilt equal whatever history hath recorded; if he want nothing but the purple and the legions to rival Domitian, the voice of nature will be heard. The brave will reject such unmanly, such fatal refinements of speculation. Like Hambden and Melvil, they will stand forth in defence of themselves, and their posterity. They will relieve their fellow citizens from temporal perdition. They will drive insolence and injustice from the seat of power. They will exult in danger, and rush to revenge or death. They will plunge their swords in the heart of their oppressor; or they will teach him, like Charles, to atone upon the scaffold for the tears and the blood of his people; and while in the eyes of their countrymen, they read their glory[135 - 'And read their history in a nation's eyes.' Gray's Elegy.], they will perhaps reflect with a smile, that some slavish pedant, some pensioned traitor to the rights of mankind, is one day to mark them out as objects of public detestation[136 - On this subject nothing liberal could be expected from Dr Johnson, who, in spite of his murmurs about Excise, and his actual benevolence in private life, has always been the firm advocate of oppression. His project of hiring the Cherokees to massacre the North Americans (vide supra p. 32) may serve to inform us what he himself would have done, had he been seated in the saddle of authority. But what shall be said for some Scottish historians who have adopted the same ideas? One of them tells us, that Beaton had prepared a list of three hundred and sixty of the leaders of the Protestant party, whose lives and fortunes were to be sacrificed to the rapacity and the pride of this ambitious prelate. Yet he pronounces the killing of such a dangerous monster to be a most execrable deed. He dwells with studied exultation on the execution of Charles I. but if our King really deserved his fate, Was not Beaton by many degrees more criminal? An author can hardly spend his time worse, than in writing to flatter the prejudices, and to corrupt the common sense of the world.].

'The theatre, when it is under any other direction, is peopled by such characters as were never seen, conversing in a language which was never heard, upon topics which will never arise in the commerce of mankind. – Upon every other stage the universal agent is love, by whose power all good and evil is distributed, and every action quickened or retarded. To bring a lover, a lady and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in contradictory obligations, perplex them with oppositions of interest, and harrass them with violence of desires inconsistent with each other; to make them meet in rapture, and part in agony; to fill their mouths with hyperbolical joy, and outrageous sorrow; to distress them as nothing human ever was distressed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered, is the business of a modern dramatist. For this probability is violated, life is misrepresented, and language is depraved[137 - Preface to Shakespeare.].' The weakest of Dr Johnson's admirers will blush in reading this passage. He very fairly denies every degree of merit, to every dramatic writer, of every age or nation, Shakespeare alone excepted. What can be more ridiculous than this?

'Every man finds his mind more strongly seized by the tragedies of Shakespeare than of any other writer; others please us by particular speeches, but he always makes us anxious for the event, by exciting restless and unquenchable[138 - Quere. What is unquenchable curiosity? and how can a play excite curiosity which cannot be satisfied by its conclusion?] curiosity, and compelling him that reads his work to read it through[139 - Preface to Shakespeare.].' But the Doctor overthrows all this within a few pages, for Shakespeare has 'perhaps not one play, which, if it were now exhibited as the work of a cotemporary writer, would be heard to the conclusion[140 - Ibid.].' The Rambler cannot always suppress his thorough contempt for the taste of the public. He no doubt laughs internally at their folly in admiring him.

I proceed to the Doctor's English Dictionary, and shall begin with quoting the remarks already made by a judicious friend, on this subject.