Part 63 (2/2)

”A gulf profound as the Serbonian bog. . . .

Where armies whole have sunk.” -- MILTON.

”Such are the colours in which Marvel paints his adventures. He has accustomed himself to sounding words and hyperbolical images, till he has lost the power of true description. In a road, through which the heaviest carriages pa.s.s without difficulty, and the post-boy every day and night goes and returns, he meets with hards.h.i.+ps like those which are endured in Siberian deserts, and missed nothing of romantic danger but a giant and a dragon. When his dreadful story is told in proper terms, it is only that the way was dirty in winter, and that he experienced the common vicissitudes of rain and suns.h.i.+ne.”

I am afraid you will find a good many ”too big” words in that.

But if I changed them to others more simple you would get no idea of the way in which Johnson wrote, and I hope those you do not understand you will look up in the dictionary. It will not be Johnson's own dictionary, however, for that has grown old- fas.h.i.+oned, and its place has been taken by later ones. For some of Johnson's meanings were not correct, and when these mistakes were pointed out to him he was not in the least ashamed. Once a lady asked him how he came to say that the pastern was the knee of a horse, and he calmly replied, ”Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance.” ”Dictionaries are like watches,” he said, ”the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.”

With some words, instead of giving the original meaning, he gave a personal meaning, that is he allowed his own sense of humor, feelings or politics, to color the meaning. For instance, he disliked the Scots, so for the meaning of Oats he gave, ”A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.” He disliked the Excise duty, so he called it ”A hateful tax levied by wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.” For this last meaning he came very near being punished for libel.

When Johnson thought of beginning the dictionary he wrote about it to Lord Chesterfield, a great man and fine gentleman of the day. As the fas.h.i.+on was, Johnson had chosen this great man for his patron. But Lord Chesterfield, although his vanity was flattered at the idea of having a book dedicated to him, was too delicate a fine gentleman to wish to have anything to do with a man he considered poor. ”He throws anywhere but down his throat,” he said, ”whatever he means to drink, and mangles what he means to carve. . . . The utmost I can do for him is to consider him a respectable Hottentot.” So, when Johnson had called several times and been told that his lords.h.i.+p was not at home, or had been kept waiting for hours before he was received, he grew angry, and marched away never to return, vowing that he had done with patrons for ever.

The years went on, and Johnson saw nothing of his patron. When, however, the dictionary was nearly done, Lord Chesterfield let it be known that he would be pleased to have it dedicated to him.

But Johnson would have none of it. He wrote a letter which was the ”Blast of Doom, proclaiming into the ear of Lord Chesterfield, and, through him, of the listening world, that patronage would be no more!”*

*Carlyle.

”Seven years, my Lord, have now pa.s.sed,” wrote Johnson, ”since I waited in your outward rooms and was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pus.h.i.+ng on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication without one act of a.s.sistance, one word of encouragement, and one smile of favour.

Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before.

”Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached the ground c.u.mbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.”

There was an end of patronage so far as Johnson was concerned, and it was the beginning of the end of it with others. Great Sam had roared, he had a.s.serted himself, and with the publication of his dictionary he became ”The Great Cham* of literature.”**

*A Tartar word for prince or chief.

**Smollett.

He had by this time founded a club of literary men which met at ”a famous beef-steak house,” and here he lorded it over his fellows as his bulky namesake had done more than a hundred years before. In many ways there was a great likeness between these two. They were both big and stout (for Sam was now stout). They were loud-voiced and dictatorial. They both drank a great deal, but Ben, alas, drank wine overmuch, as was common in his day, while Sam drank endless cups of tea, seventeen or eighteen it might be at a sitting, indeed he called himself a hardened and shameless tea-drinker. But, above all, their likeness lies in the fact that they both dominated the literary men of their period; they were kings and rulers. They laid down the law and settled who was great and who little among the writers of the day. And it was not merely the friends around Johnson who heard him talk, who listened to his judgments about books and writers.

The world outside listened, too, to what he had to say, and you will remember that it was he who utterly condemned Macpherson's pretended poems of Ossian, ”that pious three-quarters fraud”* of which you have already read in chapter IV.

*A. Lang.

Johnson had always spent much of his time in taverns, and was now more than ever free to do so. For while he was still working at his dictionary he suffered a great grief in the death of his wife. He had loved her truly and never ceased to mourn her loss.

But though he had lost his wife, he did not remain solitary in his home, for he opened his doors to a queer collection of waifs and strays--three women and a man, upon whom he took pity because no one else would. They were ungrateful and undeserving, and quarreled constantly among themselves, so that his home could have been no peaceful spot. ”Williams hates everybody,” he writes; ”Levett hates Desmoulins and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll loves none of them.” It does not sound peaceful or happy.

Some years after the death of Johnson's wife his mother died at the age of ninety, and although he had not been with her for many years, that too was a grief. The poor lady had had very little to live on, and she left some debts. Johnson himself was still struggling with poverty. He had no money, so to pay his mother's few debts, and also the expenses of her funeral, he sat down to write a story. In a week he had finished Ra.s.selas, Prince of Abyssinia.

The story of Ra.s.selas is that of a prince who is shut up in the Happy Valley until the time shall come for him to ascent the throne of his father. Everything was done to make life in the Happy Valley peaceful and joyful, but Ra.s.selas grew weary of it; to him it became but a prison of pleasure, and at last, with his favorite sister, he escaped out into the world. The story tells then of their search for happiness. But perfect happiness they cannot find, and discovering this, they decide to return to the Happy Valley.

There is a vein of sadness throughout the book. It ends as it were with a big question mark, with a ”conclusion in which nothing is concluded.” For the position of the prince and his sister was unchanged, and they had not found what they sought.

Is it to be found at all? The story is a revelation of Johnson himself. He never saw life joyously, and at times he had fits of deep melancholy which he fought against as against a madness. ”I inherited,” he said, ”a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober,” and his long struggle with poverty helped to deepen this melancholy.

But a year or two after Ra.s.selas was written, a great change came in Johnson's life, which gave him comfort and security for the rest of his days. George III had come to the throne. He thought that he would like to do something for literature, and offered Johnson a pension of three hundred pounds a year.

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